Geez, this has been a busy month! Since my last post when we got Kitty (as the hedgehog is now called), we: went to Kansas to visit my grandma and saw the Konza Prairie restoration; I went back to Chicago to talk to Eric Rohmann; we saw 8 films at the Wisconsin Film Festival; spring league Ultimate Frisbee started; and we had a good visit with my almost-step-brother.

Oh, and I put up a new poem on Cereal & Milk.

I’m not sure how much I want to say about each of those things, but I figure I should record something about each event, so here it goes: I will put up one post for each of these events with approximate dates, and this one will be my table of contents.

Over the river and through the woods…
Eric Rohmann
Wisconsin Film Festival
Spring League
A brief visit
The Ickaby Eight

Last, but not least, I put up a new poem on Cereal & Milk. I have a new plan now, and I’ll see how it goes: I want to do one Cereal & Milk poem per week. That is the goal: now I’ll see if I can stick to it…

UPDATE 16-AUG-2004: Yeah right. I’ve only posted one thing to C&M since this one went up in April. Oh, well… I have been busy making things anyway.

Well, I was planning on drawing a bunch tonight, but like I often do, I got side-tracked by a bunch of other people’s drawings. Mostly I find links to artist portfolios reading through the links on K10K. That is where I saw a link for Quentin Blake, and a show that will be up through the end of the month in London. I met Blake (not in person) through the books he illustrated for Roald Dahl, starting, I believe, with The Twits. His characters have such a wonderful… well, character. So simple: pen and ink and a little bit of wash or watercolor. He is definitely an influence on my own drawings.

Then, on a different site, I found a more obvious influence. Also simple, pen and ink drawings: Shel Silverstein gave such a wonderful spirit to his poetry and stories. His work inspired me to create Cereal & Milk, and I don’t doubt that his work contributed in making me into the Sensitive Man ™ that I am today. I mean, how can you not get choked up at the tragedy of The Giving Tree?

As I have been trying to figure out a style to adopt for my latest project, I find myself trying to imagine these complicated images with textures and layers. But maybe what I really need to do is stick to what I know: simple pencil or pen drawings. A little splash of color and it’s done! We’ll see where it goes, but I suspect the simpler, the better.