OK! I’m crazy for The Wire! That’s Avon Barksdale (Wood Harris) and Stringer Bell (Idris Elba), the drug lords. I just finished season three on DVD, and the Avon-Stringer thing was soooo Shakespearian! Intrigue! Double dealing! Family and blood brothers and war and power! Whoah.

I don’t know if you noticed, but I’m trying a fake silkscreen thing. Do you like it? Is it too subtle? I’ve often said that I think this kind of stuff is disingenuous, or just a trick, but seeing is believing, you know? I think it kinda works. I don’t know. Most of my jobs are tiny and printed on newsprint, so I don’t think they need any extra muddying. But maybe the times I get internet jobs, jobs on actual good paper and/or in actual sizes bigger than two inches, they could use a little futzing… In other words, this may well appear again some other time.

Yup, this is the first new Frog Blog post. We did it! We did it together. Since the last time I made a post, there was this big party for some dude who won a race or something? Also Caitlin and I got a cat. She’s stoned out of her mind on catnip and rolling around on the ground right now. Her name is Sheba, and she was Dan’s grandmother’s before she was ours. She’s marmalade, sorta fat with a kinda stubby tail, very conversational and all-around cute. Before we got her, I drew this cat:

Okay, now here are some composite sketchbook doodles from the last month or so. Can you see a theme here?

I probably should have mentioned this a while ago, but I’m putting the Sketchblog on hiatus until I finish moving it to its new home at PatBarrett.com, where it will become the Frog Blog. Very exciting. I’ll be back probably about a week after the election, when I’ll post the new blogdress. Aight?

How’s about a doodle to tide you over until then? It might not look particularly like him, but here’s Putin rearing his head in the Alaskan airspace:

Followers of this blog might know that I’m a Wii fanatic. I love using gestures and pointing at the screen as if I’m actually doing what the on-screen characters are doing, and I love the goofy type of games that the system attracts. Mostly I love making Miis.

After a month or so of fashioning Mii caricatures and posting them on the Check Mii Out Channel, I found myself looking at people and contemplating which features I would use from the exquisitely limited Mii palette. One lady’s eyes could be a perfect match for those really angular ones on the second page, or some guy’s hair could be decent with that pompadour-ish ‘do. (When I realized I should spend more energy drawing the specific angle of a nose than trying to find a close approximation on the Wii, I started the Celebrity Saturday series.)

I submit Miis to the weekly Check Mii Out contests (the people at Nintendo chose a theme, the people at home try to match it, and then judge which characters are the best fit). I obsess over how my little guys are doing on the Posting Plaza (the people at home toss up their best creations, and then give thumbs ups to the ones they like).

Well dudes, after a year of toiling in agony and obscurity, I’ve finally made the A List; I’m the Number 83 Mii Artisan. If I haven’t made myself clear enough, this is at least as good as discovering your high school lacrosse team is ranked among the Top 50 nationwide. It’s probably even as good as producing a movie that wins the Oscar for Best Sound Editing.

But that’s not all! Doo-oods, my Sarah Palin is tenth in the nation!!!!!!!! That’s like…! fuckin…I don’t know, say, winning six Gold Medals at the Olympics, o-kay?? [Actually, it was eight. -Precise Pat]

For realz:

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I’m happy to announce that swampbrick.com’s envious younger brother has murdered him and seized the throne for himself. Long live PatBarrett.com! And speaking of succession, the first presidential debate just ended. It was tense, but civil, as only a discussion between senators can be. Also tonight, the Mets have shown some more signs of collapse. This is a good thing, because I won’t need to continue to be weighed down by the guilt of being invested in their race at least as much as I am by Barack in his.

In conclusion, whoa-ho-ho-hoooooo-ooohh. You didn’t think I’d post some practice pages did you?? Drawing hands! The question is always, how much comes from cartoons and cartooning, how much from graphic art like illuminated manuscripts, and how much from “life” – which I suppose means Renaissance ideals. No’m sayn?

What kind of sketchblog is this? Two posts in as many days?? With prices so low, I must be in-saaane!!!! Well, here’s the moment you’ve all been waiting for. Our future First Lady and current Best Lady, Michelle Robinson Obama!!

I’m so sorry I don’t have more to say today, and can’t fill up your time with any thoughts on the fall of a certain empire we seem to be living through. President actually seems to be the least desirable job I could think of at the moment. But hey, perhaps this is a Franklin Roosevelt moment? Yes, it could be. It truly could be. Let’s be honest, I have nothing to add to the conversation right now. This is what you have done to me. Satisfied?

Yes, it’s true. Every single illustrator/cartoonist/comic book artist/graphic novelist/blogger in New York draws people on the subway. I even hear they do it in Chicago, too.

These guys here are both Mets fans, so I guess we’re all kindred spirits. The one playing something on his PDA was on the 7 out to Shea Stadium, and the guy in the hat was on his way home from work ’round about midnight, just like me. How about that?

Here’s that follow-up I promised. These are marked as copyright of Field Publications, but it looks like they belong to the Dr. Seuss Collection at the University of California, San Diego. They’re from a collection my mom found at a used book store called Dr. Seuss Goes to War: The World War II Cartoons of Theodor Seuss Geisel. It’s by Richard H Minear and was published by The New Press, New York, 1999.

Apparently the good doctor drew political cartoons from 1941 to ‘42 for PM, a liberal New York rag, before he joined the service making instructional and propaganda films. Seeing this many of his drawings back to back to back pointed out how clearly Seuss used the silhouette to improve legibility. It’s a classic trick of cartooning and animation, that an action is clearer if it can be judged by the shape of the figure against the background (this is also a trope of character design). So, rather than sipping a drink held in front, cartoon characters turn their heads sideways and gulp it from an uplifted hand. Anyhow, the dude gets it.

I’ve also been reading Popeye and Krazy Kat and Little Nemo comics lately, and I feel like I could stand to incorporate some of the frontal, theatrical nature of old comic strips into my own work. I tend to compose cinematically, with camera angles and a sense of space, but I’m really drawn to the clarity and elasticity when the characters are at the front of the frame, and the scenes are behind them. This is something that’s worked for book illustration since the illuminated manuscripts. But what do I know? Maybe my overly-rendered backgrounds are my thing. Maybe I’m more a product of the movie theater than the stage.

Okay! That’s enough art school blah blah blah for today. Here are those drawings I’m ripping off:

Okay bloggers, real talk. I haven’t posted in a while, which makes me sad. I’m continuing to make glacial progress on my website overhaul, which makes me happy in a bittersweet kind of way. I haven’t even posted a celebrity for either of the last two Saturdays. Do I chalk this up as a blog vacation, or do I quit on the whole celebrities thing, and develop more drawings in the nakedness/supernatural/imp vein? I have been doing some more loose-limbed sketchbook doodling lately.

Let me tell you, it’s hard to figure out where one fits in the ever-shrinking editorial illustration world. It’s also hard to figure out the appropriate tone for a public blog. When I launch at PatBarrett.com, I’m going to include the sketchblog as a sub-site. How much of this sort of desperate, searching, I’m so in my mid twenties business should be allowed to continue? How should I link to you, my readers and fellow bloggers? Where do I leave the Live Journal world behind? Ay ay ay.

This drawing is inspired by Dr. Seuss wartime political cartoons. I’ll post some in a follow-up.