Dumpster Diving

Larry and Loraine are good friends of ours. Loraine wanted to surprise her husband for his birthday and requested a doodle from me. Larry has been accused of being a bit of a dumpster diver. I know that he supports the local schools by collecting recyclables. So, this image of him taking a dive just had to be done. This is Larry hold a big chunk of freshly caught salmon—not retrieved from a dumpster.

Loraine was going to present Larry with this masterpiece at a birthday party for him. Sadly, the party was rained out. That was really too bad because she is a great cook and I was really looking forward to sampling some more of her talents.

Unfinished Ninjas

I like publishing unfinished work here on my blog.  It gives me a chance to show you the steps I take to get one of my doodles done.  Here is a large family project that I am in the middle of.  This is a surprise gift for the father.  There are so many faces I'm having to drawn it on a larger piece of paper—14x17.

These are photos that I took of the piece to give "Mrs. Ninja" updates on my progress.

This is not the best shot—just a quick click of the camera while it sits on my drawing table.

I took this one under a little better lighting conditions.  I'm about 1/3 of the way done on the coloring. I have to work from the top left down to the bottom right so that I don't smear the colored pencil.  It has a wax base so it will melt and make quite a mess if I lay my hand across it too long.  I always like to see how the coloring really brings the image to life.

I feel bad that it's taking me so long to get this one done, but I feel good about how it's turning out. What do you think?

Inspiring Fatherhood

Father's Day is this Sunday.  I scribbled out this little doodle this afternoon just for you—in case you wanted to "Copy & Share If You Dare" it for your own blog, or color it and give to your father, or the significant man in your life.Being a father myself, there have been times when my daughters made comment on my "less-than-inspiring" attire. But, I know that, in the end, if you force them to... they will admit that I am the wind beneath their wings. Right girls!?!

(Remember the rules: If you  Copy & Share this doodle I want to know about it. Especially if I can go and visit it on your blog.)


P.S. If you haven't read my personal challenge on the previous post, please do so. I need your help. I need your inspiration if I am to go through with doing the craziest thing I've ever done. (It beat the time that I tried to scare the whits out of a bunch of little campers while wearing a bear suit while in the forrest one night.  That didn't work out so well for me.)

You Wanna Be a Rock Star?

This is the beginning of a doodle that I've been working on in my spare time. I'm not sure why I went with this guitar guy—just thought he would make an interesting drawing.  It's actually on a larger piece of paper than I normally draw on—17x14.  That's part of the motivation—having room to draw in a bunch of stuff. I'll see where it goes. I have a drawing of a LARGE family that I started on last night. Plus I have a finished caricature waiting to be picked up that I can't publish because it is for a friend that might look at this blog sometime. You can expect me to be updating this doodle from time to time.

Blogger has a new way to customize your template, so I fiddled with that a bit.

The wedding plans continue. We'll be making a trip to Oklahoma in July. I'm sure that the ladies will fill my time with all the "stuff" that they have to do to make this wedding come off.

Speaking of weddings... June 9th marked 31 years for Marylynn and I.  I posted these to Facebook Wednesday and thought that I might share them here with you.

The just pronounced Mr. and Mrs. Richard Green.  Some things have changed.

I'm telling you, the stars were real!

Let's get out of here!!!

Having my cake and eating it too.

It's off to Colorado for the honeymoon! This is back when they still used rice.

Let's Go Camping

My friend Scott is the pastor of a church in Coquille, Oregon. He wanted a doodle to advertise a family camp that they have coming up.  He wanted a van that was packed with people, packed with equipment, and ready to go camping.

Scott called me yesterday evening to ask how the doodling was coming. I had to confess that I had forgotten his request. So, I got to work on it right away and e-mailed this creation to him just this afternoon.  He said that it was "amazing."  (I like it when people say that about my art.)

Unfortunately, this seems to have become a pattern with me when dealing with Scott. Last January we had a lunch engagement at a little port town one hour away from the both of us. He showed up. I didn't. I got a call. We rescheduled. I felt so bad that I bought the lunch AND took some really nice photos of him for him to use.  (He looks so casual and happy.)

My apologies Scott. I guess I've got some kind of metal block when it come to dealing with you. Were you mean to me one time and I've somehow blocked it out of my mind? I want to lay the blame on you, if I can.

The Whole Big Bite

Back on April 19th I posted half of this illustration. Basically I hadn't scanned it correctly and half the of the drawing didn't come out right.  He now, for your viewing pleasure, is the whole "ding dong" thing. Was it worth the wait?

Copy & Share If You Dare

In other news:  Let the wedding planning begin. There have been a ton of phone calls going back and forth between here and Oklahoma. This is daughter number two getting hitched. This wedding is a bit more tricky than when our oldest got married. We live 2,000 miles away and the wedding will be there, where the wind come sweeping down the plains—lots of logistics to plot out. But I married Mrs. Logistics. I am confident that this event will come off in style. As for me, I'm sure that it will kill me.