Bob Boze Bell Art Blog

September 30, 2009
Had a long day, driving into the Beast today. Took along Tommy and we headed for downtown at about ten. Had an appointment with Arizona Republic Editor Ken Western at 11. He wants me to do a Tombstone piece for them on the last week in October. We also talked about me doing a version of True West Moments for the newspaper. Has potential. It would run once a week on the Op Ed page.

On the way out, exchanged insults with fellow cartoonist Steve Benson. He said I looked like Howdy Doody and I said he sure knew a lot for being a dumb, ex-Mormon Bastard. This passes for love and admiration in the cartoonist community.

From there Tomas and I drove over to Ed Mell’s studio to see his latest Billy the Kid paintings. He’s got some sweet ones for our show on October 15. Ed and his son Taylor joined T. and I for lunch at Adrian’s at 44th Street and McDowell. A little pricey ($46 cash, I paid).

We then continued out on McDowell Road to Scottsdale and up 68th St. to Indian School, dropping down to the Overland Art Gallery on Main Street. Met with Trudy and dropped off a dozen of my Billy the Kid paintings for the show and priced them. For instance, I get $1,800 for a gouache of Billy (the cover painting from the October issue) and Ed and Gary Ernest Smith each get $58,000 for the same sized painting. I am definitely the junior partner on this outing! Still, I am proud to even be sharing wall space with them.

Speaking of art and working diligently, after reaching the 10,000 mark on September 1st and filling 55 pages of my next sketchbook in South America, we got home (a week ago today) and I took a break for a day. Then one day turned into two and then into a total drought! I have done maybe six sketches in the last week. Yikes! This is exactly why I started the quest in the first place: so I could get in the habit of drawing every day. How easily I slipped into my old, lazy ways. I did at least six sketches a day for four years. I didn’t miss a day for the first year and in fact, one night when I had driven all day to New Mexico and had a late dinner at Lew and Tara’s cabin in Mogollon, I went to bed and woke up at one, in terror that I hadn’t done my six drawings. I stumbled out to the truck and quickly did them, in the dark. Ha. Now, I’ve missed five days in a a row. How embarrassing.

Got to get back on the drawing wagon.

Although I haven’t been drawing, I did salvage a couple paintings in my discard pile in the studio last weekend. This one, I had given up on last spring, but all it needed was a unifying wash to hide some of the garish edges. Very nice desert storm painting:

“Funny what you can accomplish when you do it everyday.”
—BBB

September 25, 2009
Hard to believe it’s been almost a month already since I finished my quest to do 10,000 bad drawings. I left in a bit of a hurry and didn’t get to post all of the final exam. Here are final drawings:

Final Exam, Part II

1.) With gouache as a medium create a ridge fire with intense heat:

2.) Shifting gears, with as few lines as possible create a face, looking to the right:

3.) And now, for your 10,000th bad drawing, execute, with a single touch of the pen to paper (one line, without stopping) render a gay caballero dancing in the moonlight:

You sir, have just completed 10,000 bad drawings. Now for your 10,0001, what will you do?

“It’s always about the hats with you, isn’t it?”
—Head Proctor

September 24, 2009
Home after a three week adventure in South America. We flew all night Tuesday from Buenos Aires to Dallas, then changed planes and caught another plane to Phoenix. Got home at noon on Wednesday. Chalked up four countries (Bolivia, Paraguay, Uruguay and Argentina), ate great food, saw amazing things, solved a whole bunch of life, and sketched like crazy (55 pages worth).

Frankly, it was actually a relief to be away from all the negative talk about the economy and health care, but I have to say, the long arm of our culture is hard to escape. Here are a couple sightings that amused me:

Not sure why Obama is in green, but it caught my attention on a very crowded newsstand in Montevideo. Meanwhile, Quentin Tarrantino has to be happy about the billboard campaign his studio bought throughout Argentina and Uruguay:

Meanwhile, my son Thomas says that in his travels throughout South America there is always a Simpson ripoff on a store or, in this case, a bar:

And speaking of knock offs, here is a “hamburgueso” eatery in Santa Cruz, Bolivia:

Patent Attorney, anyone? Probably the most successful worldwide ad campaign in the history of the world is the logo in this pic:

In every town and every country, you see the classic coke logo. The kids are a school group running around the plaza in Samaipata, Bolivia (Samah-ih-pata, means resting up high).

Some of the U.S. references are quite eclectic, like this Jim Morrison line on the side of a building in Santa Cruz, Bolivia:

On our last day in Argentina we found this gaucho town thirty minutes west of Buenos Aires called Canuela. In the center of town was this watering hole:

Spanish reverses words, so instead of Old West Saloon, we get Saloon Old West. Ha. The logo on their napkins shows a gunfighter coming through swinging doors. Amazing, the long reach of the West, our West, that is.

We ran into all kinds of weather, cold, hot and lots of rain, like this photo, taken near an Inca ruin on top of a very high mountain in Bolivia.

Artwork, tomorrow, from that sketchbook I’m holding.

“To understand is to perceive patterns.”
—Isaiah Berlin

September 1, 2009
Did 18 sketches last night and this morning to finish my quest. Woke up at four and did the final six. Bittersweet ending. Exhausted, final drawings rather weak (or quite simple and efficient). I’ll post when I get home in a couple weeks.

Late for the plane, Flying all night. Thomas Charles is already there. Looking forward to seeing him.

“That’s one small step for me, one giant relief for my family.”
—BBB