Dr. V

I was asked to put some illustrations in an online magazine. This is for the cover. Each issue has a cover of a doctor with a mask and one of those round metal thingies on his or her head. This is my rendition. When it comes out I will post where you can go to look at it.

Hella

Danny turned me on to the work of Ronald Searle. A great old time illustrator. There is one book by him in particular that Danny covets. It's called, "Paris sketchbook." I found a used one online so I bought it. It's a first edition, 1958. I noticed the person who originally bought it had signed their name very prominately on the front page. The name was strange so I googled it. Hella Freud Bernays. Turns out she is Sigmund Freud's niece. I think she translated books for a living. The internet is cool. Check out this cool little movie of me. Click here.

Stumble

If you've ever seen a cool website and then tried to find it later on and couldn't remember how to find it again then Stumbleupon is for you. You need to have firefox as your browser. Go to stumbleupon and download it. With one click of a button you can surf categories like art, illustration and photography. It searches instantly for cool stuff. It is very addictive. When you land on a site you want to remember just hold down control and click and it saves a photo and the url to your own little stumbleupon library. You can visit my pages here. I use the thing all the time. It's a great place to hide away all the discoveries I make online.

Buddies

This drawing on the street thing is quite strange. Not a lot of people do it. Think if you met someone and asked if they wanted to go drawing with you. People would look at you like you were nuts. So what are the odds of having two friends who are willing to do this with me? Danny, Butch and I are such a trio. Plus Butch has a car. So when Butch asks, "what do you want to draw?" I can say the Williamsburg bridge and my wish can come true. Presto. We don't talk or interact when we are drawing. It is done silently but it is comforting to know that some maniac is a few feet away doing the same exercise. People are always checking out the three weirdos. It's like the line from the old theme song to the show, "The Monkees." "We get the funniest looks from, everyone we meet." That's us.

Federici

The other day I did a photo shoot for Samsung. I worked with a really great photographer, Daniela Federici. She was much easier to work with than some of the ego maniacal male fashion photographers I've had to deal with in the past. Her work has a real specific look to it. You can see more of her work here. I drew a portrait of her in action. Turns out she lives in my neighborhood too. I will definitely be using her a lot in the future. Daniela and I went out for a drink a few weeks ago. We like talking to each other. It's nice to stay friends with incredibly talented artists I get to work with. She is also a filmmaker who lives a kind of fearless life doing whatever she wants artistically. I am so much the opposite, filled with doubt and fear. I'm hoping some of her rubs off on me.

Theatre Of The Absurd

Absurdity is an artists friend. My mind works in mysterious ways. I think it is from watching too many cartoons as a kid. When I was little I got up at the crack of dawn, ran to the basement turned on the TV and filled my head with lots of funny stuff. I'd watch Colonel Bleep followed by Davey and Golieth, Gumby, Diver Dan, and Beany and Cecil. I really believe it helped me creatively. Bugs Bunny didn't play by the rules. I didn't want to be a policeman or fireman. I wanted to work on Tennessee Tuxedo. Come up with gags for George of the Jungle. When I was growing up there were seven channels and television was god. Now I have seven hundreds channels and there isn't a thing to watch. How did that happen? Drawing is my TV now and I usually tune into myself for amusement.

Nickname

I may have mentioned this in the past but my wife’s nickname for me is squirrel. It’s because I am so anal. I constantly clean the house and arrange everything just so. It would make anyone nuts. She calls what I do, “squirrel activity”. So I did this little drawing for her. The stamps on there are from Mattias Adolfsson. I bought a print from him and those were the stamps on the cardboard tube. I loved them so much that I steamed them off. Then I spray glued them on to my drawing. Believe it or not there is a group I belong to on flickr that is called, squirrles. People post photographs of squirrels that they've taken. I think I’m the only one posting drawings. I also want to thank everyone for linking me. I'm up to 96 links from blogs now. I'll be breaking the hundred mark soon. I especially want to thank Susan Henderson. Her google power is awesome.

Jack The Ripper

I have an unusually large family. Hundreds of cousins. Tons that are still in Ireland. My mom and aunts still take great care to stay in touch with everyone. So it is not strange for me to get a phone call out of the blue by someone saying, "You probably don't know me but I'm your cousin and I will be in New York in a week. You think I could stay with you?" Hell yeah. You're my cousin, that would be cool. My cousin Jack is one such individual. My grandmother had a brother and four sisters. One of the sisters is Jack's grandmother. She had like ten kids who in turn each had like eight kids. The first time I turned up in Ireland, my mom gave me a phone number to call. I felt stupid because I didn't know any of these people but I called the number anyway. A bunch of folks turned up at my hotel. They drove me into the woods in the dark of night. We ended up at a little pub with a thatched roof. There were about forty people inside. Someone said, "everyone in here is your cousin." And it was true. That was only a third of them. They had come to meet me. I was shocked and overwhelmed, especially by how much they drank and partied. Wow, these are my people. I went to their homes for supper. It was a fantastic experience. So now you know why I love getting those phone calls when I hear someone on the line say, "you probably don't know who I am?" Oh yes I do.

Midgley

The first thing I noticed when I met the Photographer John Midgley was how much we looked alike. He too is an elf with a shaved head. I would like to approach an advertising magazine and see if they will run my series of portraits I've done on photographers in the business. I have a bunch now. John and I got along very well. I like hanging with him. We are going to have dinner together with the wives. Very civilized.

Also I have been tagged to play in a silly game. Seeing as Juj is a fan, I will go along with it (partially). To make a long story short, she has a blog: everything is contextual.blogspot.com. If you get tagged you have to tell 7 things about yourself no one knows. So for a fan I'll do it. But then you are supposed to tag 7 other freaks and they in turn have to do it. That is where I'll draw the line. So here goes. 1. I have some mental blog that prevents me from being able to use dental floss. 2. I don't eat salmon or mussels. 3. Sometimes I pee sitting down. 4. I've stopped going to a shrink. 5. I like Pat Buchanan 6. I never cheat on my taxes. 7. I never ever order take out food and that's the truth.

Links

Links are king. I never really noticed or cared about my links before. Obviously everyone knows links are what give you google power and we all dig power. Every once in a while I visit technorati to see how my linking power is doing. Technorati is a site that tracks how many links you have. My blog now has 83 blogs linked to it. I'm not sure of the difference between having regular links and links from blogs. Maybe someone can explain that to me but links from blogs seem to be where it's at. The problem I have is that people used to link to my tommykane.com site. There I have about 25 links from blogs. Too bad I can't carry them over to my blog. Anyway I would love to get over the hundred mark. At one point when I hovered around fifty, I made an effort to write to people for some link exchanges. That went very well I must say. My friend Danny Gregory has like 350 links from blogs. He rules. If anyone would like to help out and link my blog, that would be excellent.

Toronto

I spent my birthday atop the CN tower. There is a real fancy restaurant there. One of those circular ones that rotates the whole time you're eating. It was a kind of tourist place except the food was top notch and expensive. The constant rotating definitely made me dizzy. We hit the club scene too. Everyone in Toronto looks like a model. I'm not sure what that is all about. Must be the cold winters or something. Someone gave me the book, "So you want to be a Canadian." It's filled with lots of facts. Did you know that ginger ale, plastic garbage bags, lawn sprinklers, paint rollers and zippers were all invented in Canada? Well it's true.

Good Charlotte

I was at Laguardia airport waiting to fly to Toronto to do a photo shoot. The producer and I were suddenly surrounded by a bunch of tattooed thugs. Turns out it was the rock band, Good Charlotte. We started to chat each other up. One of them had a tattoo on his arm that I recognized from a Mark Ryden painting. He was surprised I knew of Ryden. I told him I illustrate. They looked through two of my drawing books I had with me. Everyone loved my bong drawing, especially the lead singer. One of the brothers does a bit of drawing himself. I gave them my cards and stickers. Turns out they were not thugs at all. They were actually nice well behaved young men. I believe the word is: Pros. When I got to Toronto and turned on the television in my hotel room, Good Charlotte was everywhere. There new album is huge there. They even performed a concert that was televised live on MTV throughout Canada. I wish the boys all the best of luck.