Bob Boze Bell Art Blog

August 31, 2009
Final day of my quest to do 10,000 bad drawings. Over the weekend I realized this is really my final exam. Here are the results so far:

Final Exam, Part I

1.) Emulating A. Bierdstadt, create a campfire scene utilizing a full moon in actual scale, not the gargantuan kind that hack artists use:

2.) Using raw sienna execute an old time carte de visit:

3.) Avoiding line, use a black, felt-tip pen to illustrate a Sonoran vaquero using cross hatching exclusively:

4.) Take the same vaquero and put him on a horse:

5.) Utilizing only two complementary colors, illustrate the same vaquero:

6.) Using a black pen, capture the female form. Ten bonus points if you can get in a public service announcement about the dangers of not using sun screen:

7.) Illustrate the fluidity of clouds and the blending of subtle cloud colors:

8.) In sixty seconds do a gesture drawing of Michael Stipe of R.E.M. as a zombie, trying to choke himself:

9.) Using only silhouette shapes and two colors, convey the skyline of an urbane setting:

10.) Create a scene of a desert Haboob:

11.) Imagine that Frederic Remington and R. Crumb meet at Woodstock. What would that look like?:

“This has been a test.”
—Test Giver Guy

August 28, 2009
It’s really starting to sink in that my quest to do 10,000 bad drawings is coming to a very fast end. Did ten sketches last night which puts me at 9,957 with 33 to go. Now I find myself wanting to put the brakes on. Not so fast! Amazing. Human behavior patterns are so predictable and yet so crazy.

More Lessons Learned On My Quest to Do 10,000 Bad Drawings
Going back through my sketchbooks I have noticed that there is a rhythm to the successes and failures. I mean that the sketches go along at a bland rate and then every 10 or 20 days it spikes, with something that is head and shoulders above anything around it, like this page from November 5, 2008:

Of course, there are exceptions, like this page, which is from November 3:

And this is quite an exception because one is full of loosey goosey washes, and the other is tight pen work. I won’t bore you with the down stuff but here’s another amazing (to me) page from November 11:

Amazing because the effects are subtle, but strong, yet not overworked. Truly an exception to most of the pages. After the above page, nothing jumps out for almost a month, until December 15:

Then the fields of creative effort go barren for the rest of the year and clear into January. Here’s January 30, when something finally gets traction:

Then it’s quiet, or bland, until February 5:

The frustrating part is trying to capture, or remember, what I was thinking that day. Did I know at the time it was working better than usual? Not really. Sometimes I would know (yesterday’s “Lone Grave” seemed to have potential as I was doing it), but I wouldn’t even put the stat at half and half. Probably more like 70-30 (70% percent of the time I don’t have a clue if what I’m doing is decent or wrong headed).

Nothing worthwhile until again until February 15 when I’m trying to capture late afternoon light on Elephant Butte:

I seem to remember thinking this page was a total failure at the time I did it. I shifted gears three days later and whipped this out in black and white:

Stayed in black and white for a time. Here’s February 20th:

With a follow up page on March 20 that is pretty strong:

And then a remarkable page of color four days later:

I have a hunch that this is all very similar to a woman’s monthly cycle. We coast, we bloat, we fight it, we get irritable, then a gush of creativity pours out, quickly goes dry and then the cycle repeats itself (until you have a heart attack and really mess up the cycle. Ha.).

When I got home from work yesterday I worked on a small Billy portrait I had started earlier, adding some shadow:

Not a bad overbite, with a little bit of Elvis sneer. A cocky little s–t would be how my Uncle Choc might put it.

Or, you might say I’m having my period. Or not.

“One wonders how some [artists] ever came to painting at all after exhibiting such surprising ability to dodge knowledge.”
—Robert Henri

August 27, 2009
Here is a total blast from the past (when rock videos were young and so were we). In 1986 I teamed up with Gordon Smith (who wrote the music), Dave Walker (who wrote the lyrics with me) and the Weaklies (our rock band, we all worked at New Times Weekly, the Weaklies, get it?) and Bryan Newmeister (video genius who worked at Channel 12 with Jerry Foster) and we produced a rock video for the Arizona Press Club Awards Annual Show utilizing the Governor of Arizona and many politicos of that era. Here’s the video:

Media Scum Video

Bruce Babbit was governor of Arizona at the time. Fife Symington wanted to be the next governor of Arizona (he got his wish but probably regrets it today), Keith Turley was the head of APS (and nailed his part in one take) and Carolyn Warner also ran for governor, although I think she was the head of the education department of something at the time (she had it totally goin’ on!). I’ll ID more of the participants as we go along.

There are actually two parts to the video. This first part is the song, then we segued into an MTV VJ style program with totally tasteless video snippets of elephants being born, etc. More later. Check it out!

“If Pulitzers were Lincolns you’d all be driving Fords, you’re scum, you’re scum, you’re scum, you’re scum. . .you’re media scum.”
—The Weaklies

August 27, 2009
There is a lonely grave just west of Datil, New Mexico and I look for it every time I travel through that country. It’s off to the south side of the road and appears to be a family plot with a tall, proud headstone.

Last night I was studying a Maynard Dixon painting and got the inspiration to paint a New Mexico landscape with a lone grave:

The actual gravestone is more ornate with tall columns, but I wanted to emulate the old fashioned headstones, I have seen and sketched at the Quemado cemetery, which is also in the same area. May do a big painting of this for the Billy show in October. To me it speaks to the temporary nature of people on the desert. First we are dwarfed by it, and then we are swallowed by it (that’s why the grave is tilting, on its way to being reclaimed by the earth). Anyway, I’m over thinking it (what else is new?), but I think it has a fitting aesthetic I want to portray.

This is one of ten sketches I did yesterday (43 to go). And, so I thought it might be the right time to start recapping all of things I have learned from this experiment.

Lessons Learned On My Quest to Do 10,000 Bad Drawings

• Like most Boomers I grew up on Walt Disney animation and one particular segment from the Wonderful World of Disney on ABC really made an impression on me. An animated paint brush sweeps across the TV screen, and as it moves, it leaves behind dripping paint that magically creates a lush lagoon with palm trees and vegetation perfectly rendered in a couple seconds. I remember actually trying to do this after seeing it (I think this was when I was in the sixth grade). It didn’t work (especially with a pencil). But, somehow, all these years later, I am still infected with the idea that if I ever got good enough at drawing I would be able to simulate this magic. Kind of naive and stupid, on my part, but there you have it. My long journey has forced me to face the reality of the situation. Drawing is hard work and you have to fight to get something halfway decent.

“You will never become a popular painter. You are too much of an individual for that.”
—Robert Henri

August 27, 2009
We have more than a few subscribers who are incarcerated. Sometimes these guys (they’re always men) write us fan letters and tell us that True West is a breath of fresh air in their world. From time to time, we run into “Reading Material Evaluation” board problems with the mail screeners at these institutions, usually because of our gun ads.

However, a recent rejection from the Colorado Department of Corrections really got to our Business Manager, Carole Glenn (who handles these subscription issues). Our July issue was flagged and denied to prisoner Gary S. because the issue allegedly “supports, incites, promotes, encourages, or advocates illegal gang activity.”

The cover, along with pages 4, 5, 6, 8, 13, 32, 34, 33, 36 and 38 are flagged for something cited as “Contrary to treatment plan (Minors)”.

Here is the offending cover:

Evidently, getting kids hooked on history goes against their treatment plan.

Here is part of a letter Carole Glenn wrote to the Administrative Services Manager in Buena Vista, Colorado:

“True West respects and supports the right of your institution to monitor and determine the appropriateness of reading material for those incarcerated there. We do not, however, agree with the evaluation of True West in general or of the specific issue stated.

“True West is dedicated to preserving the history of the American West. It informs readers of their heritage and provides information on travel, art, books and museums. The specific issue referenced focuses on ways to get young people interested in history.

“Bad deeds are not glorified in True West, but actions of those who helped build a better way of life, then and now, are. The July issue has a wonderful article on Hugh O’Brian and mentions a charitable youth leadership organization that he started in 1958. It also has an article on the Texas Camel Corps, restoration of historic buildings and western art.”

End of excerpts from Carole’s letter.

“If you are open to the point of gullibility and have not an ounce of skeptical sense in you, then you cannot distinguish useful ideas from the worthless ones.”
—Carl Edward Sagan

August 26, 2009
Funny how much a cactus (and a kid) can grow in 20-some-years. Here’s a photo taken of Deena, Dusty The Dog and me on our back porch:

The year is 1988 so Deena would be eight. Now, here’s the amazing part. See that small cactus cutting we had just planted to the right of us? Well, here it is in a photo taken this morning:

Oh, and by the way, the photo was taken by Olive Mondello (a very attractive woman out of my past). And here’s another angle:

This cactus has flowers that bloom at night. I got up early to go feed the chickens and kind of did a Whoa! Went and got the camera and snapped off a couple images.

Finished another dozen sketches last night and I’m now at 9,947 sketches with 53 to go. Speaking of which, I have carted my sketchbook to many a foreign place, including Nicaragua, Guatamala, Peru and Utah. Here’s one of my pages from Leon, Nicaragua:

The humidity was really oppressive in Leon and just looking at the drawings of the street makes me sweat. Here’s a page of sketches of Lake Suchitlan in El Salvador:

And, these (below) were done in the highlands of Peru last summer:

And finally, as promised, here is a sketch of Utah:

Gus Walker wonders: “What will the 10,001 sketch look like?” Well, we’re about to find out. I must admit that I have improved over the course of the experiment, but it’s not as dramatic as I hoped it would be. Gee, I wonder what Carol Burnett has to say about this?

“I have always grown from my problems and challenges, from the things that don’t work out, that’s when I’ve really learned.”
—Carol Burnett

August 25, 2009
I live in a house full of Spanish speakers. Both my kids are fluent and my significant “esposa” is damn close (she attends classes every weekend and spends many evenings with her nose in “mucho grande libras.”)

Which leads me to the big debate we are having at True West today. In our art issue, we are running this image:

This painting, which I created for the second edition of my Billy book in 1996, is entitled “Su Vista Penetrava Al Corizon de Toda La Gente” (His Face Went to Everybody’s Heart). The original will be in the Overland Gallery opening on October 15. So far, so good.

This morning I got the following email from Managing Editor Meghan Saar:

“Your painting title: ‘Su Vista Penetrava Al Corizon de Toda La Gente’ is incorrect. I have changed it to the below:

“’Su Vista Penetraba el Corazon de Toda la Gente’ (His Face Went to Everybody’s Heart)

“The Source: Jose Garcia y Trujillo recounts his memories of Billy the Kid and expresses his belief in the myth of Billy the Kid’s survival in a 1936 interview taken in New Mexico:

“You think Billy The Keed let himself be shot in the dark like that? No Senora — Billy The Keed — never. I see Billy The Keed with these eyes. Many times, with these eyes. That Billy, ‘tenia un’ agilesa en su mente — en su menta aqui…’ I understood that he meant that Billy The Keed had an extraordinary quickness of mind. Again he pointed to his forehead and then with a quick motion to the sky. ‘Una funcion electrica’, he said. Something that worked like lightning… ‘I don’t want to dispute against you Senora, but in my mind which is the picture of my soul, I know it is not true… Everybody like Billy The Keed — su vista penetraba el corazon de toda la gente… his face went to everybody’s heart.. Muy generoso hombre, Billy The Keed — a very generous man. All the Mexican people, they like him. He give money, horses, drinks — what he have. To whom was good to Billy The Keed, he was good to them. Siempre muy caballero, muy senor — always very polite, very much of a gentleman.’”

I forwarded this exchange to the world’s most gracious and knowledgeable BTK expert, Fred Nolan in Chalfont Saint Giles, England. Here is his reply:

According to my original source, which was Kadlec’s “They ‘knew’ Billy the Kid” published in 1987 and referenced in THE WEST OF BTK, you both have it wrong: it should be ‘”Su vista penetrava al corazon de toda la gente” and there is an acute accent on the second ‘o’ in ‘corazon.’ Megha’s source is doing that old aural thing where they hear a ‘b’ for the ‘v’ in Spanish words (as for instance in every census you ever look at — e.g. Balanzuela instead of the correct Valenzuela).
—Fred Nolan

Meghan and Ashley (our intern who lived in Spain and minored in Spanish) maintain that Fred is wrong, and that penetrava is the Italian form of the verb and that penetraba is the Spanish.

Quien Sabe (Who knows?) Hopefully you. Please weigh in on this.

Speaking of Spanish speakers, my son Tomas finished his Peace Corp assignment in Yanque, Peru yesterday. A week earlier, a U.S. congressional delegation visited Lima, and elicited this email from my son:

“So one of the congresswomen asked what type of support we needed from them. I told them it’d be great if we could get diplomatic immunity. They thought it was funny.”
—Tomcat

“Silence is often misinterpreted, but never misquoted.”
—Old Vaquero Saying

August 24, 2009
Well, I had at least four different versions of Looming Billy in the works this weekend, but on Sunday, Carole Glenn, Deena Bean and Patricia were over and I showed them the finalists, in progress. All three picked the same image, so I finished it this morning and Robert Ray shot it, sent it down to Dan “The Man” and Meghan and I wrote the cover heds and here it is:

Meanwhile, Ed Mell is getting the Billy bug himself. Here’s a sneak peek at his first piece, called “Ygenio (Eugenio) Salazar”:

Ed saw a photo of Salazar in the Lincoln County Courthouse Museum and loved it. Ygenio rode with Billy the Kid and was severely wounded in the back and shoulder in “The Big Killing” (July, 1878) when the Tunstall adherents, including Billy and Ygenio, ran out the back door of the burning McSween house straight into the guns of Buck Morton and others perched on the back fence (15 feet away!). The Kid managed to escape, but both McSween and Salazar were shot down. The victors danced over their bodies and pumped bullets into them for good measure. When one of the Brady bunch cocked a pistol and pointed it at Salazar, another Brady fighter said not to waste ammunition “on that Greaser.” After everyone stumbled off to bed, Salazar started to crawl. He made it a quarter mile to a relative’s house and he not only survived, but live until 1936. Pretty amazing, no?

Gee, I wonder what ol’ Abe has to say about this?

“The probability that we may fall in the struggle ought not to deter us from the support of a cause we believe to be just; it shall not deter me.”
—Abraham Lincoln

August 24, 2009
Spent most of the weekend on cover art. I have this persistent vision in my head of a leering Billy, looming over the New Mexico landscape. I have a half-decent design in mind, and a whole slew of sketches to back it up:

Came up with the line: “Billy the Kid looms over the New Mexico landscape like a cultural atomic bomb.” Ha.

Trying to develop the theme with clouds that could be a mushroom. Mmmmm.

And, in the middle of all this, I got on a skeleton kick, for an Old Vaquero Saying idea I’ve been kicking around:

And, oh yes, I poached a sunset from a photo Reb posted on Friday’s blog post. I call it a “Reb-set”:

Crossed the 9,900 barrier yesterday. Did 20 sketches and now I’ve got 85 bad drawings to do to complete my quest to do 10,000. Amazing. Planning on finishing a week from today.

Did go on Friday to see the opening of Inglorious Basterds. Quentin is so over the top ridiculous you have to love him. Great humor and mad dog violence. Loved it. Unfortunately I could love him even more at half the length. With the two Kill Bills and now this Nazi-Kill-Fest, coming in at three hours, I wish someone would, and could, edit him down even a tad. But no one has figured out how to do it, so we take him in long doses, waiting for the inevitable blast of humor and outrageousness.

Speaking of sinister Germans, I wonder what ol’ Goethe has to say about Tarantino?

“A talent is formed in stillness, a character in the world’s torrent.”
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

August 21, 2009
Been obsessed with capturing the essence of the clouds I witnessed on my trip to New Mexico last week. Big Monsoon Mothers. Here’s an early study, inspired by a mountain of clouds I saw north of the Trinity Site:

The mountains of clouds were as massive as the mountains below them. Another scene I’d really like to capture is from this sketch I did just west of Socorro, coming from Magdalena:

The clouds were moving fast so I had to really whip this one out, grabbing just the key details. When I got home I immediately tried to capture the dynamic of those clouds in a color study:

This morning I tried to build on that composition and torque it even more:

This is closer to what I witnessed, but I think I can do better. And, of course the trick is to get Looming Billy up into the middle of those clouds. I think I’m getting on the verge of something.

For a guy who hates math (and likes to joke that he married a math teacher in order to balance his check book), I sure have had the numbers rolling through my head recently. Woke up this morning mulling a few:

• 15: number of True West Moments we video taped for the Westerns Channel

• 10: number of days left before we leave for South America

• 4: number of editorial holes I have to fill before I can go

• 9,868: number of bad drawings I have completed on my quest to do 10,000

• 132: number of sketches I need to do to finish before I leave for South America

• 197: number of sketches I have done so far for for the Big Billy cover art

• 5: number of days before the issue goes to the printer

Joey Dillon took a couple pictures at the shoot yesterday. Here’s one of me sitting on the water trough and setting up the bit:

Notice the sun reflecter. As if it’s not hot enough, the crew feels the need to bounce light under my Tonto Brim to make it even hotter! Ha. FYI: the new True West Moments should be on the air in the next 60 to 90 days.

“Find something you’re passionate about and keep tremendously interested in it.”
—Julia Child