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On this afternoon's walk in the rain I saw my first crocus. Isn't it fitting how Nature just keeps going - despite all the misgivings of we striving people lost in the all the awful news of the moment. It's nice to just be painting, painting, painting - without scarcely thinking about it.

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I ink, therefore I am.  

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Maybe you've listened to me complain how my neighborhood hasn't had a single bookstore in 5 years - even though it's named 'University Village'. Well things are changing... and today there's a new bookstore at last. I can scarcely wait to go in and look around. I even have a children's book that I did with Two Lions - so I wonder if it'll be on the shelves? Wow... having books on shelves... there's a novel concept!

http://www.seattletimes.com/business/amazon/amazon-opens-first-bricks-and-mortar-bookstore-at-u-village/

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Having installed a new SSD boot drive, a 2 TB HDD and 12 G of memory it feels like something else entirely. I've been re-learning the basics of adding new disks and linking and disk managing.  Not too hard to do.

So happily Photoshop & the Creative Suite now have a whole new lease on life.  No more waiting 2 minutes for that Indesign file to finally open.  Now it's more like 8 seconds to start the program and open the file. That's more like it.

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Here's a fun new sketch to start the week. In my mind I imagined all kinds of different line qualities - pencil, pen, brushed pen - but when I started drawing the final, I stumbled on this digital brush that I tweaked and liked it just fine the first try.

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Digital layers makes it quick and painless to try things out. Here's a history of a two page spread that was a work in progress. Lots of changes in the layout, drawing and color.

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Here's a before and after - I'll let you guess which is which. My feeling is that one advantage to digital art is I can revise any aspect of the art without having to tear it up and start over completely... and that saves time & stress!

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And then there's my New York Times editorial illustration. 

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I decided, quite by accident one day, that this ought to be a style I should try to stick with.  It's funny, since I'd deleted the original file already, but just stumbled upon an older jpeg version.

One of the things I struggle with forever is how to define figures - either with line or with just shape.  And if it's line, then what kind of line.  In a complicated way this piece answers a lot of those questions for me.

Here are some of the variations on the theme that I tried before deciding on this:

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First there was the amusing sketch - which if you examine it in detail it is apparent that one leg has gone missing!  Sometimes an artist forgets the most basic things.

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I liked how stacking 3 or 4 similar paintings together creates a 3D effect with the landscape.

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The children's book illustration class with Maurice Sendak was held in a corner window studio on the 11th floor, high over 5th Avenue. I remember I was so nervous on the first day... waiting for the famous Mr. Sendak to appear. I’d have never guessed he’d turn out to be a disarmingly unpretentious regular guy from Brooklyn.

I told him I was nervous having him as a teacher because he was so famous. 'I'm just an old man with a beard... get over it', he said. He was totally unassuming... but he had this air of anxiety... must have been the genius gnawing at him or something. A cold draft of anxiety that always seemed to be there. But he was totally brilliant, entertaining, delightful.

Maurice would wait until the class was all quietly hard at work and then ramble on with priceless philosophical insights. I thought it highly amusing one day to hear him declare the obvious, “Of course a degree in illustration is completely superflous... it’s only one's talent and portfolio that really counts”. Another time he said “It doesn’t matter how many brilliant talented people you hang out with, it won’t make you any more talented”.

One day M.S. brought in the dummy pencils to 'Outside Over There'... they were incredible.. detailed down to each leaf. ‘It's like an opera’ I commented. M.S. thought that was an interesting, because someone else had also told him that. At the time I didn’t know his interest in opera was so keen... but I imagine that had something to do with it. I lent him a plastic bag to wrap the dummy up in, since it was pouring down rain... my brush with fame.

M.S. seemed to really care about his students welfare, unlike most of the other distant teachers there. He would make appointments with editors for his students to visit... invite them out to lunch (I actually turned down an invitation once because I had a stupid midterm the next class... something I'll always regret)

I used to come back to visit the class though even after I dropped out of school. M.S. was thrilled when I dropped out and started working. One day Richard Egielski was there too. He hadn't won the Caldecott yet. I don't think I met another illustrator for 10 years after leaving school. Amazingly I'd never even heard of the SCBWi. But the experience of those weeks was magical. It was like something you read about in books... like how Picasso and Renoir and Rousseu would all meet and have parties in Paris in 1906. I could scarcely believe it was me there... among the greats of the world of children’s books.

Also in the M.S. class were Steve Salerno and Vivienne Flesher. Steven Salerno has gone on to write & illustrate fabulous children's books... he was even chosen to do the art to a reissued Margaret Wise Brown book. The last time I saw Vivienne Flesher was one night on the sidewalk outside Balducci's... she hadn't landed a single illustration assignment yet and seemed a bit discouraged. Within 5 years I'd be seeing her incredible, unnervingly beautiful pastel draftsmanship on the cover of Time magazine.

I loved Walter and Niiad Einsel's class too. They were so calm and focused and seemed to impart wisdom almost by osmosis. Good design... basic aesthetics... the history of illustration. They really were a great team of artists. I wished I could have stayed on longer.

But after the Holiday break, my career as a ‘freelancer’ began in earnest. Underscore ‘earnest’ what with all of $275 in the bank account... make that extreme earnestness.

The decision to drop out of school was fairly obvious. I was terrified of running up a huge student loan debt. I wasn't really feeling like I was learning as much in school as I was from New York City. I was desperate to start making the rounds of publishers and actually start working. I hardly had to think twice about my choice. Also, my Mimi (a.k.a. Ann) had moved out to join me in my little 'La Boehm' room on West 78th street. We'd met in Seattle, and I guess true love can't be denied. She flew out at Christmas and together it turned out to be the start of a great adventure... since I'm still married to her. Looking back, no doubt it was the most exciting time of my life.

But on to work. What with $275 in the bank I really needed some work. This was it... Do or Die.



I still remember the first time I ever made a cold call to a publisher, trying to get a portfolio review. I was at a pay phone in the basement of the Museum of Natural History... and I was calling Workman publishers (who I still haven’t ever worked for to this day). My voice was trembling as I got through to the art director and lied and said, “I’m a freelance illustrator and I wonder if I could drop by and show my portfolio”. I guess it’s the lying part I remember so well. And the response was a total ‘No, we have no interest in seeing you at all..’ A total cold shoulder. But I had pockets full of dimes and just kept on calling.

I must have made the rounds to no more than 5 or 6 places before I landed my first job... doing an educational spot drawing for Macmillian I think. It was just $75 or something... but it was money for making art... not pushing a broom. It was the first time I'd ever been paid for artwork. It was so invigorating to just be out and about in midtown Manhattan, meeting real art directors in real publishing houses. The energy of the streets, I think they refer to it. It was fun and easy and what I'd come to New York to do.

What did I have to lose? Not much... there was always Plan B. Taking the bus back to Seattle... but I didn't want Plan B.

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And so our tiny tale of hopeful striving rambles on... with our petite protagonist settling into his new life in the big city. Having dared to dream, he discovers that the world quickly becomes his oyster.

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It was fun exploring my new neighborhood. There was the one grocery store where nobody spoke english... not even the checkout clerks. Somehow we managed. Then at the other grocery store, you’d be greeted by ‘Howie’ the manager... a real mustachioed character along the lines of Don Ameche. Howie really loved to sing. You’d walk in and he’d be crooning... “When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie... That’s Amore!” They don't sing like that in Seattle.
Outside, the neighbor kids would be break dancing to boom box music on flattened cardboard boxes on the sidewalk. They'd wait for the next delivery job to take groceries to some apartment on their special 3 wheeled delivery bikes.

There was 'The World Famous Pizza Joint’ on Broadway with live video coverage of ‘The World Famous Burger Joint’ just two stores down. There was the Apthorp Laundry and Zabars Delicatessen.... where one soon learned better than to just ask for 'cheddar cheese?' They had about 7,000 different kinds! I haven't seen a real deli anywhere west of the Hudson since.

And of course I needed to furnish my new lodging. In Manhattan, I discovered, this is as easy as picking through the piles of garbage on the street outside. You would not believe what people throw away in NYC! Probably within 2 days I had most everything I'd need. A desk, a swivel lamp, table and chair. And to keep the roaches out of my soap and toothpaste, I found a birdcage, which I hung from the ceiling. I'd keep my soap, toothpaste and some of the silverware inside. I strung christmas lights on the wall for a soft evening glow of illumination. So there you have it... La Boehm... right on West 78th Street. Everything but Mimi, of course... but she was to arrive later.

On to Art School

Art school was way down in Greenwich Village. It was a 15 minute ride in the subway or a 40 minute ride on the bus. I really liked taking the bus more usually, because I got to see so much of New York City. I remember feeling totally happy one morning riding the bus down to school... as if it were a feeling I'd never felt before. The bus went past the FlatIron Building... past the Christmas Store... a crisp bright fall morning in New York city and it was wonderful to just feel almost like a different person. I had an apartment and a job at the Parsons School of Design. I had a whole new exciting life... my old and miserable life had been replaced almost by magic.  And I liked the new one better. It was exciting.. it smelled an exotic, intriguing, edgy, big time smell... no telling what was ahead. Life was good.

At Parsons I got a job in the school tour office. It was the funniest little office. To get there you walked through a gallery space and then up a funny spiral staircase made of cast iron and looking very old fashioned. I did a bit of paperwork, looking through letters from prospective students and also I gave tours of the school... which was fun.

I’d tour parents and students through all the floors and departments... showing off the school. A few parents actually pressed $10 bills into my hand, thinking somehow I could help their children get accepted. Wierd!

Classes were okay I guess. Mostly just life drawing. It was all just learning all the art basics about colors and values and all that stuff. Drawing from the nude. You know how it is with art teachers. One teacher would teach all the students to paint just like her. She had us all buy the exact same brush she used... the same paper... the same palette. She had us hold the brush exactly like she did and move it just like her.

Another teacher would be busy torturing the models with absurd poses... and torturing the students with absurd commands. Some of the teachers were just great... and realized that we don't all have to paint just like they do. I had one class from Norman Rockwell's cousin... David, or Peter or something. He was a wonderful old gent in a sporty cap who'd tell great stories about the old days.

One morning I had the oddest experience. Walking onto the school elevator there was a girl I'd sat next to in my college german class for a whole year... 2000 miles away!

"Margaret! What are you doing in New York?", I asked, incredulous.
"Modeling for life drawing!", she smiled, "And trying to get into a broadway show".
We chatted a bit... but never did get together. New York never seems to allow anyone time to just hang out. Good thing I met her in the elevator. I imagine if she'd just walked into one of my life drawing classes out of the blue and dropped her robe, THAT might have been just too much! I always had kind of a crush on her. Auf Wiedersehen, Margaret... I guess she was chasing a dream too.

I’d have to say mostly the classes weren’t very interesting and there was a real undercurrent of discontent among many of the students about getting out into New York and seeing publishers and finding work as illustrators. I guess it was around that time that I found out you really didn’t need a diploma to become a freelance illustrator... all you needed was a portfolio and talent. And I already had those. This was a happy discovery for me. As always, I was in a hurry... I'd already been to college.



After about 5 weeks of becoming more disenchanted with the school, I went in to show my portfolio to Murray Tinkleman, the dean of the Illustration department. That experience turned things around for me 180 degrees. Murray just luved my work and immediately put me into Maurice Sendak’s children's book class which was mostly for 4th year seniors. He also switched me into some other more interesting classes.... with Walter and Niad Einsel. Both those classes were worlds better, and exactly what I'd hoped to find in a New York art school.

To be continued... when our ambling artist wannabe meets 2 Caldecott winners and strikes out on his own.

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Our bumbling saga continues as our spanking new Knickerbocker finds his way around town... full of pep, vim & vigor.

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Next problem... where the heck was I going to live? After about two days I started feeling way too at home in the Vanderbilt YMCA, except for the bedbugs. I could have stayed on for weeks actually... like in the old movies, when characters live in hotels. There's something about having a desk clerk, lounge, cafe and elevator that kind of gets to you.

The next week I adopted a new schedule of looking around all the far flung boroughs of New York City. Being too clever by half, I figured I'd live out in some unpopular borough, and save on rent. I took the train over to Hoboken one hot sticky morning... summery sticky sidewalks and a mist of humidity in the air. I remembered the Frank Sinatra song about Hoboken. I must have heard something about Hoboken being nice... and it was surprisingly quaint. Old fashioned iron fences surrounding old parks and boulevards. Brownstones lined up and still keeping their diginity from the last century. But... Hoboken wasn’t for me.

I thought I’d outsmart the commute one day and locate on Staten Island! Brilliant! I figured it would be almost like riding the ferryboat across Puget Sound from Seattle to Bainbridge... only not quite as pristine. I remember taking the ferry to Staten Island (the first and last time I ever went there) and then riding the train out to the end of the line in Staten Island. I remember walking down the tracks... way the hell out in the middle of nowhere... feeling totally lost and impossibly too far away. Dumb idea I thought to myself. So I got right back to Manhattan.  This wouldn’t be the last time I moved away in error... and came back to New York. I did that twice.

A few more days went by... I was getting used to NYC but starting to worry about finding a place. Then one bright day I picked up a Village Voice and looked through the want ads. There was a room listed on West 78th Street. I hadn’t even been to the West Side before... so of course I went. I think I might have walked all the way there, and the more I walked the better it looked. I remember walking up Central Park West and going past the Dakota... though I didn’t know it was the Dakota then.  The streets were quaint and charming and totally New York. I loved it.

At the apartment, Maury, the ‘super’ showed me around. It was a classic Upper West Side brownstone. Maury was a delightfully crusty old bolshevik, with an accent as thick as garlic bread. He dressed in about 3 old tattered colorless coats. I’d later discover that’s what he always wore... winter and summer. He could have been a screen double for Charles Laughton... only tattered.



I loved my little room at first sight. A little sunlit room facing south on the second floor of a walk up brownstone.  It was a really narrow room... you could almost reach out and touch the walls on each side, but it had a VERY high ceiling and it was quite long. A long narrow tall room with a window... a subdivided room actually.

Maury had one of those accents like onion soup... heavy, flavored, almost impossible to know what he was saying... but I liked him right off. He was my kind of bolshevik. I don’t think I ever saw him outside of his standard ‘moscow wear’... a heavy dark shapeless winter overcoat with a matching hat. He even wore the three overcoats to the Met, where I ran into him one day. "Paintings! You like paintings? Look around! Beauty!", he said. You just don’t meet guys like that in Seattle or Salt Lake. So I signed on... $35 a week... dirt cheap. It had a little refrigerator and a stove and a squeaky spring mattress and the shared bathroom was down the hall. Roaches, no extra charge.

I had an address now... 161 West 78th Street. I loved my new room... roaches and all. If you leaned out the window you could just see the Museum of Natural History at the end of the street. It was like living in one of those great New York movies with Jack Lemmon or something. Plane trees and fancy iron railings all along the street... a great place. Just one week earlier I’d been in Seattle... 3 days ago in Denver. Now I had my own place for a whole new life. Wow! My life seemed suddenly so very much more exciting! I’ll always be grateful to the Village Voice for listing a place like that. Just like always... when things seem impossible and there’s no good choices... suddenly the BEST possible choice pops up at an affordable price out of nowhere. Life does things like that sometimes... but I guess you have to pay the price of waiting through all the other stuff first.

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To be continued... until your socks get bored right off!

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The wraparound studio Chez Neezer. I've take a shine to the new updated iPad camera software that makes really seamless panning shots. So much fun! 

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And so continues our homespun tale of New York's newly minted immigrant... stumbling after his dreams. Having arrived in the big city with his duffel bag stuffed with illusions, ignorance, innocence and pluck.... along with hopes & dreams and socks.

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Sunday morning, 10 am, Fifth Avenue & 10th Street, Manhattan. I finally arrived at the doors of the fabled Parsons School of Design. It was a place I’d dreamed about for 2 years, ever since getting a partial scholarship. Of course the doors were locked.

For about 4 years I’d been dedicated to becoming an illustrator. I'd been inspired by my late Uncle Ed. He had been an illustrator who worked outside of Philadephia and done very well with lots of advertising work and Little Golden Books. I remember being thrilled as a child to see his name in the artist credits printed in a book. Such fame!

But back to my narrative, I have to say I was disappointed at the sight of the Parsons School of Design. I’m not sure what I was expecting, but it was probably more than a beat up aluminum frame doorway in an ordinary building off 5th Avenue with just a skimpy name overhead. Later I found out that Margaret Wise Brown had her first apartment in New York City just a few blocks over from Parsons. But I didn’t know that then. She probably used to have breakfast and dinner in the same restaurant that I liked to hang out in around the corner on 5th Avenue.

Ah well, life never fits dreams all that well. I was tired and hungover from 3 days on the bus and I needed a shower. I figured I could pass for a student, so I hunted down the Parsons School of Design dormitory that I’d read about, 2 blocks away. I remember on my way there I passed an amazing carved wooden embelishment on a building that struck me at once as something I'd already seen in a strange dream that I’d recently had. I took it as a good sign that I was on the right track.

Anyhow, my first and last trip to the Parsons dormitory. I took a long hot shower and felt much better. Next item... find a place to stay the night. I didn’t know anyone... school wasn’t open yet, there was no one around. I suppose I’d planned on trying the YMCA... and looking it up in the phone book, it was just a bus ride uptown to the 48th street Y near the United Nations. It all worked out as planned. By Noon I was in my room at the YMCA and ready for whatever lay ahead. I came to feel right at home. Since it was right near the UN there were all sorts of exotic people staying there... never a boring minute, like so much of the rest of New York.

So... room keys in hand, duffel bag stowed... I set out to savor a little NYC culture. First stop the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I don’t know why I chose to go there first... but I sure as heck didn’t regret it. After living in the boonies out West for the last 10 years it was like getting slammed with a 2 x 4 of culture upside the head. I drifted in astonished wonder through the galleries... feasting on culture. I felt like I was a millionaire in those huge quiet granite rooms with skylights and perfect illumination on the paintings. I loved every minute of looking at original oils by Cezanne, Van Gogh, David, Tiepolo, Rubens, Rembrandt... it all reminded me of when I lived in Washington DC, where I went to high school, and the splendors of the world class museums there, that I’d visit every weekend.



Somehow the perfection of the artwork gave me a sense of triumph in my plans. I had radically changed my life. I had gambled and done the right thing. I remember thinking it had been quite a day... beginning with the exhausted squalor of the Greyhound out of Chicago to the Port Authority Bus Terminal to Greenwich Village to the midtown YMCA... and there I was at 3 pm soaking in the renaissance paintings of Vermeer in the perfect lighting and quiet of culture at the Met.

Ah, New York... the city of True Egalitarianism. What a town! If you only live once, might as well have a time of it. That’s sort of what inspired my whole adventure actually... but more of that later.

The days that followed were fun and alive. New York doesn’t let you dwell within too much. You can’t stay bogged down with your own personal problems when there’s all that noise and commotion around you... when you’re amazed every minute at something new and outrageous.

I took right to it all... the noise, the bustle, the craziness. I remember walking by banks that had been bombed and had police tape around them... everyone just keeps moving like nothing had happened. Just being on the streets was a show... an entertainment. Just getting through the day an accomplishment.

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Since my blogger's mind seems to have skipped a track and my mind has been emptied by the 90 degree heat wave we've had here, I thought I might take a look back... and put up kind of memoir to fill the time over the next little while. It's the story of my trip to NYC to become a children's book artist. The pictures are from my first portfolio that I took to New York.






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Arrival in Gotham

The skyline appeared in the dim light of early dawn... must have been 4 or 5 in the morning.. there is was at last, we’d arrived. New York City! Skyscrapers bit into the skyline from one end of the horizon to the other. Immense, gigantic, huge... I’d think you run out of words to try and describe the view of New York from Weehawken or Parassamus or wherever the hell the bus was from across the river. But I was there at last... Manhattan. After sitting on the bus for what seemed like 3 days all the way from Denver I had finally arrived!

It was all so exciting... holding my breath as the bus ducked under the Hudson, through the first of many dark subterannean New York City tunnels filled with grime and ancient tiled walls. They all had famous names and bundles of electric cables and ventilation shafts and everything was covered with grime and dirt and beatup and crazy. All the way down the Hudson... all the way from Denver I’d been reading a book about New York City. It was a children’s book from the 1950’s with descriptive articles and hand drawn pictures of all the city’s sights. That’s what I was here for anyhow... to become a real artist. A children’s book artist more specifically.

My luggage consisted of one army surplus duffel bag filled with all my earthly posessions. Weighed about 45 pounds. I had $800 that I’d saved up working in Seattle. I was going to the Parsons School of Design on 10th street and 5th Avenue... right down in Greenwich Village. And it was all scary and exciting as hell.

There’s no describing the smells of underground New York. It’s a mixture of fumes, electricity, oily machinery toiling in the dark, urine and whatnot. The bus driver leaned out his window and yelled something about a garbage strike going on... and I noticed there were mountains of garbage stacked up everywhere. This is it.. the big time.

Hitting the streets, I basically didn’t know anything about NYC. I’d visted New York about 10 years earlier when I was in high school... but that was just a two day visit to Forest Park. This was something entirely different.



It was 6 am on one of those soaking humid late August mornings. First impressions are strong... and my first sight in the early morning dusk was of the trashed out empty streets outside the Port Authority Bus Terminal. Empty except for a lineup of transvesties all dressed up as glitzy women leaning against an alleyway. ‘Weird!’ I thought to myself and hurried on my way out of there. I remember one black dude in particular with an elegant woman’s hat on, a purple blue feather and matching dress... smoking a cigarette and blowing violet smoke into the thick damp air.

Other first impressions... giant 3 foot potholes oozing toxic bizarre unknown liquids. Could it be milk? Some sort of resin? It looked like milk, but that was all I could guess. Busted down everything.... signs busted down and coated with that special NYC grime... busted air vents, busted street lights, busted windows, busted everything. But the main impression was one of being towered over by the city... like a little scurrying bug where most everything was way up above me as I made my way through the streets below.

So... there go I, with my duffel bag over my shoulders on a hot August morning... arrived in New York. I walked. Walking was probably the ‘flight’ part of the ‘fight or flight’ panic thing. I walked and walked and walked... all the way over to 5th avenue and then all the way down to 10th street. Looking at the map I guess it’s about 3 miles or so... seemed like a long walk. But it didn’t occur to me to take a bus or subway.

(to be continued... maybe)

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