circus truck grill - 100 drawings in 100 days

i'm still all wound up about the fair. and especially the groovy truck sculpture i saw there. yesterday's drawing was of a section of the front and the tire of this amazing beast. today, i give you a drawing of the grill - yes, this jolly roger was welded onto the grill of the chevrolet. now, the cool thing is that all of the parts that make up the skull and cross-bones are tools and ratchets and other things that i don't know what they're called. i know they are either truck parts or just found pieces of metal. the reason why i am so attracted to this piece, is that i myself used to go to the train tracks and pick up whatever scraps of iron and metal i could find to use in my paintings. and i wish i would have thought of this skull and crossbones first!

circus truck - 100 drawings in 100 days

well, i finally got to the fair! it was great - not as weird as i was hoping for, but maybe that's just the experience i had when i lived in oklahoma city.

this was the highlight - i didn't catch the artist's name, but i must go back and get it. this is an old army truck he had bought and added, by way of welding, all of these tools, scraps of metal, etc , to make this fabulous sculpture! the whole thing was rust-ridden and gorgeous! i just love rust in art! in the places shown here in my drawing, "circus truck", the rust looks just like black islands in a rusty sea... i think this truck sculpture is one of the most amazing pieces of art i've seen in a long time!

chesterfield - 100 drawings in 100 days

i really wanted to draw more circus-inspired things, but that will have to wait until tomorrow... i am going tonight!!! i'm so excited. but my best friend from high school wants me to draw some of the whales i saw the other day, but alas, the photos i did manage to get of them, although they are great photos, and i will have some great memories of that day from them, i don't think anyone else would recognize what they are... so, i will have to create something special that involves whales soon.

so, i was just flipping through a magazine, and saw this gorgeous sofa, which looks a lot like the leather sofa in one of my paintings of a miniature schnauzer that i was commissioned to do years ago. the dog was perched upon this chair, looking very much like Thurston Howell the Third (gilligan's island) and wearing an ascot. from then on, i have always enjoyed drawing/painting beautiful furniture and architecture, as well as wild wallpapers.

the face of the circus ii - 100 drawings in 100 days

oh how i just love the circus!! and the carnival, and the fair, and mardi gras, and, and, and...

i saw tons of these when i was in new orleans in 2002, pre-katrina. i was there just right after mardi gras and was sad that i missed it, but the city was still vibrating from the big festival.

i would just love to go to venice when they have their mardi gras.

but, mardi gras originated in rome, where it was called lupercalia, long before the new world began in europe. the ancient custom began when Christianity was embraced in Rome, and rather than abolish all pagan rituals, it became a period of festivities and merriment that preceded the penance of Lent.

circus and snakes - 100 drawings in 100 days

in honor of my anticipated visit to the city fair, i have drawn
"circus elephant" (top left) and a goofy-looking weird snake, "ninderry snake" (bottom left). the snake theme came about when i was at my mom's this weekend, and they had found the skeleton of either one very large, long snake, or possibly two. nonetheless, there really are no good snakes in australia, so i'm quite glad that it/they were dead. the reason why we couldn't really tell if it was one snake or two, is because the crows had been around and the majority of the skull was absent. i did, however, manage to swipe a few pieces of skeleton for artistic research...

"venus de sydney" - 100 drawings in 100 days

i came across this figure in my "inspiration" folder on my desktop. it's so interesting to me how i collect all this information from the web, and i can even get my act together enough at times to create an "inspiration" folder, in which i keep any and all things that COULD potentially inspire me in those moments when i am stuck. and such a devastating void it is, to be stuck in artist's block. but here, i have created myself an escape route, an easy way out, a cheat-sheet...

do i use it? no. not really. only when i'm searching for something else and i accidentally stumble across this folder. like today. so, here she is, "venus de syndey" or "venus de fogotten folder"

whale watching - 100 drawings in 100 days

i just got back from whale-watching at harvey bay! how absolutely amazing those creatures are! i haven't finished my drawing yet, but stay tuned, tomorrow it will be up!