Screws In My Coffee

[caption id="attachment_1385" align="alignleft" width="200" caption="Lonnie's Xmas Tree Portrait"] [/caption] Every year since I separated from my children my distain for the year end holidays has grown. I have fond memories of Christmas with my children in Portland, Oregon when they were growing up and still believed in Santa Clause.  Now that they are teen and adult ages the pretense of playing Santa is long gone. Now the only joy that look forward to during the year end holidays is that a critical computer or network system does not fail during the break so I can just chill. That all changed in 2010 however.  No I did not have the Ebenezer Scrooge experience and get visited by three ghosts.  Nor did I have a Miracle on 34th Street and meet a real Santa Clause. What happened was the Nor' Easter Blizzard of 2010 that dumped 32 inches of snow on New York and New Jersey. This snow storm may have inconvenienced the locals, but for me it was

[gallery link="file"] What a wonderful surprise to be visiting my sister in New Jersey. Today it started snowing and the landscape is all covered in white.  I have not been in snow like this in a long time.  I am also staying in a bead and breakfast (B&B) for the first time.  My wife Sylvia has tried to get me to experience a B&B and I have always refused. Boy was I missing out. We are staying just about a mile from my sister's house at the Pillars 2 B&B . The host LaMonte and Nancy are really great.  Tonight Nancy provided us with homemade cookies, homemade marshmallows in hot chocolate. We have also enjoyed walking around the neighborhood looking at historical homes. Some of the homes are in great shape for their age.  At one time Plainfield was the full of millionaires who worked on Wall Street in New York.  The population has changed over the years but there are still some amazing homes still standing. Tonight my sister, Deborah, fixed a wonderful dinner a

[caption id="attachment_1352" align="alignleft" width="200" caption="Nubian Flower Child circa 1980"] [/caption] So where did this drawing come from? Well for this drawing I got the inspiration from a drawing for my comic book that I drew in 1980. I do not know why I have a fascination with drawing portraits with my bizarre hippie trippie style.  When I started drawing this image I thought that I was drawing a woman.  As I now look at the finished work it sort of looks like a man.  A lot of my drawings start out one way and end up another way. I am a very moody person and my drawings reflect the way I am feeling.  On one level my art conveys my emotional state during the time that I am working on the drawing. For example when I draw portraits that are smiling, I am happy and when I draw portraits with a sad look, I am sad.  So this drawing the Nubian Flower Child has a dazed look.  This is how I felt during the course of creating this drawing.  

[caption id="attachment_1320" align="alignleft" width="200" caption="Ala Bindah 1980"] [/caption] I completed another drawing last night. I worked on this mostly over the Thanksgiving break when I was in Hilton Head Island , South Carolina. I decided to take a break from the O Magazine beauty ads and draw something from an old sketch book. The inspiration for this sketch came from a sketch that I drew in December 1980 thirty years ago. The sketchbook is filled with drawings for a cartoon or comic book that I call  The Zulu Aqua Mareens (ZAM). Zulu because they are colored purple. Aqua because they are fluid surfers. Mareens because they can do anything. The story behind the title is what I did with Sylvia when we were up relaxing at Hilton Head.  The Purple Haze reference is to remember the fact that we got sucked into a vacation time share scam.  All of my life I have avoided going to time share presentations. During my visit to Hilton Hea