Charles Schulz Museum

Many years ago, my husband and I ventured to California for our honeymoon, which turned out to be his first trip to the west coast.  We've been there many times since then, but our honeymoon was special, and due to an unfortunate hard disk crash, we lost all our photos from that trip.  One place we visited, which is one of my favorite places in the world, was the Charles M. Schulz Mueseum in Santa Rosa. 

Well as luck would have it, thirteen years later, we planned a family vacation to the west coast, and luckily there were TWO Peanuts fans on this trip, who insisted on taking the day trip to Santa Rosa. I have to tell you, for me it was like coming home.  The first stop along the way was a quick visit to downtown Santa Rosa, where a bronze statue of Charlie Brown and Snoopy stands in Railway Square.  It was nice to see this little gem again.  Scattered throughout the downtown area are several fiberglass statues of more peanuts characters, painted by artists as part of a local project.  We made sure to take advantage of these photo op's while we could.  You can read more about the statues here:  http://www.roadsideamerica.com/story/24523. 

The Museum itself is loaded with goodies for any fan of Snoopy, Linus, Lucy, and the artist behind these famous characters.  One of the most fascinating components of the permanent exhibit is a recreation of Schultz's studio, including his original drawing table, his desk, and his books.  Also on display in a nearby room is the legendary Nursery Wall, a section of wall from Schultz's former home in Colorado Springs, containing original artwork from his early career.  The museum also features rotating exhibits throughout the year.  When we visited in the summer of 2015, the theme was Ice Hockey, and the many references to skating and hockey in Schultz's work.

One of the more fascinating items to see at the museum was this unusual structure called a Peek-a-Boo Box.  From a distance, it appeared to be a tower-ish wall with peek-holes in it.  Burried inside the wall, and viewable only through the holes, were these beautiful 3-dimensional shadow-boxes of Peanuts characters made from cardstock.  I held my camera up to every peek-hole and captured them.  If you walked by this structure without taking the time to look inside, you missed all this magic.

As of the date I'm writing this, just two days ago was the 16th anniversary of Schulz's passing.  I cannot imagine what my life would have been like without his influence, his creativity, and his inspiration.  May he continue to inspire young cartoonists everywhere.

For more photos from this visit, please view my online album here.

Wayback Machine: The Super Kids League!!

No it's not the Justice League, and it sure as hell isn't Teen Titans Go (good grief, I hate that show!!). It's not even the Legion of the Super Heroes but if you guessed if they inspired it, you'd be pretty close!  Ladies and gentlemen, dusted off for the first time in three decades, is an original drawing of some super teens that I came up with back when I was a teen myself... (drumroll please)... THE SUPER KIDS LEAGUE!!

Here they are, as they looked back in 1980-something... Wonder Kid, Inviso-Kid, Colormatic, Thundercloud, and Wombat, just to name a few... my new favorite is the one at the top, center.... Flame Boy (think "Human Torch") with his hand tea-potting on his hip with just the right amount of Fabulosity.... if that's really a word (I doubt it).

I mean, the work is all very derivative... if DC or Marvel had a hero that did something, I made my own version of it.  I actually designed two sets of heroes back then... Laughing Lad (top row, right) was in both leagues.  Of course, for all the things I loved to create, I never really took these works to the next level... I did actually start a comic for Zippy, the borderline inappropriately named boy speedster.  It was to be a secret origin tale where he (and untold others) gained their powers from a tremendous glowing meteorite that lands in the woods behind his house.  He later meets up with Inviso-Kid and become anti-bullying champions.  That book, along with many others, lay filed away and unfinished.  For years, I berated myself for having so many unfinished pieces of work, but I've since learned their purpose.  They were all skill-developing endeavors.  It was a big problem to start a project, only to find that your expertise and style were now much better than when you started.  It would have been too much to go back and start everything over... so I took them as far as I could at the time and moved on.  In the end, I became a better artist.

It just so happened the other day, that I was cleaning house, and as my mind normally does, it wandered on to something a little more entertaining than vaccuming, and it just so happened that these heroes came bubbling up to the surface of my mind.  Suddenly I was plotting out what could be the makings of my next full comic.  One never knows... this is really a good sign.  I did post recently about balance in my activities... the more these things work their way to the surface, the easier it will be for me to choose what comes next!

Oh... so that people don't think I totally, totally abandoned these kids to time... here is a rework I did a few years ago... luckily I had the good sense to file them all together so that I could find them.  I wanted to know what these heroes would look like if I drew them today.  I avoided all manner of "Hollywood rewriting" and instead just drew them with today's skills - minus the hands... I totally admit I rushed the hands to get the below drawing done.  As they came to life on the paper, the pencil nearly ran away from me with excitement to see these guys again after so many years.  I could almost see them animating themselves on the page.  It may be time to reboot Reflex Comics!!

Norman Rockwell's Scout Paintings

I suppose one artist who had a huge impact on my life was Norman Rockwell, but not so much from a creative standpoint.  I never really gravitated to painting, although I have tried my hand at it.  I will never be a master painter like Rockwell.  But in my teen years, my life was in utter turmoil; school was hell, bullies were hell... many times I really felt like my safety was at risk in phys. ed. class, so I would cut class and spend time with the art & music teacher to get out of wrestling lessons which were sheer terror.  I had been in Cub Scouts while in elementary school, but regretted leaving it.  I always felt like there was something left unfinished... I never earned my Bear badge.  By the time I got to Junior High School, I discovered that the kid behind me in homeroom was in Boy Scouts.  I asked him if I could check out his troop because I wanted to join up.  It was probably the best decision I could make as an eleven year old.  Scouting gave me stability and a chance to do something for my own betterment.  It gave me a life outside of school.

A constant companion to any good Scout is his handbook, and the book we used in the early 80's was richly illustrated with Norman Rockwell's paintings of Scouts of all ages.  It's been said that Rockwell painted an America that no longer exists.  Others say he painted an America that never existed at all.  But to me as a twelve year old, Rockwell painted a world that I believed existed somewhere, and that I wanted to become a part of.  The lead image at the top spoke to me as a kid.... it showed the guts and determination it took to stick to your oath and finish the path to Eagle.  His paintings left their mark on me in a way I can't otherwise describe.  I saw good Scouts in those images, and that's what I wanted to be.

There was something else I saw in his paintings, and that was a possible future for myself.  I knew I was getting something out of the program, and it was largely because of good men who devoted their time to us kids.  I know I felt a level of gratitude towards them, and I knew deep down that I wanted to be able to someday pay it forward, and make a difference in other peoples' lives.  Somewhere inside, I knew I wanted to become a Scoutmaster... like the ones that were in my life, and the ones I saw in these images.  There was one image that made a huge mark on me as I was maturing, and it was this one:

The people in this image may very well be the same person depicted over the years.  I loved my life in uniform.  I wanted to age in the same way as that kid in the campaign hat.  Little did I know, my life would take a sudden turn as I finally came to maturity.  As I rounded the corner after I made Eagle Scout, the proverbial writing was on the wall.  I was desperately in need of coming out of the closet, and there was no way I was going to be able to do that as a member of the Boy Scouts of America.  For a short time, I was an Assistant Scoutmaster, and for an even shorter time, Assistant Webelos Den Leader, but this lasted less than a year.  My time was cut short, and I drifted quietly away with a deeply broken heart.  It would be many, many years until I would sort my life out and come to terms with what amounted to a huge loss and drastic change of life plans.

In 2005, a new opportunity was presented to me.  I discovered an online presence known as the Rover Scout Association.  It was founded by a good man named Craig Brown who wanted to return the ways of Rover Scouting from the brink of extinction.  Rovering had long since been abandoned by the B.S.A., but it was now coming alive with the R.S.A.  I joined, and followed along with these adventures that eventually led to Craig, myself, and a handful of other people founding what's now known as the Baden-Powell Service Association (US).  The BPSA is a co-ed, non-discriminating, traditional Scouting program for people of all ages.  In the 2007-2008 timeframe, I led that fledgling organization as the Chief Commissioner.  I had my own Rover Scout Crew here in Connecticut, and for the first time in many, many years, I was back in uniformed service.  I remember many nights being the last Scout to hit the sack after every one of my crew was asleep.  It kinda reminded me of another of Rockwell's paintings that looks something like this....

I suppose this could all be filed under one of those Facebook memes of "what I think I look like/what I really look like"... it may even be a bit presumptuous or even conceited to try to see myself in work as iconic as Rockwell's.  But the truth is, at a young age, they made an immeasurable impression on my young mind... so strong that it took me 20 years to realize that they've been hiding out there, still inspiring me to be the best Scout that I can be.  I suppose in this case it may be true, that Life sometimes imitates Art.  I like to think of it as Art inspiring Life.  Long story short.... the BPSA is now 400+ members strong, with 50 groups across the country.  I am still involved with them, as a Lone Rover who occasionally helps out as a trainer with Brownsea Training Camps.  While I'm not exactly the Scoutmaster I dreamt of becoming, I am happy to see that there is finally a thriving Scouting option for people like me, and for kids who were like me, and I had a hand in building it. 

Anyhow, I hope this blog post comes across in the spirit it was intended. I am rarely this personal with my writing.... My feelings about my past and my life as a Scout are deeply personal to me.  Maybe they will do someone else some good out there.  If you liked this post, please drop me a line.

Peanuts, The Art of Charles M. Schultz

In my previous post about my first exposure to cartooning ("How To Draw Cartoons"), I mentioned Charles M . Schultz as an early influence of mine, and I must say, I have not said enough about him.  In as much as I was a consumer of his work, I really studied it too.  I think I must have read every book of his comic strips in our elementary school library.  I was also quite taken by the idea that all his characters had a similar look and feel.  His character designs basically had interchangeable parts.  All you had to do was change the hair and the clothes, and suddenly you had another member of the Peanuts gang.  As an adult now, I understand that the drawings are but one component of the overall character... just watch, or even just listen to, any Peanuts holiday special to get the idea.  But in any case, some of my earliest characters were directly inspired by the Charlie Brown characters.  For this reason alone, I have always had a soft spot in my heart for Schultz and his work.

A few years back, I stumbled upon a stunning art book whose title is also the name of this post. The book features incredible close-up photography of the actual printed comic strips, so that you can see the half-tone dots that are a by product of the printing process used to render Schultz's ink work.  Many of the pages show tape marks as they were photographs of scrapbook pages full of strips clipped from newspapers.  Scattered throughout the volume are photographs of toys and other memorabilia.  The overall effect is one of a gigantic collage that is enjoyable to explore.  The book shows Schultz's work in a much more intimate way than it had probably ever been presented before.  It's worth noting that the book is designed by Chip Kidd, a world famous book designer.  In as much as I find Schultz's cartoons inspiring, I must say I also find Kidd's books to be as much inspiring if not more.  They make you want to design your own books in such a compelling way so that people will WANT to read them.  I think I'm quite a ways off from doing that, but the direction is there.  Of course, when I just want to feel like a kid again, I reach for this book.  It's been a welcome and well used member of my collection.

The book cover... this just screams of Chip Kidd's style.

We actually saw this wall at the Schultz Museum in Santa Rosa on our honeynoo in 2003.

The Gemini II Recovery, Recovered

Recently, I've found myself saying frequently that I'm very much a child of the space age, and here is one of the reasons why.  When we were kids, my dad would break out his slide collection every once in a while and give us a show.  More often than not, we would be treated to photos my dad took when he was in the navy in the 1960's.  I fondly recall seeing images of the Gemini II landing, which his aircraft carrier, the U.S.S. Lake Champlain, recovered.  I mean, I was the crazy kid to get up early in the 1980's to see space shuttle launches, so I guess I figured every kid had a dad who got to be there when space capsules splashed down, right?  I know now that these are really special memories, and I was a lucky kid to have been this close to the space race. For me, it was just a part of life to dream about going to space... I know I did.  I was the kid that was going to land on Mars, apparently.

When my dad retired and moved to North Carolina recently, he asked me to hang on to his photos and slides until he could transport them himself.  Well, I did what any normal kid would do some 30 years later... I went rumaging thru the archives until I could find those Gemini II images... and I did.  My dad recently turned 70, and I scanned a few of the slides to be incorporated in a photo display that my younger sister put together.  Below are the best of these images.  I will have them professionally scanned someday, bur for now, 1600 dpi scanning from my own scanner will have to do.  They have a bit of an Instagrammy, ghostly quality... but if nothing else, they are historic and simply must be shared.  These haven't really been seen by anyone in decades.  So here for you are some recovered images of the recovery of Gemini II, as seen thru the lens and the eyes of a navy meterologist, who happens to have the same name as me :-)

 

P.S. I've been told that somewhere in the collection are a few snapshots of the astronauts themselves.  Looks like I have more digging to do...  When I find them, I will post them on this blog.

Revision:  I was advised by said retired meteorologist, that these were in fact Gemini II, an unmanned mission.  U.S.S. Lake Champlain also picked up Gemini V which carried Gordon Cooper and Pete Conrad.  I've revised this blog post to correct the mission, which I had previously described as Gemini V.  These images are in fact from Gemini II.  More to come, once I do some more digging. (6/6/2015)

Space Age Art of Robert McCall

This weekend, Sir Robert and I paid a visit to the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum in Washington, DC.  It had been about 20 years since I had been there, so it was good to get back there and see some great things again.  Space capsules, a Lunar Module, giant rockets, a section of Skylab, Pioneer, Viking, they were all there.  One of the most impressive things to see, however, was not a piece of machinery.... it was a mural.  On the wall in the main lobby was an amazing depiction of space exploration.  A moon landing and an larger-than-life Apollo astronaut seemed to gaze out at the museum visitors, amid a backdrop of countless planets, starts, and galaxies.   The style of the work was very familiar to me, so today,  I did some Googling to find out who the man was behind the work.

The mural, aptly named, "The Space Mural - A Cosmic View", was painted in 1976 by Robert McCall.  McCall is probably one of America's greatest space age painters of all time.  As I paged thru images of his work, I realized I had seen lots of his paintings before.  I was taken back to my youth, when I had a great sense of optimism for space exploration, science, and the future.  It's clear to me that McCall wished to share this same sense of optimism and vision with all those who saw his work.  He really spoke to an entire generation that grew up watching moon landings, shuttle launches, and planetary fly-bys.  At least, I can say, he spoke to me.  As I looked at the mural, and the array of capsules and rocketry, I said aloud in the museum that I always dreamt of space travel and the future... and I still do.

These are photos I took of the mural:

Here's a great article about McCall.  Here is another.

And just because... here are images of a few of the space stamps that Robert McCall's work appears on:

1960's Superhero Cartoons!!

I totally on a superhero kick right now... they just announced the theme for SpookyBear Weekend 2013 as "Heroes & Villains" and that is totally right up my alley!  So I've been taking a trip down memory lane (again), catching up on the old Filmation superhero cartoons that predated the 1970's Superfriends programs.  It was not an unusual thing to see Green Lantern solo adventures right along side Superman, Superboy, the Atom, and The Flash.  Of course, we didn't get these shows locally... you had to hope the antenna on the roof would catch those weak signals from channel 5 from NYC.  When we finally got cable, they came up once in a while.  So here is an idea of what I'm talking about... totally goofy, primative, and campy to boot.  Here is my favorite superhero of all time, GREEN LANTERN, in his own solo adventure.  Check out the entire channel of Filmation's cartoons 

Lonesome Ghosts!!

So a very long time ago, I had one of these Fisher Price hand-held movie viewers.  It was waaaaay cooler than a GAF Viewmaster which could only show one frame at a time.  The movie viewer accepted a cartridge which contained a real, celluloid motion picture.  You aimed it at a light source and cranked it by hand.  The two cartridges I had were cartoons, one of which I do not remember... the other was Disney's "Lonesome Ghosts".  I used to watch this cartoon short over and over again.  I ran it at normal speed, fast, slow, forwards and backwards... I couldn't have been more than 4 years old at the time... and I was already studying how to make pictures move.  The only catch... there was no sound.  So I am sure I've watched it about 100x more without sound than with sound.  As this blog is turning into a creative archive of my work and inspirations, I couldn't not post about this favorite cartoon of mine... I guess the part of me that loves cartoons will never grow up.

How To Draw Cartoons - Syd Hoff

From a very young age, I've been into comics strips, animated cartoons, and comic books.  I would spend hours in the school library reading Peanuts books by Charles M. Schultz (more on him later).  And Saturday morning was not Saturday morning without the Superfriends.  I want to say it was around first grade that I saw a book at one our school book fairs that I had to have.  It was Syd Hoff's "How To Draw Cartoons", a how-to book for kids.  I remember that my mother didn't really want me to have it.  I think she would have rather had me get something I could read, to improve my reading skills.  I must have pleaded my case effectively, because after a couple missed opportunities, I finally went home from a school book fair with this book.

I think from the moment I learned how to use a pencil, I began to draw, but when I took ownership of this book, I turned my attention from drawing cityscapes to drawing cartoons.  I spent hours with pencil, paper, and my new how-to book.  Now, instead of reading Charles M. Schultz, I studied his work.  At times, I imitated him.  I imitated Syd Hoff and his style too. I know I probably wasn't a very good cartoonist back then, and I don't really know that I'm that great now, but I would have to say, if there was one book that changed my life, it would be Syd Hoff's How-To book.  It helped me discover a lifetime of pleasure and relaxation as a cartoonist.  I suppose the drive was always there, and it probably would have come out somehow, but I guess Syd gets the credit for being the one who showed me how to get started.

Recently, I was going thru my collection of how-to books, art books, and other toon-related things, and realized that I lost this book long ago.  Thanks to Google and eBay, was able to locate it a copy of it for just a couple dollars.  So history repeated itself... I had to have it.  It's now on its way to me.  I can't wait to get it and leaf thru it again.  It'll be fun to see the images again that started me down my journey as a cartoonist.

Zallinger - Draw A Dinosaur Day

So today is Draw A Dinosaur Day - it's that simple - draw a dinosaur and send it over to drawadinosaurday.com.  In honor of this momentous day, I'd like to mention one of my early influences... Rudolph F. Zallinger, who is probably best known for his Age Of Reptiles mural on display at the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History.  He illustrated an Giant Golden Book as well that I still have from my childhood days.  Maybe later I will post a few photos from it.  His work is stunning.  I wish I could paint as well as him!

Here is a drawing I did (a while ago) in colored pencil.  A similar version of this (which has long since been lost) won in an art contest sponsored by the US Postal Service to design a dinosaur stamp.