Wednesday, April 29, 2009

Cocytus


This shows me standing in for Michael. I've been going to so many cathedrals these days how could I resist making a lil' religious art?

Tuesday, April 28, 2009

But... what does it MEAN?


The museum in question is the Reina Sofia, the museum that houses the Guernica, among other things. The vast majority of the museum was really sick: tons of DalĂ­, Picasso, and all those homeboys and honeys. It is still hilariously pretentious though. There really was a giant black square on the wall called "Untitled," and you can bet they paid many thousands of dollars for it. I was with my parents and we got the audio tour, which afforded much comedic value. One exibit, a bookshelf full of wood chips, had an audio clip of the artist describing the piece, which went something like this:

"I was renting a house near my daughter's school, and I brought some books with me to work on. One morning they caught the light in quite a pretty way, and I said 'that's it! there's my subject! books!' I use hard wood; it's less pourous and requires less treatment. I made the wood into timber and I chopped it into pieces. I'm sort of the opposite of a sculptor. While a sculptor uses solder, I use white glue. When I use white glue to attach the pieces of wood together, it feels as though I'm establishing connections between them."

Unrequited Luv


Giant tentacled cyclops monsters. Can't live with 'em, can't live without 'em, right guys? Am I right?

Sunday, April 26, 2009

Adventures in Dreamland


Here's another explanation. Dream interpretation is generally BS, but I guess there has to be some reason why my subconscious is terrified of my teeth falling out. Sadly, this is one of the few problems that AMZAING GENERIK VIAGRA!!! is incapable of curing.

Some of my readership (Gold) has pointed out that the description of this blog is somewhat of a lie because I tend to draw more bananas than dinosaurs. To them I say: look at panel 2. Are you happy now?

Engrish


Behold, the English version of a menu at a seafood restaurant I went to in Madrid. I will do my best to interpret it for the benefit of my readership.

1. This dish is only available to pirates and other non-landlubbers.
3. This is a typo. It should read "Clams to the face."
4. Similarly, it should read "Cockles to the dome piece," which is quite a delicacy in Spain.
7. To distinguish it from the rest of the menu items, which are inedible.
9. Not sure what this is, but based on the name I'm assuming it's some kind of nightmare creature from the depths of hell.
14. For doing battle with the accursed Nephrops.

Friday, April 24, 2009

Love letter

Behold, a postcard I sent to that lousy son of a gun I used to call a roommate. Text was dictated to me by Nicholas Cage through a Ouija board.

Front:


Back:

Inspiration


I think it was Gandhi who said, "Be the senseless destruction you wish to inflict on the world. Also, it helps to be a dinosaur. Last but not least, I am really hungry."

A rougher, pencil-sketch version of the t-shirt design I posted a week or so ago. This drawing is one of my favoritest doodles. Senior year of high school we all had to paint a square for a class quilt, and that was the first occasion I drew this highly inspirational work. It has since appeared in countless notebooks, whiteboards all over campus, my roommate's wall last quarter, and last weekend, on the Ponte Veccio in Florence.

Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Topical humor


links to sources:
Edgar Mitchell
Dennis Kucinich

What dreams may come?


This one might require some explanation. Not that it'll make that much more sense, but I'll try.

The text in this comic strip is the most famous doggerel (literary term for "shitty") poem of all time. Its origins aren't exactly clear, but as the story goes, a famous author (Dorothy Parker, William James, Ogden Nash, and Gertrude Stein depending on who's doing the telling) awakes from a dream, convinced that he or she has received a profound insight. He/she quickly jots it down and returns to sleep. On awakening, (s)he excitedly looks at the scrap of paper on the bedside table, only to find that... it makes no sense.

The scientist Friedrich Kekulé, who solved the riddle of benzene's molecular structure, said that the answer came to him in a dream (he dreamed of a snake eating its own tail; benzene is a ring). The poet Samuel Colridge claimed that the text of his most famous poem, Kubla Khan, also came in a dream.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that sometimes dreams are responsible for truly profound inspiration. Other times, they are responsible for bullshit like "Higamus Hogamus."

Dear Diary









Presenting myself, in drawing form! Click for a bigger version of the image - quality is a little low, but lack of access to a scanner means I have to rely on digital cameras.

Monday, April 20, 2009

Page from my sketchbook

This is how I occupy my time on the metro - I usually just start with the eyes and see what happens. Sometimes, that leads to a cute little whale. Other times, it leads to a deranged-looking octopus who is BFF with an egg with a flower growing out of it's head and a cube-thing with a chicken leg.

We've all been there

Pretentious artistic criticism


Today, a pretentious review of one of my own drawings:

This work, from the artist's "banana period" (see blog post, Apr 26 for further examples) depicts David Hume (left) and Immanuel Kant (right) debating the question "do people eat bananas, or do bananas eat people?" As this question is ultimately unanswerable, whichever position chosen represents the paradigm of the individual, and has more to do with culture than abstract truth. As such, this work can be taken as an allegory for the modern political climate in America, but we should be wary of trivializing this highly significant and challenging work.

Divine inspiration


Taken at face value, this drawing is sacrilege, but I really think I'm onto something here. So heaven is like a frat, right? It's the chillest frat ever, the one with all the chillest bros and the most jell-o shots at parties. God is the President of the frat. The Holy Spirit is "Community Outreach Chair" or something like that where nobody really knows what he does but he gets a better room than you anyway. And you spend your life pledging this frat and hoping to get initiated. And Jesus is the pledgemaster; he totally wants you to get in, but you have to play by his rules or else you get dropped (Hell... week? No, eternity. Actually, Purgatory is more like hell week in this extended metaphor). He even has his own Greek letters (alpha and omega, fish symbol, chi...), knows how to turn a couple of fish and loaves into a bangin' party, and, according to scripture, his blood alcohol content is 12% - how fratty is that?

I think this would make a sweet t-shirt, a counterpoint to those "Jesus is My Homeboy" shirts (only 3 years too late to be relevant!). Maybe I'll get around to that, or maybe someone with better Adobe Illustrator skills than me can help me out?

Thursday, April 16, 2009

Still life

Critics have called it "a spellbinding indictment of the hypocrisy of our epoch" and "the swollest banana they have ever effing seen, seriously."

The media takeover begins.

Hey peoples! I'm starting a new blog to post the silly pictures I draw. I have a bunch of thangs sitting around that I want to post but I need to find a scanner. Actually, I have access to a scanner, but it's at the language center and I would need to ask an administrator to scan them for me; I haven't worked up the courage to try to explain, in Spanish, why I need this done.

Here is a picture of a stegosaurus that I drew and edited on my computer. I've been wanting to turn it into a t-shirt for a long time but sadly I am lazy and bad at Adobe Illustrator.




I also made a squid.


Stay tuned for lots more stuff.

Love,
Phil Nova