A Quiet Moment Amongst Friends

Heavy Turbulence and the Planes Crashed in the Desert

Drawing, Microsoft Paint, 800 x 500 pixels, 2009

 

Last night I took Southwest Airlines Flight 339 from Oakland to John Wayne airport in Orange County. We hit some nasty rough patches along the way. I made this drawing on my laptop during the hour-long flight.

Upon landing, I realized that I had subconsciously drawn inspiration from a doodle that Seth L had done years earlier on a cross-country flight. (I was able to verify this because Seth bequeathed his entire back-catalog of doodles to this blog.)

Drawing, ink on paper, 5" x 8", 2006

A Quiet Moment Gets an Extreme Makeover

I've ditched the blue and black header and replaced it with a custom design that incorporates doodles from the last six months. The doodles were created by me and many of my friends. If you are new to the blog you can find context for each of these characters in the archives (six pages). This blog is a repository for good and bad art created by me and people that I know. There is no quality control. You can send your submissions to aquietmoment@gmail.com.

News and Notes

The Distant Relatives With Beards contest continues to take shape. The final bracket will be available Monday, March 30th. 

The recent post about William Howard Taft getting stuck in the bathtub has taken the internet by storm! It's currently one of the highest ranked Google Image searches for "Taft in Tub", "Political Cartoons about Taft",and "Taft is a blue devil in the bathtub".   

I've removed the text from the original image so that scholars in the distant future can easily use it for documentary films and book reports. I make no claims to copyright, please use this as you wish.  

 

In more depressing news, the Google search results for Obama Inauguration Commemorative Coins are tanking. The internet market for those coins is hot and there are a lot of competitors on the 'net. The coins are still for sale! 

The loss of my Obama coin edge is being made up by the hundreds of depressed Scandinavian metal-heads who keep Googling "corpse drawings". The addition of Exquisite Corpse as a category on the site has been a huge boon. 

I'm going to be spending more time trying to get inconsequential terms ranked highly by Google. 

Please send art. 

More Competitors in The 2009 March Madness Great-Grandfather Beard Challenge

Found photographs, digital video, 2009

Two new competitors have entered the Great-Grandfather Facial Hair Contest and more competitors are coming soon! 

Ben Y comes out swinging with this hand-colored photograph of his great-great grandfather, Pesach Wolf Cotlarsky from Kiev, Ukraine. The snow white beard is going to present a major hurdle to the other participants. 

Nick L has stirred up some controversy with the submission of Cole Younger, one of the outlaws in Jesse James' gang. Cole is either Nick's distant cousin or uncle. An executive decision was made to allow this non-grandfather into the contest. This has major ramifications. A new precedent has been set: all famous bearded relatives are now fair game. 

Cole Younger before a fight.

Cole Younger after a fight.

A computer analysis was performed on the new entries and both men check-out as descendants of Ben and Nick:

Entries are being accepted until Friday, March 27th. E-mail aquietmoment@gmail.com

Great-Great-Great-Grandfathers in an Epic Battle for Beard Supremacy

Found photographs, photographs, photoshop, video, pixels, 1888 - 2009

Last week, Seth L's mother Laurie was researching his family genealogy and found a photograph of Seth's great-great-great-grandfather on the internet. J. Ludwig Riedesel was a farmer who emigrated from Prussia in the mid-1800s.

 

It's a fantastic find, but to be completely honest, I'm a competitive guy and my initial reaction was to worry that Seth's great-great-great-grandfather might have a nicer beard than my great-great-great-grandfather, the sea captain William Tichenor. 

This is March Madness, and it seems the only way to settle this is to have an old fashioned great-grandfather beard contest. If I can get some more photographs of great, great-great, or great-great-great-grandfathers, I can put together a bracket that we can all bet on. I'm biased, but I think my surly-looking ancestor's monster goatee is going to be tough to beat. If you think your great-grandfather can run with these two dudes, you better get in on this. 

You may be wondering if Seth and I rigged the contest by stealing some random photos off the internet. It's offensive that you would even think that, but I'm cautious, and to prove that we are related, I digitally morphed our faces with our ancient kin. The pictures and videos are indisputable evidence of a genetic relationship. 

Seth clearly has the Riedesel eyes and cheeks:

 

And I've got the Tichenor nose and heavy brow:

 

As an incentive for entering your great-grandfather (or greater) into the March Madness for Beards, I will morph you into your distant relative's photo. How sad would it be if this contest was just my grandfather crushing Seth's grandfather? If this is going to work, we need some competitors, so everybody get cracking! 

Contest Rules:

• Participants must be a great-grandfather or greater-grandfather (greatest?)
• Multiple entries are acceptable. 
• All participants must have some form of facial hair (you can enter a grandfather with a pencil mustache but he probably won't make it out of the first round. This is mainly a beard contest.)
• One photograph is required per participant (paintings or sketches may substitute photographs if the image was created during your grandfather's lifetime. ex. If Ulysses S. Grant is your great-grandfather, you're in with a $50 bill) 
• The judging process will be determined in the coming weeks

Entries must be submitted no later than Friday, March 27th. Competitors will be added to the blog as soon as I receive a photograph. Once the bracket is set, we'll start betting real money ($$$). Tell your friends. You might need to ask your parents to help you with this. 

Send entries to aquietmoment@gmail.com

Good luck!

Climate Change Is a Problem for the Children

Four drawings, pencil on paper, 3" x 5", 2009

On a recent visit to the new California Academy of Sciences, I came across an exhibit where visitors were asked to write down their solutions to climate change. The responses were posted on a wall for everyone to see. I stole these four examples because they caught my eye and I figured that the janitor was probably going to toss them in the trash later that night regardless.

As we all know by now, the children of today are going to be the ones bearing the brunt of the climate changes that our generation created. These kids are going to have to roll up their sleeves and dig out of this mess just like our generation had to dig out from under all the crap that previous generations piled on us. While it's tempting to kick back and cheer the young'uns on from the sidelines, there is no good reason why we can't all chip in a little bit. I decided to do my part by punching up these four drawings to make them clearer and more effective as pieces of propaganda:

 

The first panel didn't need much improvement, so I simply fleshed out the animal in the tank and had him eat junk food instead of fish food. In the second panel, I made it so the bird is saved by flying into space to escape Earth. The space shuttle in the background has the same idea. In panel three, I added more plantable items. This piece was already strong, but I felt that adding more items enhanced the creator's original intent without cluttering it. In the final panel, I clarified that people should stop eating microwaved meat (gross). I assume this is what the artist meant.

Octopom

Photoshop, 10" x 15", color, 2009

 

So far, 2009 has been the year of octopus moms and exotic dog breeds. With "Octopom", Julia W taps into the frenzy with a true-to-life depiction of an octopus with three tentacles that are actually not tentacles, but Pomeranian puppies. The octopus is struggling to swim with dogs for tentacles just like Nadya Suleman is struggling to raise her family with dignity.

Julia lives in Portland and is studying to be a nurse. There's more good stuff on her blog: http://youngcatron.blogspot.com/

Update: Martha Stewart's purebread Chow puppy named Ghengis Khan just died in a freak kennel explosion. 

Ron Kittle and Me

Found item, photograph, 3" x 5", 1983

Carl W unearthed a photograph of a childhood meeting with baseball legend Ron Kittle. The two quickly became friends and later that day Ron tried to buy Carl a beer but the waitress said Carl was too young. 

You can learn more about Ron Kittle on his website. Research his favorite things, and then hire Ron to speak at your next corporate event. 

Harry Caray and Me

Found item, photograph, 3" x 5", 1989

Kevin R unearthed a photograph of a childhood meeting with legendary Cubs announcer Harry Caray. The two quickly became friends and later that day Harry bought Kevin his first beer at a nearby pub.

A New Mascot for New York's Taft High School

Drawing, pencil on paper, photoshop, 7" x 8", 2009

On a recent visit to New York, I spent time with my friends Nathan L and Katherine M who both teach at William Howard Taft High School in the Bronx. The school has over five thousand students and was recently divided up into six small schools within the same building. 

With the new division of students and faculty, it seemed there was a need to revamp the mascot to unify all of the six schools around a powerful visual image. The current school mascot is the Blue Devil, which is so watered down and generic that I'd bet most students wouldn't know one if they saw it dancing in the street. Nathan saw the need for improvement and commissioned me to create a new mascot from which all of the students and faculty could draw inspiration. 

In coming up with the new design scheme, I focused on the school's namesake, the 27th president, William Howard Taft (September 15, 1857 - March 8, 1930). The most inspirational story from Taft's life is when he got stuck in the White House bathtub. I chose to render this misadventure in the style of a political cartoon: 

I later modified the cartoon, so that the central image of the embarrassed and enraged Taft could stand alone as the school's new mascot:

 

The runner-up for the new mascot was Cowboy Taft. This heroic version of Taft won the 1902 Texas Rodeo by using his massive girth to weigh down and subdue the meanest bull in the West:

If you would like to learn more about President Taft, you should read an excellent report written by a second-grader named Jorge.

Go Taft!