Buttnekkiddoodles

Ybor City, a community in Tampa that was home to Cuban and Italian immigrants and where the cigar making industry flourished. Still some shops where men hand roll the cigars. I was too late the day I went there to draw one at work. Had a reputation for being a tad rough but looked to be settling down and accommodating tourist and upscale restaurants right next to tattoo parlors and vintage clothing stores. Notice that I got lazy with the flag. Not only didn’t finish it, but drew the star pattern of 48 states.

     

Got nothing but beautiful weather while scooting thru the South. Spent several hours at the John and Mabel Ringling Museum in Sarasota, which was full of choice stuff. Eye catching feature – all the fig leaves were removed from the copies of very recognizable sculptures, and the heroic figures’ manley attributes were restored.

 

       

Headed out across the country for my Fall tour on September 10th. Denver was the first stop. The above statue is dedicated to the 3,000,000 young folks that worked in Roosevelt’s “Tree Army”, the Civilian Conservation Corps. 55,000 worked in New Mexico alone. When you hear the mantra that government is the problem, not that it can’t be problematic, and that business and the “market” will be our salvation, business was slow in coming to the rescue in the 30’s in this country. If the market is so dependable, why did 3,000,000 Americans feel a need to trek off into the outback with shovels and picks? Just a Thoreau like need to get back to nature?

    

Got to Denver 9 hours before my bags, compliments Delta. Knew it would be tricky when my flight schedule had me landing in Minneapolis for my connecting flight at 4:35 PM and the flight to Denver boarded at 4:35 PM. we landed 18 minutes late and a mad dash to the next gate just got me in before the door closed. Once in Denver, got off the bus from the airport and thanks to the kindness of strangers, made it to the ballpark where I met Tim. Tim provided the lift in his pedicab to my hotel while holding a running conversation about things Denver, etc. Worked a demo the next day at Meininger Fine Art Supply, the oldest in Denver, and many parts West for that matter. Henry Meininger’s grandfather opened the store 132 years ago and has provided quite the slew of artists with gear including Charles Russel and Frederick Remmington.

   

That’s Judd Meininger, great grandson of the original owner of H.R. Meininger Fine Art Supply, and wife Olivia, takin’ in a Colorado Rockies ballgame and a strip of chocolate covered bacon. Hell yeah I had a bite. Judd is quite the omnivore and a fired up cat with a vigorous appetite for life, period.

      

Went to the Everett McKinley Dirksen U. S. Courthouse a couple weeks ago to sketch in court. Had a pretty interesting experience for 3 days. Then put 3 days in Federal Court in Hammond, Indiana. Beats daytime TV but could at times be likened to a 15 inning baseball game where both pitchers are hurling no-hitters. Forgive me if this sounds like a pitch but using the Pitt Pens, fountain pens and grease pencils means no one around me is having to put up with the rank smells of solvent based markers.

        This drawing may give one the impression that the judge is smiling. Far from it. He didn’t cotton any nonsense and could be very curt in his reprimands.

    

What a month it’s been. Working out in the Bay area, wedding in Texas, lost a book project, banged my heels up on a granite dance floor, and the heat from Texas followed me home to Illinois. Ducked into the First Slice Pie Cafe on Ashland to escape the heat and grab some chow before skirting over to Rosehill Cemetery to draw trees & tombs. Banged this drawing in with a Visconti fountain pen juiced up with Platinum Carbon and took the Pitt Pens to it later ala coloring book.

 

Sat under the trees for a 4 1/2 hours.                          Managed to fend of a colony of ants.

One day in particular was just beyond the predictable. Early in the morning I dropped my girlfriend off at the airport Midway in south west Chicago. Due to congestion on US 55 I chose to head back north up Cicero Ave. I recalled on a previous trip some interesting sites in a part of Chicago that has not been tarted up with gentrification and luxo lofts. In the 3000 block of north Cicero, just above Wellington, is Chicago Meat. A tidy mart with a trinity of life sized bovines on the roof, just above the entrance. I pulled the car over, pushed the seat back, and produced the drawing below.

 

When I returned home I couldn’t recall the location, address, or name of the business, so I went on line to Google Maps and searched block by block with their function that allows one to virtually drive down the street. When I saw the store with the animals on top, I wanted to see if I could get close to the location I had drawn from. But, I was headed south and on the wrong side of the street. Seeing a double arrow on the screen that pointed directly across the street towards the store’s front entrance and drive way, I clicked on the arrows and zoomed right up to the entrance where one door was open. Wild…I thought. I could see right into the first aisle of the store. And oddly enough, I had another arrow on the screen pointing towards the beckoning door and aisles of food beyond. I clicked on the arrow. In to the store I was swept. This wasn’t just the magnifying function that I had used numerous times to get a better take on hard to read addresses. I was actually in the store. I mean virtually. I spun the camera around and looked right back out through the doors. As the view rotated 180 degrees, I could read all the brands on the cans and boxes of food. There she was with red bandanna on, a familiar face looking back at me from bottles of syrup and boxes of pancake mix as witness to my virtual slip through the mirror. I could also see that someone was at the check out counter. I turned the camera around and followed the arrows on the floor as they steered me throughout the store. Horns and stuffed animal heads displayed throughout the store, along with rows of metal racks hung from the ceiling in testimony to the routine slaughter that was/is the nutritional legacy of Chicago Meat.  In short order, I wound up back at the front doors through which I had entered. (If you want to see this for yourself here’s what you do: Go to google maps, search for 41.935732,-87.746561 – that’s the latitude and longitude of the front door of the store. Zoom all the way in. That will  put you in street view. When you get to street view you’ll see a set of double chevrons pointing at the front door of the store. You’re on your way, enjoy the trip.)

That afternoon I headed over to Rose Hill cemetery to work on a drawing of the grounds before I hustled downtown to make a life drawing session at the Palette & Chisel. First I stopped in to a pie store on Ashland to have a quick lunch where I drew the younger man working on his computer.  

After drawing for a couple hours in Rose Hill I hiked over to the Red Line. Took that to the Palette & Chisel where I squandered the talents of model Melissa and only managed a couple of passable drawings. After that I boarded the #22 bus on which, with her fidgeting and the bus hurky-jerkin’ along, I managed a better likeness of the passenger seen in the lower left hand corner on the page following Melissa’s seated pose than 3 previous hours of intense scrutiny. At some point a young woman with an intense pink dreaded hairdo got on the bus and sat next to me. We exchanged hellos and to my surprise it was the same woman I had drawn a week earlier, on the page above sitting in front of the gentleman with the woven skimpy brim. I told her she was in the book and showed the drawing of her. She was quite amused. ( This also happened to me in Portland. See post “In Portlandia I Were” )I found out that she ( let’s call her Lady K ) designed costumes for the theater and other events. About this time a fellow across the aisle from Lady K, who was both smitten and a few sheets to the wind, started muttering sugary nothings in her direction. The spunky pink toped gal was having none of it and snapped out, “That’s enuff!” and “You really need to stop!” I whipped out a quick likeness of the transit Lothario to Lady K’s amusement. You can see the sketch above. Fairly soon after that, as the bus neared my neighborhood, Lady K said goodbye and went to the front of the bus to disembark. Our little friend held back a bit then got up and followed., whereby I noticed a bottle of beer in each of his 2 front pockets. As she got off, he swept off the bus and immediately I could hear Lady K’s voice telling him to return to the bus. The bus driver left the door open and was making inquiries as to the situation. I got up and hopped off the bus to see what was developing. Our friend seemed to decide it was best to walk off his evenings enthusiasm and up Clark Ave he set. LK thanked me, said she was cool, and into the night she stood. I gave thumbs up to the waiting bus driver who closed the doors, waived and drove on up Clark. I walked on up Clark the remaining 3 blocks and as I turned to head down my street I saw the dejected romantic trudging a block further up Clark probably wishing he was still on the bus. At least he was getting the benefit of stretching his legs.

This image was deleted last summer in a hurried and ill considered attempt to lighten the load on an old computer that was huffin’ and puffin’ to keep up. This is the drawing for a tattoo that my dear friend Lisa is now sporting on her upper right arm. The drawing was done with Pitt Artist Pens  on Utrecht toned paper.