Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958)

Maggie Pollit (Elizabeth Taylor)
8 x 5 sketch, pencil, watercolor, sumi brush pen on moleskine watercolor paper

"You know what I feel like? I feel all the time like a cat on a hot tin roof."

To be Free

... In 1957 he was elected president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, an organization formed to provide new leadership for the now burgeoning civil rights movement. The ideals for this organization he took from Christianity; its operational techniques from Gandhi. In the eleven-year period between 1957 and 1968, King traveled over six million miles and spoke over twenty-five hundred times, appearing wherever there was injustice, protest, and action; and meanwhile he wrote five books as well as numerous articles. In these years, he led a massive protest in Birmingham, Alabama, that caught the attention of the entire world, providing what he called a coalition of conscience. and inspiring his "Letter from a Birmingham Jail", a manifesto of the Negro revolution; he planned the drives in Alabama for the registration of Negroes as voters; he directed the peaceful march on Washington, D.C., of 250,000 people to whom he delivered his address, "l Have a Dream", he conferred with President John F. Kennedy and campaigned for President Lyndon B. Johnson; he was arrested upwards of twenty times and assaulted at least four times; he was awarded five honorary degrees; was named Man of the Year by Time magazine in 1963; and became not only the symbolic leader of American blacks but also a world figure.

At the age of thirty-five, Martin Luther King, Jr., was the youngest man to have received the Nobel Peace Prize. When notified of his selection, he announced that he would turn over the prize money of $54,123 to the furtherance of the civil rights movement.

On the evening of April 4, 1968, while standing on the balcony of his motel room in Memphis, Tennessee, where he was to lead a protest march in sympathy with striking garbage workers of that city, he was assassinated.

Read the full biography of Martin Luther King, Jr. Nobelprize.org

Think think think!

Much of my time and mind has been in think-mode. Several comic projects I've underway are all in that exciting initial stage of mapping and laying out... I ponder how to lay out the panels so they transition in an effective manner for action and pacing and emotional impact. I wonder how to squeeze in all the dialog, what can be snipped and what's important to content. I dream about the characters and how they behave, what do they wear, how do they react?

Being in a bit of a time crunch, I'm not wasting any time commuting to the office and have spent a couple mornings at Think Coffee. Not because they're oatmeal isn't too bad (I don't like oatmeal, but have resolved to eat it this year), most definitely because I support their business ethics and conduct, but it's abuzz with people which I find really energizing. Laptops whirring, coffee being sipped, brains all working! And should I need an extra boost of the mind and soul, I hop over to Ted Talks (discovered via the amazing Tina Eisenberg) and listen to Isabel Allende talking about tales of passion and real life and its translation to fiction.

Most of the Ted Talks are incredibly inspiring, but listening to Ms. Allende speaking about women overcoming incredibly harsh and seemingly futile struggles and odds... what I wouldn't give or do to adapt one of her books to graphic novel! Particularly Zorro, even if the comics world is pretty awash in Zorro fiction, and really, who can top Alex Toth? But, Allende's romantic version is world-spanning and rich with history and incredible characters... in her version, behind this great man is not just one woman but at least half a dozen extraordinary women.

Hullo, 2008

Been on a terrifically long break from this little blog, and oh how I missed it! I don't think I've ever mentioned the point of why I post what I do... maybe I have, I'm not sure. In case I haven't, and it's even a little bit of a puzzle to myself too, but basically this small space of the web is set-up for me to share with you my art that you likely will not see anywhere else.

It started with the normal blog stuff, posting news about work I'd done, behind-the-scenes sketches, links to work I admire. Then I realized that I didn't like posting work-in-progress art and got hooked on the Deskset Flickr group while deciding I'd only post silly doodles from my sketchbook. Not sure if this wasn't a bi-product of a sweltering summer and my desire to do very little except sit in a cool cafe drinking sparkling lemonatas.

September drove me indoors with the rain and I was spending more and more time with classic art methods, nothing digital, figure drawing, references from books. In particular film books where I was sketching from old Hollywood movies. I posted a few and found it to be quite enjoyable. So did you and others and until the holidays hit, it was a weekly ritual of joy. Particularly when I started in with the watercolors.

So, Happy New Year. And, a happy new blog.

I've determined that my sketches fall into a handful of themes and have changed the "features" accordingly. Matinee sketches generally appeared on Monday and Deskset seemed to arrive on Wednesday, everything else was pretty random. This may change, who knows. I think 2008 is going to be a strange year and I like to remain as elastic as possible.

Feel free to comment here with any thoughts, suggestions, or questions. I'd very much like to get feedback and I more than welcome the dialog. That's what this delight is all about, isn't it?

Love and peace,

Christine