30-Day Drawing Challange: Day 30 (the end!)

The challenge is arm-wheeling. No, wait… the challenge is OVER!

See the blog Expatriatism for a list of the other worthy participants, including my artist niece, and links to their daily drawings.

Day 30: Our FINAL assignment was to draw a Concert Moment.

So I drew: The Night I Lost My Hearing.

Somewhere in the early 70s, my friends and I saw The Who at the San Diego Sports Arena. We were in the “cheap seats,” but rushed the stage and wound up in front (I think this would be called a mosh pit in more modern times). We were packed in like sardines with everyone else, waiting for the music to begin.

We saw dark forms milling on the stage, stage hands setting up guitars and gear, walking back and forth in front of the little red amp lights.

Then nothing.

Then more milling forms. Band members took their positions on the stage. Well, most of them did. Then three things happened at the same time:

1. The lights came on.
2. The music started.
3. Peter Townshend was arm-windmilling a chord on his guitar, mid-air… having jumped off the top of a stack of amps and speakers.

All night long, Townshend kept giving his engineers the thumbs up, meaning “louder, louder.” When each song ended, all of us sardines would scream at the top of our lungs, clapping and whistling, our faces only inches from each others’ ears.

Our applause must have been insanely loud. And we would hear…

…rinnnngggggggggg. Nothing. We would hear nothing but the ringing of our ears. I literally heard no sound from the wide-open, screaming mouths of those beside me. Yikes.

Trying to find the car that night, my friends and I were like a Cheech and Chong routine, shouting into each others’ ears with cupped hands, “Where’s the CAR?!”

“What?!”

“Where’s the CARRRrrr?!!!?”

And so on.

The 30 Days are now behind us and we’re done! Thanks to Don Hillson for inviting me to this challenge, and thanks to all of you who also participated, those who commented, liked the posts, and those who simply endured them wondering if I would ever stop! Normal (if such a word ever applies to me) blogging will resume now…

30-Day Drawing Challenge: Day 29

The challenge is purring right along.

See the blog Expatriatism for a list of the other worthy participants, including my artist niece, and links to their daily drawings.

Day 29: Our assignment was to draw an Internet Meme.

Here’s my favorite. It speaks for itself.

And it really doesn’t care what you think.

30-Day Drawing Challenge: Day 28

The challenge is waltzing Matilda.

See the blog Expatriatism for a list of the other worthy participants, including my artist niece, and links to their daily drawings.

Day 28: Our assignment was to draw a Hobo.

I’m sorry to keep complaining on top of drawing, but who makes these lists? “Hobo” hasn’t been an acceptably used word in decades.

A bit of history for you youngsters… when I was a kid, we spoke of hobos, tramps, bums and winos. Charlie Chaplain’s character was “the tramp,” by the way.

A hobo was technically just a migrant worker who usually hitched rides (without paying) on trains, and lived in camps outside of town. A tramp (from “tramping around”) was basically the same thing, but tramp was a slightly more pejorative term.

A bum actually refused to work, and a wino was the alcoholic sleeping on the street.

A lot of these were shown in movies, usually in a stylized, romanticized form. The props were the worn out top hat, the bindle bag (matilda in Australia) over the shoulder, a stub of a cigar (either a discarded butt picked up as a free smoke, or a roll-your-own made from multiple butts), and cooking beans over a fire in their own can (since the hobo could not afford a saucepan, etc.; oddly the can was usually shown with the lid still attached.)

But those terms have fallen out of use, there are whole new classes of migrant workers and issues associated with that, and a whole new mindset toward the various kinds of down-and-out people who come to cities.

Dray a hobo? Naw. But I did draw you a Tramp.

30-Day Drawing Challenge: Day 27

The challenge’s head is stuffed with fluff.

See the blog Expatriatism for a list of the other worthy participants, including my artist niece, and links to their daily drawings.

Day 27: Our assignment was to draw our Favorite Disney Character.

Honestly? I don’t have one. Really! I’m not that into Disney characters at all. I could have put Ariel, since I think the music from Little Mermaid was amazing, but I really can’t call her a “favorite character.” It’s the music I like… that, and the Jungle Book music. (King Louie’s “I Wanna Be Like You” solo is a classic, as is the vulture Beatles parody “We’re Your Friends.”)

But then I thought of Winnie the Pooh. Now, I realize that Pooh was not created by Disney. No, Disney merely exploited Pooh and made gazillions. A. A. Milne created the whole Pooh menagerie and those books are sheer genius for entertaining kids while not driving the adults who have to read them insane. We loved them, in fact. I confess I’ve read them without a kid on my lap or anywhere in sight. The droll humor is pretty classic. And the insights have been distilled into books like The Tao of Pooh and The Te of Piglet.

But, since most people think of Pooh as Disney now, I can proudly claim “Winnie the” (we’re on a first-and-middle name basis, you know) as my favorite. But I drew the version created by Ernest H. Shepard (illustrator of the A. A. Milne books), since in my opinion, it’s way cuter than the Disney version.

So Pooh it is, and all this in spite of the fact that when our 5th grade class put on a Winnie the Pooh play, I was given the one-second, one-line role of a BUG. I still remember my line! “Who me?” I’ve been asking that question ever since.

I drew Pooh on the Blustery day, which, as we all know, is when anyone needs a friend the most.

I didn’t mean to make Piglet seem quite so much like a measles patient. I’m pretty sure, in fact, that he was immunized. But my set of markers is limited as to colors and this what I tried to get a pinkish yet not-too-pink pink. Oh well. I know Piglet won’t mind. Rabbit’s attitude would have been another story…

30-Day Drawing Challenge: Day 26

The challenge is just playing around.

See the blog Expatriatism for a list of the other worthy participants, including my artist niece, and links to their daily drawings.

Day 25: Our assignment was to draw our Favorite Video Game.

Well I have to put this in perspective. I grew up playing with DIRT, okay?

My friends and I used to go to game parlors and play air hockey and pinball.

I remember when “video game” meant Pong, Space Race or Pac Man, and we never owned any of those.

And then, once I was an adult, we lived and worked pretty much off the grid for 3 decades and were not exactly on the cutting edge game-wise.

So I was thinking, favorite video game? That assumes I have played some in the first place.

But then, my loving wife reminded me that since I was given an iPad, I have been known to spend a moment or two (I can quit any time I want… honest!) playing the game pictured here. And I supposed that’s a “video game” in the broadest sense.

30-Day Drawing Challenge: Day 25

The challenge is GONNA GETCHA!

See the blog Expatriatism for a list of the other worthy participants, including my artist niece, and links to their daily drawings.

Day 25: Our assignment was to draw The Bogeyman.

Okay, I admit I toyed with the idea of drawing Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer or Tiger Woods, and ducking for cover…

But instead, I offer this sweet image.

Really, I never saw (or believed in) the Bogeymen.

But I heard voices…

30-Day Drawing Challenge: Day 24

The challenge gets playful.

See the blog Expatriatism for a list of the other worthy participants, including my artist niece, and links to their daily drawings.

Day 24: Our assignment was to draw a Toy.

Although I’m 57 years old, I actually spend a lot of time playing with toys these days. On the floor. With my grandson Max. (Disclaimer: I would gladly play with my granddaughter, as well, but other than a few brief moments of stacking her Duplo pieces, she’s usually going through the room across the floor, at about 36 mph.)

Max is into trains. And I mean really, really INTO them. This includes Thomas the train and all his buddies like James, Henry, Percy, Annie… believe me, the list goes on and on, and my favorite 3-year-old knows them all. (I pause here to offer silent thanks that my daughters were into Sesame Street, and now my grandson is into Thomas the train, and that we totally sidestepped the extremely annoying purple dinosaur who shall remain unnamed.)

The Ikea train easy is fun to set up in multiple layouts with loops and bridges (trestles?). And the colorful little locomotives and cars hook together by magnets. Fun.

Playing trains with a little boy is interesting. Shouts of “Choo choo-oooooo!” and “All abo-oooard!” abound. But the absolutely most fun thing to do (Grandad soon learned) is to make a break in the tracks so the trains will “CRASH,” which allows you to say, “Oh no-oooo! They crashed!” as if surprised. (This is most likely one reason why our laws don’t allow for three-year-old engineers.)

Of course, “oh no” is said with a big smile. A smile of sheer delight with eyes a-sparkle.

Come to think of it, Grandad is smiling, too.