Sketches and Pictures: March 2004 Archives

And that means it's time to get my act together and start planning the spread for my table at Comicon.

The only thing I have planned right now is a sketchbook. I was really impressed with the sketchbooks on sale last year, so I'll copycatting this July with my own mini. It hasn't got a title yet, but it'll be a series of sketches of profoundly abnormal people; lunatics, circus freaks, the dead, people with horrendously unpleasant and unsightly diseases and injuries, that sort of thing. It was inspired by my developing fascination with psychicatric, medical, and memorial photography. Here's a dry run.

30-year-old Elisa Ann Williams was committed to a British lunatic asylum in March of 1877 with a diagnosis of "chronic mania," apparently aggravated by "domestic trouble." She insisted that she had committed murder, and must suffer death. Her hobbies included imagining voices and screaming at the walls.

The portrait and patient dossier were lifted from Harm's Way, a compilation of antique Burns Archive photographs edited by Joel-Peter Witkin. This is the only Burns Archive book I have; the rest, such as Masterpieces of Medical Photography and Sleeping Beauty: Memorial Photography in America, won't leave the shelf for less than $400.00.

I need a wealthy patron.

That's pretty much it for today, except for one thing: Wednesday is now, officially, email day. I'll answer all the emails I recieve during the week on Wednesdays, if they don't merit being answered immediately. So patience, guys, okay? I get a lot of email, and I can't get to it all right away. But I swear to you that I read and appreciate it all. I realize that you don't have to write me, and I thank you for doing it.

In conclusion... what the hell.

There's an abandoned office building down the street, getting the gut-rehab treatment. Chances are summore condos are going up, because that's what's always going up these days.

Anyway, they've been dumping most of the building's innards out on the streets for the trashpicking filth to cart away under cover of night. Filing cabinets, chairs, desks, bookshelves, that sort of thing. And last weekend, I obliged them.

Obviously, it wasn't covered with mini B-movie posters and stickers when I found it. But for some reason, I always seem to have a good supply of this sort of crap lying around, just in case something needs to be defaced.

I won't recount what it took to get this thing down the street and up to the tenth floor, because you don't want to hear it and I'd rather forget it myself. Suffice to say this thing is made of steel, six feet tall, and I need to do more weight training.

The monochrome stiff in the upper right-hand corner is saying "It's useless, even harmful for man to think." Which reminds me: Polls are open tomorrow, Chicagoans. Hope you're planning on limbering up that stylus-hand for when November rolls around.

Also, I added my good buddy Zack to my friends list, because the damn Luddite finally got a site up. Go visit.