Samurai Cowboy shade in Taisho Bistro

We, my wife and I, had lunch in this sushi restaurant, Taisho Bistro, today and this samurai cowboy window shade, and samurai armor on display, makes it my new favorite restaurant.

 I don't recognize the character for any anime or manga, off hand.  I'll have ask the restaurant staff if it is an original or not.

Sunday Music Muse Day - Jazz for Play Boys with Kenny Burrell and Freddie Green, Julian Lage

This Sunday Music Muse Day find me wishing for a end to winter, and licking my wounds from filing my tax returns. To ease the pain of both, here's two totally different jazz CDs.  First up, is a CD picked up on two day trip to Buffalo, NY, and Niagara Falls, Canada. I always try to hit local music shops when I travel in hopes of finding hidden musical gems.  This trip was a bust,  except for this funky CD of a 1950's LP, Jazz for Playboys, featuring guitarists Kenny Burrell and Freddie Green. Just the title, and cover art, made it a must buy. But seriously, this classic 50's jazz and it was recorded by the Rudy Van Geider, the legendary recording engineer, in Hackensack, NJ, I'm assuming at his famous studio. All I can say is, "Cool Daddy-O".

My next selection, was recorded in 2009, the studio debut of Julian Lage Sounding Point.  Lage has grown to be regarded as one the outstanding young guitarist on the jazz scene.  I just featured a Gary Burton CD with Lage on it. Sounding Point was nominated for a 2010 Grammy for Best Contemporary Jazz Album.  Not too shabby for a debut album.  As public service I'm listing the sideman as the type on the CD is in 0.05 pt type. You'd need a microscope to read it.

• Bela Fleck – banjo on "The Informant", "Long Day, Short Night", and "Alameda"
• Julian Lage – guitar
• Chris Thile – mandolin on "The Informant", "Long Day, Short Night", and "Alameda"
• Ben Roseth – saxophone on "Clarity", "All Purpose Beginning", "Peterborough", "Quiet, Through and Through", and "Motor Minder"
• Taylor Eigsiti– piano on "Tour One" and "All Blues"
• Aristides Rivas – cello on "Clarity" and "All Purpose Beginning"
• Jorge Roeder – bass on "Clarity", "All Purpose Beginning", "Quiet, Through and Through", "Lil' Darlin'", and "Motor Minder"
• Tupac Mantilla – hand percussion on "Clarity", "All Purpose Beginning", "Lil' Darlin'", and "Motor Minder"
•  

I admit some tunes on the CD were "meh" at first listen, but it's worth going back to again.

Here's hope that spring comes soon.  Until then, stay warm with cool tunes. Enjoy.

A&E Presentation Posters (mid-1980s)

I found the 8x10" transparency of final poster of the A&E Documentary promotional piece. Also, another poster for A&E's comedy lineup. I did these in the mid 1980s.

 This is my original rough sketch. A&E asked for the plane and FDR to changed to more generic images. I still like this drawing of the B-17. Plus, I rarely do life-like drawing like the FDR image.

Here's the final rough sketch with the new changes.

This Comedy show presentation piece was used by A&E in meetings with advertisers, I think.

These were done with airbrush and Dr. Martin dyes.  Unfortunately, I didn't get the original works back, but I do have these 8x10" transparencies for my archives.

Robot Sunday 2-24-2019 - B3B0P is caught in a Mech-Spider's web

Robot Sunday - B3B0P is caught in a Mech-Spider's web. "Is this the end of the brave little service robot...".

 ...TO BE CONTINUED!!!!

Sunday Music Muse Day - Gary Burton Quartet, Bill Evans & Jim Hall

This Sunday Music Muse Day, find us in the western region of upstate New York bracing for a forecast of dangerous high winds of 50 to 65 miles a hour.  There be a chance of rain with that, but the real concern is overturned trees and downed power lines, resulting in blackouts.  We're hoping for best.  To ease the tension I'm listening to Gary Burton Quartet Live, with Pat Metheny (guitar), Steve Swallow (bass), and Antonio Sanchez (drum).  This live set record in 2007, is sort of a reunion of the classic Gary Burton Quartet of the 1970s, with the exception of Sanchez.  Burton relate in the liner notes how he is amazed at guitarist since he tried learning guitar as a teenager, and "never could figure out ...all the different fingerings."  By contrast he said, "most guitar players don't play the vibes, but the exception to that would be Pat Metheny".  It seems Burton lent Metheny a vibraphone one summer, before he join the band, and with a few months he was playing better than Burton's students.  That's a cool story.  The CD has the quartet revisiting old tunes with a fresh approach from experiences learned on musical paths they travel since playing in the original group.  It would be nice to pull out the original group recording for comparison.  On a side note, the cover is by Peter Max the quintessential artist of the hippie movement of the late 1960s and early 70's.  I like the art, but the type design and placement makes this look like a kid's music CD.

To further ease the tensions and enjoy the clam before the storm, I put on Bill Evans & Jim Hall Intermodulation. This CD is a re-issue of the follow up 1966 LP to their classic 1962 duet session, Undercurrent.  I had the good fortune to have picked up Undercurrent in the past year, so this is a great compliment to it.

As I write this, winds are picking up. So wish us luck. 

Dime-A-Dozen Project #9 - St. Clair - Before Afro-Futurism

[Dime-A-Dozen Projects is so named from a conversation with creative friends of mine as we lamented that when we were working full-time for someone else, we get these (in our minds) original million dollar ideas, that would, somehow, turn into "dime-a-dozen" ideas when we were out of work and on our own. I have ton's of unfinished projects in the form of character sketches, incomplete written outlines, half drawn comic pages, and full illustrations. You get the idea, a dime-a-dozen idea. I'm feeling the need to catalog for my own sanity and for a simple record to leave my kids, and as I said above, along the way rekindle my creative juice and start drawing again.]

This collection of sketches is Odd & Ends of a group of miscellaneous Black characters in Sci-Fi settings started at a time when there were few black characters in science fiction stories in comics and other medias.

Lance St, Clair is "Shaft in Space", (the badass black private eye from the 1970s movies).

 

Some of my sci-fi adventures was inspires my the DC Comics Manhunter 2070 mini-series, created by artist Mike Sekowsky published in 1970.

  

My character Maximus Kreel is a Earthman who was abducted by aliens and taken to a distant galaxy and stranded there, he takes up the life of bounty hunter. 

Lance Bold was alternate name of Maximus Kreel (I think).

 

Lance St, Clair created by writer friend, Charlie Hunt, a story, "Cool Heat" was outlined but never finish. Such in the fate of a Dime-A-Dozen Project. 

  

Here's a detail showing a female Space Pirate. 

  

Space Jump (?) Think the 70s.

 

This is my rough sketch of the "StarGod" cover.

 

This is a rough outline for plot points of the story

 The StarGod tablet.

 Misc. sketches of St.Clair characters.

 Here is the very rough comic page rough of the "StarGod" story.

 Misc.space ship designs.

 Misc. drawing roughs in a thumbnail of a Space Mercenary duo.

 This detail I used for a larger art piece.

 

 The unnamed Space Mercenaries.

I hope at some point get back to some of these ideas an character, either as one-shot illustrations or longer comic book stories.  There is  more fun Dime-A-Dozen projects to come. I'm looking forward to sharing them.