Bob Boze Bell Art Blog

December 2, 2009
My speech at the Heard Museum yesterday was a ton of fun. First off, my hosts, Jan and Jim Patten, from Pella, Iowa, bought me lunch at the Heard Museum Cafe which has excellent food. I had the spinach enchiladas, and we talked about Wyatt Earp’s time in Pella (Jan’s family lore lays claim to the story that her Dutch relatives beat up the Earp boys).

We had a packed house for the speech at 1:30, including, not one, but two folks from Kingman (who didn’t know each other). The first person who came up to me before the speech was Joan Hampton Jasso who came to Kingman in 1952 and graducated from MCUHS in 1962 with Sarah Ann Waters, Bill Ridenour and Joe Hart, among others we both knew. The other gentleman, T.J. McMichael, graduated in 1958. Both cherished their days growing up in Kingman. This is a refrain I have been hearing more and more, the older I get. When I was younger the most common comment when I ran into a former Kingmanite was, “Man, I couldn’t wait to get out of that hellhole.” Come to think of it, I think I said the same thing when I was a snotty twerp and didn’t know jack about the important things in life. Which reminds me of my Uncle Bud’s line: “You sure know a lot, for being so damn dumb.” Ha. Always have loved that Kingman quip.

Still working hard on the big, doubletruck of the Mesilla Brawl On The Mall painting, but had to stop this morning and whip out a Mountain Man spot illustration for an ad touting our 2010 Great American Trail Rides:

It’s a poach from a Bill Moyers’ sculpture titled “The Reckless Breed,” although I changed it exactly 20% (my lawyers made me state this, for the record). Ha.

“Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.”
—Samuel Beckett

BBB

November 30, 2009
For the past week or so, I’ve been studying famous battle paintings and I’ve noticed that the fighters in the portrayals always seem to be of two types: the heroic, chest-out defiant one (think Joan of Arc or Custer), and the fatally injured, but heroically posed woe-is-me-dying pose, complete with knitted eyebrows and a hand to the breast right out of some 1890s melodrama. These have never seemed very accurate to me. They certainly don’t look like the fights I have witnessed growing up (true, they weren’t gunfights, but still, a rock fight on the playground must have some similarities, no?)

When I was in high school we often had fights in the park next to the “new building,” at lunchtime. The cry would go out, “A Fight in the park!” And off we’d go to see some fistful of testosterone carnage. Or, more accurately, “Hey, Mickey Campa is going to beat up someone. See you in the park!”

Mickey was our resident fisticuffs champ and I have personally seen him wail on more than one face.

One time two guys were goaded into meeting in the park. One was a good guy, a Mexican kid, and the other a scraggy white guy, like me. We all met in the park, but the two guys didn’t want to fight. They were prodded and goaded and chided but they didn’t really want to be doing this. Finally, a friend of the white guy, a dude named Stan Legg, jumped into the fray and said, “Oh, what the hell,” and he punched the Mexican guy with a so-so haymaker. Suddenly the entire crowd went ballistic and while four or five In-dins (the Hualapais were there supporting the Mexican dude) jumped Stan and, as they staggered across the grass, all legs and fist flying, the rest of the crowd broke into small fights here and there. Me, I was doing the sideways shuffle, with my hands up at chest height and ducking, weaving and bobbing, trying to find the exit. Which I did successfully.

All through biology class my heart was beating so fast I could barely sit still.

As promised here are a series of illustrations I have been working over the long weekend, trying to capture that sideways shuffle I have personally witnessed:

Here are a few more sideways shuffle studies:

And here are those sketches applied to the heat of the Mesilla Brawl On The Mall:

From this fight I switched gears and did some sketches for the Burnside Rifle Classic Gunfight:

The newspaper reported that the two shooters, who were 80 paces apart missed each other, in part, because a dust storm enveloped the dueling site obliterating the field of fire:

Decent dust and wind effects. Gee, I wonder what ol’ Alighieri has to say about that?

“Worldly fame is but a breath of wind that blows now this way, now that, and changes name as it changes direction.”
—Dante Alighieri

BBB

November 25, 2009
Finished Blazing Pols at 3:30. Would have finished earlier but my computer kept beeping. When there are comments on my blog I get a beep and a link to approve them and yesterday’s Brokeback Mountain post created a three ring circus of comment.

Here’s the finished scratchboard:

Still didn’t get those pistols quite right, but it’ll have to do. A 1,200 dpi tiff went down to our art director, Dan The Man, at 4:30 and now we’ll see what magic he works for the cover.

“Measure yourself by your best moments, not by your worst. We are too prone to judge ourselves by our moments of despondency and depression.”
—Robert Johnson

BBB

November 25, 2009
Worked all afternoon yesterday on the the Blazing Pols illustration. After some 35 sketches, finally got a decent looking drawing of a gunfighting elephant at about two:

Utilizing the old spreading-lead-on-the-back-of-tracing-paper trick, I transferred that sketch to an expensive sheet of Essdee Scratchboard ($22 a sheet) and laid in the fightingi elephant and the head of the dying jackass:

So far, so good (yes, I changed the derby into an Uncle Sam hat because I knew that Dan The Man will probably want to carve that hat and put it in front of the True West logo). Unfortunately I had drawn myself into a corner (something I’m very good at). Although the editorial style cartoon I’m emulating harkens to the 1890s and early 1900s, the fight itself took place in 1871, so now I’m facing a dilemma. If an editorial cartoonist was drawing a cartoon of a fight that took place thirty years earlier, would he make the weapons authentic to that time? Perhaps, but this is supposed to be an allegorical representation of the fight, like you would see in a daily newspaper. Still, this is True West, so I opted for a percussion Colt as the jackass’s weapons:

Rather than blunder onto the Essdee Scratchboard and try and fake my way through the pistol grips and frock coat folds, I decided to go into work this morning and have our production manager Robert Ray take a model jackass out in the back and pose those effects:

Now that is one fine jackass pose.

“He was grinnin’ like a jackass eatin’ prickly pear.”
—Old Vaquero Saying

BBB

November 24, 2009
According to the Hollywood Reporter “Westerns are hot this year.” In addition to Jonah Hex (Josh Brolin) coming out next spring, FX is “saddling up for Reconstruction, a period Western set in a Missouri town during the post-Civil War Reconstruction era and centers on Jason, a proper East Coast gentleman who returns from the war a changed man and seeks refuge in a border state.”

The producers, Joshua Brand and Peter Horton, evidently came up with the premise when discussing the economic crisis and the situation in the Middle East, including war-ravaged Iraq. “We thought a good way to tell the story would be through the allegory of the Western,” Horton said.

I’ve also heard through the grapevine that Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian is going into production and is schedule to be released sometime in 2011.

Speaking of contemporary Westerns, the Autry National Center in LA is hosting an installation called “Whatever happened to Ennis del Mar?” Ennis, of course, was the Heath Ledger character in the controversial gay cowboy flick Brokeback Mountain. The Autry will be recognizing “the contributions of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community to the American West.”

This series Out West (get it? Out of the closet) is scheduled to take place over the next twelve months, will feature Western scholars, authors, artists, politicians, musicians, and friends of Western LGBTs in discussions and gallery talks at the Autry. Programs currently being considered examine LGBT Native Americans, LGBT rodeo culture, LGBT political strides including the struggle for marriage equality, and LGBT contributions to the Western arts.

“’What Ever Happened to Ennis del Mar?’ is the first program in the Out West series. When Gene Autry issued his ten-point ‘Cowboy Code’ in the 1940s, he could not have anticipated the story of Ennis del Mar and Jack Twist, but the messages of tolerance, fairness, and integrity the Code promotes speak to the acceptance for which the Brokeback Mountain characters longed.” Their story is the departure point for this first discussion which is scheduled for December 13.

Some have asked why there wasn’t a lesbian counterpart to Brokeback Mountain and someone sent me this broadside:

How You Know You Are Still a Republican? if you are more upset about Brokeback Mountain than Abu Ghraib.

Ha.

Still working out the kinks in the Blazing Pols cover illustration. Did a tight rough scratchboard yesterday at lunchtime:

Need to ground the elephant a bit more and bring out his suit of clothes a bit more. Also, need to spend some time on the gun hands. Want them to be a bit more accurate and stylish. On the home stretch, hope to finish tonight.

“Watch what people are cynical about and one can often discover what they lack.”
—George S. Patton

BBB

November 19, 2009
Our office copies of The 2010 Source Book arrived this afternoon and it’s a beautiful thing. If you want to find anything related to the West this is the issue you need to have (hint: subscribers get it free). Inside is our Eighth Annual Best of the West Awards and I predict the following people are going to be very happy: Jim Clark, Steve and Marcie Shaw, Jay Dusard, Pat Kearney and Gary George, Waddie Mitchell, Charles Harris III and Louise Sadler, Robert Utley, Jim Halperin and Steve Ivy, Mian Situ, Bill Anton, Bruce Lafountain, Mark Sublette, Jim Hatzell, Cattle Kate, Michael Guli, Bob Goldfeder, Patricia Wolf, Clint Orms, Trent Johnson, Mark Taggart, Anna Berry, Lorrie Zuzek, Denny and Pat Willis, Ken Klemm and Peter Thieriot, Marty Roberts, Victor and Kathy Garrison, John Bianchi, Jim Dunham. Rock Clark, Charmaine White, Jackson Polk, Madeleine Pickens, Sharon Paulin, Meghan Lally, Paul Zarzyski and Wylie, Sons of Joaquin, Dave Stamey, Ken Burns, Jimmy Palmiotti and Justin Gray, Cormac McCarthy and Joel and Ethan Coen.

Twilight Neighborhood
I’ve had three people this week ask me if I know Stephenie Meyer, the Mormon housewife who created the Twilight phenom. “You know everyone in Cave Creek, don’t you?” seems to be the refrain I get the most. Actually, I do not know her and I don’t know anyone who does know her. For one thing, as I understand it, she moved out here from Mesa (What A Place-ah!) a few years ago. She evidently keeps a very low profile because I’ve heard the mayor doesn’t even know her (and he gets asked about her more than I do!). I was talking to someone recently who said they saw her at Fry’s, which is on Carefree Highway several miles west of here, but that’s it. Wouldn’t even know her if I saw her.

Went home for lunch and worked on gunfighting elephants. Had good source materials thanks to Robert Ray and Google:

Also working up a wonderful dying donkey. Going to be a fantasy cover. Ha.

“A man who claims to know what’s good for others is dangerous.”
—Old Vaquero Saying

BBB

November 19, 2009
Saw my first Low Pants Lance. I was on my way to yoga last Tuesday when I saw this tall kid angling down the alley by the Career School next to Black Mountain Gym. As I drove by I looked in the rearview mirror and saw that the back of his pants hung below the cheeks of his arse! He then jumped a wall so I got a real good view of the entire buttocks area. Amazing. I had seen photos of this phenom from New York City, but had never seen this extreme before, in the flesh.

Had a speech last night at the Fountain Hills Historical Society. Packed house (105 people) for dinner and a slide show created by Robert Ray to illustrate our 102 cover march to the present. Sold about ten books and drove home. Excellent time, well spent.

It’s Dan the Man’s B-Day today. He’s 62. Here he is, at left, fifty-some years ago:

When I showed this slide last night the AV guy, Reno, said, “Man, that looks like Spin & Marty.” Yes, Spin & Marty was a Disney serial that ran on the Mickey Mouse Club at about the same time this photo was taken. Dan and I are actually emulating the costumes of the TV show 26 Men, about the Arizona Rangers. We thought we were so authentic. Ha.

Happy Birthday Dan! Speaking of Dan The Man, I mentioned we are jamming on a cover for the January issue and Dan wants a 1900-style editorial cartoon. Here is an example of two masters of the medium from that time period. First up, Heinrich Kley’s work:

And here’s another elephant-related-editorial cartoon by James Montgomery Flagg:

Man those guys could draw! Of course Flagg is the guy who illustrated the iconic “Uncle Sam Wants You!” with Sam pointing out at us.

I’ll post some of my sketches later, but in the meantime:

Classic Gunfights: Democrats Vs. Republicans
Well, I asked for headline suggestions and got them:

• Battle of the Bands

• Politics Most Deadly

• Dead Serious Politics

• The Dead Pols Society

• A Real Political Battle

• Politics cum 1871
—C.W. (a newspaper friend who doesn’t want his name used)

• Kinky Friedman on politics, “Poly means more than one, and ticks are bloodsucking parasites.”
—submitted by Lance Ross

• “Killer Politics!…Donkeys and Elephants throw down” or “Massacre in Mesilla.the first REAL Red State”, or “Hey you Asses, There’s an Elephant in the room…and he’s packin a .45!”
—submitted by Jeff Prechtel of the PUNdit Posse

• Grand Old Shoot Out: When Politics Meant Slinging Lead Instead of Mud

• Punching the Party Ticket Wild West Style: When Hanging Chad Had a Completely Different Meaning

• The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly Politics: A Real Republican and Democrat Shoot Out

• Six-Gun Politics: When Democrats and Republicans Actually Killed Each Other

• No Country For Sane Men: Republicans and Democrats Shoot It Out

• Blazing Politicos: Excuse Me While I Whip This Out
—Chris Zimmerman

“The whole history of the world is summed up in the fact that when nations are strong, they are not always just, and when they wish to be just, they are no longer strong.”
—Sir Winston Churchill

BBB

November 18, 2009
When we first moved to Cave Creek in 1986, I took my sketchbook down into the creek bottom and while reclining beneath a huge sagauro did a series of sketches that ended up contributing to this pen and ink illustration:

The cave that Cave Creek is named for is in the embankment at left. Since these giants are in the creek bottom they are susceptible to more freezing and frostbite damage because the canyon they are in holds the cold air down. When this happens the arms of the saguaro twist, typically going down, instead of up. They appear to be almost in agony and considering the mechanics of freezing they probably are. Makes for some very distinctive saguaro shapes though.

I Can’t Believe I Drew it
Another page of sketches from my quest to do 10,000 bad drawings:

Another Decade, Another Cover Quest
Editorially, we’re on to 2010 and busy trying to come up with a striking cover for our January issue. As I mentioned the other day, the cover story, by Bob Alexander, involves a gunfight between Republicans and Democrats in Mesilla, New Mexico in 1871 where at least 7 were killed (some reports claim 15) and fifty wounded. Essentially, two parades, one Republican, one Democrat, marching in opposite directions, met, hurled insults and the ball opened. Here is my first rough sketch of the idea:

Supposedly, both sides had some semblance of a band and in fact, one of the participants was saved by a bullet hitting his French horn. Here is a tighter rough of the concept:

Our art director, Dan The Man Harshberger was out for our anniversary lunch yesterday (his 62nd birthday is tomorrow). He is not too enthusiastic about the busy nature of the sketch and would like to see something more isolated, and suggested perhaps a 1900 style editorial cartoon a la James Montgomery Flagg or Heinrich Kley. Adding that perhaps we could show a symbolic elephant shooting it out with a donkey. Hmmmmm:

Also wrestling with the cover head. I want something like:

When Republicans Actually Killed Democrats

It needs to be short and snappy. Suggestions welcome.

It’s pretty amazing. We think things are tense today, but this makes everything seem very tame by comparison.

“Politics is like a dysfunctional marriage because every fight is really about something else.”
—Dick Armey

BBB

November 17, 2009
We got some rain over the weekend, not much, but just enough to get that great desert smell. I just found out in a newsletter that Kathy gets called Bottom Line that “when the weather is dry, certain plants secrete an oil that is absorbed by rocks and soil. When it rains, the oil is released into the air as a gas, creating an aroma called petrichor.”

Not Bad Weather
Another page from my quest to do 10,000 bad drawings:

I hosted a free lunch for the staff today to honor our tenth anniversary and to celebrate the completion of our Third Annual Source Book (which Robert Ray has nicknamed “The Stress Book.”) Carole ordered Subway sandos for everyone and we had a fine time.

“There is really no such thing as bad weather, only different kinds of good weather.”
—John Ruskin

Don’t tell that to a tornado survivor.

BBB

November 16, 2009
Just got more info on the remake of True Grit by the Coen Brothers. Steven Spielberg is producing along with Scott Rudin (who produced No Country For Old No Men). It looks like Matt Damon is going to play the Texas Ranger (Glenn Campbell in the original), Josh Brolin is being talked about as the bad guy Ned Pepper (Robert Duvall) and according to Variety, the Coens want Jeff Bridges for the gruff U.S. Marshal (John Wayne). They hope to begin filming next spring.

I am a big Coen brothers fan. My kids often quote The Big Lebowski (which starred Jeff Bridges as “The Dude”) and we just saw their latest flick A Serious Man last weekend, which I really enjoyed. It’s about growing up Jewish in Minnesota and is allegedly based on the travails of Job, from the bible. At the end of the movie, during the credits it says: “No jews were hurt during the filming of this movie.”

Funny, funny boys.

Working on a cover story by Bob Alexander for the January issue on Republicans and Democrats in an actual toe to toe shootout where 7 died (some claim 15) and forty were wounded. This was in Mesilla in 1871.

I Can’t Believe I Drew It
Another little set of gems from my quest to do 10,000 bad drawings:

Deena Bell went to her 10 High School Reunion last Saturday night. Not sure if this is a trend, but they just met at Harold’s (a legendary bar in Cave Creek). No formalities, no registration, no banquet, no name tags. We had fun on Sunday morning comparing her phone photos of everyone with the high school annual.

“It’s much easier to eat, drink and be merry if someone else is picking up the tab.”
—Old Vaquero Saying

BBB