Sketchbook: Sketching at the coffee shop.

I sometimes hang out in the coffee shop on Cherry Street, in Tulsa.   I don’t like coffee so I usually get some iced tea and a cookie.

Here I’m messing around with  Man-Frog.  As in “The Uncanny Man-Frog” that this very blog is named after.   A digital comics sight is interested in publishing him.  I want to update him a bit, but this  look isn’t working for me.  Man-frog’s real name is Aristotle, by the way.

Here’s an idea I had, ( probably inspired by the sugar high from the chocolate chip cookie)     Get a bunch of two foot square canvases and do these pop art portraits.  Sketched out are  a Cherokee Princes,  Retro Robot and Jesus.

One more.

Coffee shops are the perfect environment for sketching.  Food, drink, music, and people to praise you for your  sketching.   Is that narcissistic?

Cartoonists: Meet the Benders!

Jack and Carole Bender are the cartoonists that do the strip Alley Oop.

Alley Oop is a syndicated comic strip, created in 1932 by V. T. Hamlin, who wrote and drew the  strip through four decades.  Alley Oop is a time traveling caveman, who rides a dinosaur named Dinny, and lives in the kindom  of Moo.

Jack Bender took over the strip in 1991, and now he and his wife Carole produce the strip.

The Benders asked me to do a pencil drawing of them based on the illustration I did for the Oklahoma Historical Society, which featured  a dozen or so Oklahoma Cartoonists.

The Benders met me at Chilis for lunch and to get the illustration.   We had a great time talking about cartooning, and cartoonists, and they graciously bought me lunch.

You may be saying; “Right, the Benders met you for lunch.  I’m not buying it!”

Ha, well, look in the window. There’s my reflection taking the photo!