Illustration Friday: Instinct

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Instinct collage and paint on panelling

Illustration Friday: Celebrate

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Standing By collage on canvas board

I like to squeeze in an accordion whenever I can.

Illustration Friday: Time

Time Machine 5"X7" mixed-media

Mixed-media, you ask? This piece is a 5"X7" canvas board with a section from a found map, magazine cut-outs,photo-copies, a piece from a Hilroy notebook cover, packaging from a cough and cold remedy, images on tracing paper, paint, a section of vinyl tape measure, 2 sections of metal tape measure, acrylic paint, a raffle ticket and varnish. The text is courtesy of my portable Olivetti typewriter--don't drop it on your foot.

I have had an etsy shop in limbo for quite some time and am looking at trying to get it up and running this week.

Illustration Friday: Flawed

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Mamas, Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Cowboys mixed-media

This one is dedicated to my Mom, whose birthday it is today--Happy Birthday Mom!!!

My friend Katie found this little cowboy on a gravel driveway while on a studio tour last summer. Sunbleached and missing a leg, she rescued him and passed him on to me, thinking he might inspire a collage or something. He seemed like a natural choice for this weeks IF topic: Flawed.

In my sons' world of play, the pervasive influences are knights, pirates and spacemen, but for me it was cowboys. I still harbour nostalgia for simpler times, ridin' the lone prairie and singing a cowboy tune. I've had this Waylon Jennings song rattling around in my head, although it's always Willie Nelson singing it when I hear it. Recently I've found myself plucking it out on the ukelele. Here are the lyrics:

Mamas, Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys written by Ed and Patsy Bruce

Cowboys ain't easy to love and they're harder to hold

they'd rather give you a song than diamonds or gold

Lonestar belt buckles and old faded Levis

And each night begins a new day

If you don't understand him, and he don't die young

He'll probably just ride away.

Chorus:

Mamas, don't let your babies grow up to be cowboys

Don't let 'em pick guitars or drive them old trucks

Let 'em be doctors and lawyers and such

Mamas, don't let your babies grow up to be cowboys

'Cause they'll never stay home and they're always alone

Even with someone they love.

Cowboys like smoky old pool rooms and clear mountain mornings

Little warm puppies and children and girls of the night

Them that don't know him won't like him and them that do

Sometimes won't know how to take him,

He ain't wrong, he's just different, but his pride won't let him

Do things to make you think he's right.