Something new...

I haven't created anything in a few months, but I plan to change that this month. I'm about to revive and recreate a character I haven't touched since the mid-eighties.

Damaged Goods

I wanted to add an old drawing of mine to my "Model Illustrations" page. I created this in 1983 as part of a course in drawing. There are two versions of this piece: there's the original and then the much more refined piece done several years later at the expense of the original. Now, here's the problem...

This is the original. It was done on newsprint paper which clearly doesn't hold up well unless it's stored properly. The grid was penciled in as a means to recreate the entire drawing block by block on a clean sheet of newsprint paper. Why I couldn't simply draw the grid on a large sheet of visualizing paper while sparing the original, is a question I cannot answer today, 30 years later.

On a side note, this was drawn in a classroom filled with other students drawing this same model. I found it rather cool that she chose to fix her eyes toward me the couple of days that she posed for us. Did she think that I was the only one who knew what he was doing? Perhaps...

Also, notice how in this classroom filled with students, there's no evidence of any of them in this drawing. They were in my way.

This is the tragically remade drawing, again on newsprint. (If you must draw on newsprint, people, you must store it away properly and not inside a plastic bin underneath a ton of other drawings.) 

Although the face is now permanently gone, I still like the way the drawing came out. And yes, evidence of the other students is still missing.

So, the problem now is how to include either drawing on my website as finished pieces when both are so horribly defaced. (I guess that is what the blog is for...)

I forgot that I used to write.

When I get around to it, I may post all my writings, but for now here's one...

When A Child Raises A Village

They seen it    
They felt it
They watched it
They lived it
They got it
And knew that
I'm doomed to repeat it

I've lost touch with my bratnicks
Their anger
Their antics
Their screwed up semantics
Does this make me old?

Or cold to the touch
Remembering such
Was the way of my youth
When rebels of truth
Exerting their fruits
Were thriving off fiction
Commercial ambition
Developing skill
Of dialect
Of diction

No statement
No mission
The plan was for self
And those of your peer
And for whom you'd care
And yet without fail
With each passing year
Grew numbers of elders
Who'd watch us in fear

I've seen it
I've felt it
I've watched it
I've lived it
I got it
But after
My time to repeat it

They feared not of strangers
But of whom they reared
Uncommandeered
Unschooled
Unsteered

Priorities not heeded
Are priorities no more
To pilgrims who needed
Conclusions to draw
With conclusions held
Left unmolded to meld
That fear of the fearful
Was produced
Through themselves

I've lost touch with my bratnicks
Their anger
Their antics
Their screwed up semantics
Does this make me afraid?

Perhaps
And yet
My fear is not of them
But the role of my actions
Impacting
Upon them

They see it
They feel it
They watch it
They live it
But still they won't get it
'til their time
To repeat it


Joseph Fobbs
copyright 2000