And Now, What You All Came For....Hardcore Nudity!

"And I'm just so bored of wasting my time
Love and Death always on my mind." - The Stills

the other day at my trip to the MoMA, i picked up a book on the
austrian artist egon schiele (1890-1918) one of my personal faves...
an artist who painted some of the most vivid sexual imagery of the
male and female form in his day...he invented the "heroin chic" look 90 years
ahead of everyone. his models all emaciated & angular; beautiful linework-
this book blew my mind with these things i've never considered:
1) sigmund freud whose new theories on sexuality and mortality were born
at the same time- in the same city as schiele and
2) schiele did this work during the height of what a lot of artists consider
illustrations' finest hour, the art nouveau period-
when every thing was soft and beautiful....
it would've been like being in a band like the velvet underground
when all that was popular on the radio at the time was bands that
sounded like the beatles.....anyway- the bottom line is, i'm gonna
soak this book up and see if it influences my work....
and google this guy's work if you're unfamiliar with him...
i'll dedicate these posts to the process junkie....
who never met a nude woman he didn't like.....
ribbit!
frogdaddy

Save Me (From Myself)

"And I draw a line
to your heart today-
To your heart from mine
One line to keep us safe.- P.J. Harvey

i'm the ivan drago of draw. c'mon, you know who i'm talking about.
don't front. you watched "Rocky IV" didn't you? you remember the humongous
albino russian played to wooden perfection by dolph lundgren? the guy who
killed apollo and delivered the coldest after-fight interview in boxing history
by calmly announcing over the sweaty corpse of carl weathers:
"if he dies.....he dies."
now where is my metaphor going again? oh yeah. i'm THAT guy....why?
because there's a scene in that movie, where his manager is holding court
over a press junket following his training session and states-
"whatever he hits...he destroys."
i'm THAT guy....not in the literal sense, mind you....purely creatively....
i just over fuckin work everything, which is ironic in a way, cause my
wife says I can't finish anything... go figure.... i just don't know when to stop myself
until the thing i'm rendering no longer resembles itself....
anyway...here's the proof...two posts tonight...i drew the blue line on the train home
and then after giving kenna a shower and reading her a story (too long a layover!)
i tried to add some color to it....."whatever he hits.....he destroys!"
i wish i had a chip that would just zap me with some sort of electric shock when it's time
to put the pencil down....maybe it can tell me when it's time to end a blog too....
ribbit

Parent Perks

"I can't pretend
I need to defend
some part of me from you.
I know I've spent some time a-lying"- Interpol "The New"
Sundays are easy. Sundays to relax.
we have a family field trip planned to the Museum of Modern Art
in New York City today. there's a Pixar Animation Exhibit that runs through
the end of the month and I'm loving it. sometimes a family outing means
seeing something you want nothing to do with, but because nickelodeon
plays commercials for these movies ad nauseum, you find yourself
sitting through crap like "Because of Winn Dixie", but not today!
today is a day we can both agree on....i call Pixar a "Parent Perk"
cause you can take your kid to their productions and dig it as much as they
do...watch the same dvd 50 times and still discover something new....they
do it better than anyone in the game right now, hands down....
now I'm not a big believer in symbolism, but while my wife was packing
her purse with kid-friendly fare for our trip in I open our back door and gasp....
I run back into the house and call the girls out grabbing the digital and quickly snap this image:

now this picture does no justice to the frog's eye view, cause these black birds were
EVERYWHERE! hundreds in each tree-lined yard on my block stretching four houses down!
the sudden crack of my back door sent a few dozens to take wing in my own back yard and there
I was, in the middle of this murder of mini-crows- like the wicked witch dispensing some
flying monkey justice on Dorothy's ass.....hollywood couldn't cgi an image like this;
it was like having sex with Hitchcock while Tim Burton's going down on you...
it was all over in minutes with the rest of the flock flown for newer lawns.
what an absolutely surreal moment! it was made for the MoMA!
Be back this week with more sketches and inspirato....
Ribbit!
Frogdaddy

Rock Star Heaven

"Cut this picture-into you and me...
burn it backwards- kill this history"- Elliott Smith
here's a fresh-faced, pigtail-free sketch to fill my "every other day" quota....
started the morning commute with nick drake and went home to elliott smith....
two amazing musicians who left us far too soon. i was too young to appreciate
nick drake in his day (check beck's website for an amazing cover of his song "parasite")
but i really find myself missing elliott regularly...he's one of the few artists of whose
entire catalog I own....i guess that doesn't have much weight in today's rip and burn world,
but i went to the record stores and bought each and every one of those bitches.....
i can remember where i was when I first heard "Sweet Adeline" (Amoeba Records, Berkeley California)
his songs have that kind of immediacy with me.....maybe i had a grunge hangover, or maybe my tastes
were growing older, but elliott "happened" for me at just the right time...wish he could've stayed.....
frogdaddy

Things Behind the Sun

"Love this life....Don't wait till the next one comes"- Crowded House
This is for Mike- who's having a rough go at the moment- You've got
support everywhere you look, brother...you are loved.
Me and Mikey spent a hot august weekend at my sisters cattle farm
in upstate new york. we were doing some hard ass labor-shoveling cattle shite
outta the barn, bailing hay,plowing the land and the sun was friggin merciless!
around mid-day when it became unbearable, we went in to "cool off", but my
sister's farm is old school, and they gots no air conditioning! so she opens the
broken screen door to "cross ventilate" the place. mike and i are chillin,
drinkin beers, and loungin...i decide to pick up the book and throw down
a quick sketch and tell Mike to hold this pose.....anyway- since the screen door
was busted, we started getting overrun with flies. about three or four times during
this sitting, MZ would start slapping at the air around him, saying. "Goddamn Flies!"
and then resume his pose EXACTLY as he was! whatta great heart!
but after the fourth time, I couldn't draw anymore- I was laughing too hard...
I added the "Goddamn Flies" as a goof, showed it to Z- he gave me the finger
finished his beer, pulled the legs out from under the lay-z-boy and tried to go to sleep....
be strong Mikey-
frogdaddy

Deep Thoughts......

If a kid asks where rain comes from, I think a cute thing to tell him is "God is crying." And if he asks why God is crying, another cute thing to tell him is "Probably because of something you did."-Jack Handy

here's another sketch....still finding my way...what looks semi -decent on the train ride home
looks like the poo-poo platter by the time I get around to scanning it in....I'm my own worst critic I guess....having a real hard time getting her features soft...the shape of the cheeks, etc...
it's tough drawing kids their own age...I feel like she looks about 8 years old in this ..
I'll keep at it though...I can only get better right?

"Sometimes I think I can see right through myself"

"There is no YOU there is only ME....."- Trent Reznor.....
man how does that dude still make music for angry 17 year olds? aint he in his
40's by now? man he's got the formula for pissed people everywhere....I'm not goofing
on Nine Inch Nails....I dig the shit outta that last album, but i just wonder how many times
you can go to that well inside yourself...what do you feed that animal? how can you nurture
that anger for so long? and the shit is, this guy's got it made! he's freakin loaded!
what's he so pissed about? did someone key his porshe? "THERE IS NO FUCKIN' YOU!!!!
THERE IS ONLY ME!!!!!" you stay pissed Trent Reznor.....at least you're still rockin.....
Ribbit!
more from the archives.....

How Daddy Got His Groove Back

Ribbit! so my daughter threw down the gauntlet a few days ago...she wants to know why I haven't drawn a children's book with her in it yet...i gotta admit, I've been looking for the excuse to get my hand back as working on
computers all day tend to diminish your skills you spent your life honing....it's like working out-muscle
memory, they call it....when you stop drawing for a period, you've gotta get your drawing hand back...so
i will now provide a new post every other day or so to see if I can capture her essence into something
I feel can do her justice on the two-dimensional page....note I'm drawing these on my morning commute
so there's a bit of "shakey hand"....FrogDaddy

"Got a Low Low Feeling Around Me and a Stone Cold Feeling Inside...

...I just can't stop messing my mind up,
and wasting my time."- Supergrass
It's so nice to feel welcome, thanks for the support mes amis,
I'll try to maintain, to hold it down, to walk the line....your shadows are long,
but the sun's setting behind me now...here's some more old school art from
my heady days at F.I.T.

For Bex

Ribbit!
i work with an artist who just creates these amazing looking
female figure drawings and who also really pushed me to
get into this blog community ,so while I can't hold a candle
to her sacred feminine renderings, I'll dig deep into the archives
and dedicate these girly pics to bex....thanks!

sketchbook

here's some of my work past & present:

There Is A Light And It Never Goes Out.

"take me out tonight... because I want to see people and I want to see light"
-The Smiths
Ribbit! hello world.
Frogdaddy is sailing his mayflower blog. iceberg right ahead, bitches!
seems everyone's blogging these days...at least everyone I work with-
which is cool, because I happen to work at a childrenswear company in NYC
with a talented bunch of artists who truly inspire...when i figure out how to,
I'll put some of their spaces in my links folder so you can sees for yerself-
they're the bee knees, baby... the frickin bees knees.
some things you may or may not know about me. I was born & raised in New
York City but currently reside in New Jersey where I think the state motto was
just changed to "New Jersey....Come See For Yourself" which kinda sounds
apologetic about it's own reputation, no? it's like "give us another chance, please"
but i'm learning to love NJ like a time-worn Bon Jovi tune, (not Bad Medicine tho-
cause that fucking chorus annoys me)
I'm the luckiest guy on the planet cause I actually married my soulmate and we're
gonna hit ten years this sept. we have a six year old daughter who may beat Hilary
to the white house, but i'm sure they'll be blogfodder soon enough, so I'll save
some for the sequel....I'll try and chime in with some regularity, feel free to
do the same....I'm FrogDaddy...You stay classy Internet.