John Soane was an architect and collectiholic and lived just down the street from Sotheby’s auction house in 1790. He loved Greece, Rome, and once in awhile Egypt.
We can appreciate it today thanks to him, because he bought everything.
In fact, he filled his house with so much stuff that it’s hard to walk inside. When the giant alabaster sarcophagus from Egypt arrived they had a party that lasted 3 days.
I have modeled my house around his. Except, I’m an Uncle Wiggly fan.
Stop by his house in London when you’re there next. You’ll be glad you did.
This is a drawing of a Roman Schard from inside his house. Well done, John.

Valerie Holzworth is one tough lady. She’s British, and made a statement about the poor dental care she was receiving. In retaliation to British Health Care, she extracted 8 teeth with a pair of pliers and one strong glass of spirits. Well, she showed British Health care, didn’t she?
I’ll have a beer thank you. No spirits for me.

This is a drawing in my moleskin of my friend Ray Beale who is one of the best portrait photographers I’ve ever met. He also taught me more about color than anyone else. Interesting, since most of his work is black & white. Ray recently went on vacation in New Orleans. He flew over 2,000 miles and stayed a day and a half and then returned.
So much for vacations. Here’s the quote about being an artist: “It’s very interesting being legendary when you can’t even make a living & the public has never heard of you” Florine Stettheimer.

I like Lisbon, because nobody speaks English there. It’s more fun that way. How great to have 2 hotels named the “Metropole”! Isn’t that great?, and one is like miles away in a totally different direction. Isn’t that great? Anyway, once you figure it out, it’s even more fun. The “Real” Metropole has a neat marble bathroom and located in the old section downtown. Everything is still in the stores from a 100 years ago. I was able to get Rotring pens that haven’t been sold here in 20 years. I love Lisbon. Go there.

This is a spread from my moleskin sketchbook of a small shop in Cazenovia. I’ve shot some interesting panorama photos inside the store. Amanda finds “Objects D’art” for my Museum of Art Supplies. My studio is filled with ancient tubes of dried up paint, brushes that nobody can use anymore, and paint trays made for the Queen of England.
Well, maybe I exaggerated a bit. Hey, wait a minute… I forgot my pen point collection.

While in Philadelphia last March I had only a couple of hours to spend at the Mutter Museum. Perhaps one of the scariest museums I’ve ever been in. Each turn is filled with medical abnomalies, jars filled with grotesque oddities, deformaties, dusty, sepia-toned formaldehyde jars from two centuries ago with sliced faces, dangling eyeballs and double bodied heads. How does a jar filled with formaldehyde with the label “Moist gangrene of the hand sound to you? The museum is an artist’s paradise.

Zoetrope Studios and Francis Ford Coppola owns this great building in San Francisco. Most of the outside of the building has a beautiful copper green patina. The Iron frame of the building was standing during the 1906 earthquake and survived intact.
I did this drawing in my moleskin sketchbook while at the MacWorld convention.

This is a spread from my moleskin which I carry with me everywhere. It’s the small size Moleskin book with heavy paper. I draw each page with a Lamy Fountain Pen, and then smear the ink with a wad of napkin dipped in coffee, water, or whatever I’m drinking.
This page was finished while waiting for tickets to “O” in the cancellation line at the Bellagio. Incidentally, the show is incredible, I’d go again in a minute.
Viva Las Vegas!

I just wanted to thank Jon Keegan and the Invisible Man for allowing me to be a guest artist. I’m thrilled, and hope my birthplace of Passaic, New Jersey will be proud of me.
( I was in a street gang in 2nd grade, and the only member brave enough to lick rocks, but that’s a story for another day.)
I’ve been teaching Illustration at Syracuse University for 29 years ( wow, that was quick.) and been a freelancer forever.
I’m currently working on my 3rd children’s book “Dinner for Eight” about an Octopus’s dinner party which I wrote and Illustrated. My 2nd book is due in from China in July. “Please don’t eat me” which is about a fish that doesn’t want to be eaten. It is dedicated to the city of Passaic.

…I think this one seems like a shrimp