X's and O's

Pam Huggins aka PAMO and I are doing a pictorial tic-tac-toe game. I am "X" and she is "O". The idea is to counter each other's moves and do a semi-coherent complete comic from first square to last at the same time! I have posted the last square (bottom right) above. It was great fun to draw PAMO!! I had to do the last square or Pamo would have won!

Pam has brilliantly summed up our collaboration - in cartoon- at her blog here. (If you haven't seen her cartoon on what we have done, you have got to go there - it is great fun!)

Other moves in our tic-tac-toe game are in posts here, here and here. Hmmm, looks like Pamo hasn't posted all of her squares - but we will have the whole tic-tac-toe board online for you to see if we ever finish!

Well it's been a long day, I'm tired and have little to say. So I leave you with this thought:

Life is like tic-tac-toe:
A bit of a puzzle,
A bit of a game,
And if often we can't get ahead,
We usually don't get too behind either.
And the most important thing
Beyond all else,
Are the x's and o's.
xoxoxo
Don't you think?

(Yes, I always wax poetic when I'm tired.)

A FUN Game for the New Year

If this were a New Year's Card, here are some of the possible captions it could have:
Have a bang-up New Years! (for the revelers)
Give your dog something to bark about in the New Year! (for the dog owners)
May you stay above the fray in the New Year! (for the blimp pilots)
And so on..

And, of course, I wish you all of the above and more for your New Year.

But this is not a new year's card. It's much more fun than that.

In my December 20th post, here, I said that a partner and I were engaged in a game involving art, and showed you my first panel. If you know of my opponent (and most of you EDM'ers do), then there are clues in the picture above as to who she is. So see if you can guess (of course she let the cats out of the bag in her latest blog post).
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[Insert Jeopardy music here.]
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Give up? One of the arms and legs in the cloud of contention above is PAMO'S! And the barking dog is, of course, her dog. You can visit Pamo's Blog here.

Pam aka Pamo is a cartoonist of course. She let me know about some books she was reading on cartooning, and in checking out the author's works online I found myself at a blog that described a tic-tac-toe game. The blogger, Matt Madden, and his friend Tom Hart drew a tic-tac-toe grid on an 8-1/2" x 11" paper - one chose "x" and the other chose "o" - and they each drew panels of a 9-part cartoon in their respective squares, passing the page back and forth across a table. Each would incorporate their "x" or "o" in the panel, try to make that panel a part of what would become a coherent (or at least semi-coherent) full-page cartoon, and attempt to win of course!. You can visit Matt Madden's blog, see a full description of his Tic-Tac-Toe Jam, and pictures of what they accomplished here.

Now I have no time for any of this - too many other projects that I have in mind and have no time for either. Still, to do this would not be that different than a story board for a picture book (which I want to do) and besides it sounded fun, so I figured why not, and e-mailed Pam and asked, "Well?"

Of course Pam is in Tennessee and I am in Florida, so our virtual table is large. We are e-mailing each other our panels, identifying the places on the grids (e.g., Queen to Kings 4), and when we are done, Pam will assemble the 9 panels into a grid that we will show you all.

So I ask - HOW FUN IS THAT?!

Thank you Matt Madden!

I have done a lot of sketches this year in my sketch book, but very few are colored. So I have some catching up to do early in the new year. I have some definite thoughts about how to "kick it up a notch" in my art in the coming year, but don't want to jinx it by talking about it.

"Do or do not. There is no try," says Yoda, the wise. And talking about it is even worse.

So here is a rather raw page of floating heads from life from my Moleskine. For the bottom two there was a wall blocking the bottom halves of their heads for rather interesting effect, don't you think?

I owe a debt of gratitude to so many of you for being so generous in sharing of yourselves, your art, and your techniques and ideas. So it is with an earnest nod of my virtual hat that I wish you and yours a HAPPY NEW YEAR!!

Feel the Beat.

NOTE: IT WILL BE HELPFUL WHEN READING THIS POST TO GRAB A PAIR OF BONGO DRUMS AND TO CHANNEL THE BEAT POETS.






1.
It's morning. My hot tea is next to me. I am in my car in a parking space across the street from a Publix supermarket. My radio is on. Two employees stroll outside, lean back, and talk. They are satisfied - I can tell - to be there at that place in that moment, enjoying the cool air and warm conversation. Despite what the newsman says, all is right with the world. I pull out my pen, and smile.

Two days later I return. Once again I am in my car in the parking space across the street from the supermarket. I sip my hot tea. I pull out my watercolors and dampen the brush. Again the radio is on, but despite what the newsman says, all is right with the world. Again, I smile.







2. A new game. A chance to be creative. Collaboration with a worthy opponent who is enthusiastic and full of ideas. An opportunity to stretch reality, to laugh, to feel joy at the challenge. It feels so good to stretch.

In this game my opponent/collaborator will have an idea, and then it will be my turn to respond. Idea births idea, and neither of us knows how in nine moves it will end. I will tell you more another day and explain the game, but there have been three moves in this game so far. I went first, and this was the first move in our game:









3. Charcoal. My sketchbook. Thinking, an obstacle. Planning, unnecessary. I follow my instincts into the wild. I bury myself in a verdant jungle. But I do not think "verdant", I do not think "jungle", I do not think. I am a wild animal - untrained, unrestrained, and dangerous. An artist. When the charcoal is done, I grab my pen, but it is too late. There is no control in the grand cacophony. Spirited, vibrant, quivering with excitement, the chaos cannot be tamed. It is art, I think. It must be art.