Don't Let Babylon Use You

The Boatman

pencil drawing

Calbayog City 2024

My wife is fixing a big Thanksgiving feast. I can smell the food cooking downstairs.

We live in a small port city and my wife went down to the docks early this morning and picked up an amazing assortment of fresh sea food. Crabs, scallops, muscles, octopus, milk fish, shrimp, along with assorted fresh vegetables. This is going to be a feast.

I was admiring the bounty of sea food with my eight year old son, Sean.

"Daddy?" Sean asked me out of the blue, "Have you ever noticed that 'SHELLFISH' sounds a lot like 'SELFISH'?"

I love it when he says things like that.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone 💓

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Femme Fatale - Nico and the Velvet Underground

pencildrawing

Calbayog City 2024

I never liked The Velvet Underground until I listened to them.

Sometime around 2010 I downloaded their first album and,

I loved it.

Highly recomended.

I think back when they first came out I was just put off by the whole seedy Andy Warhol scene so I really never listened to them.

Lesson learned:

"Don't dislike a band until you have at least listened to them."

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if you look

black sharpie

Miami 2010

If you look closely at the edge of a black hole it becomes obvious that the entire universe is made of little tiny things.

black sharpie on manila paper

Miami 2010

the mind's eye

The river and the moon

colored pencil and pen, Los Angeles, 2018

If I could only show you my dreams. Listen to me, I dream in deep blue. Deep deep blue.

Visceral, almost violet blue.

And reds.

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ballpoint pen and alcohol

Calbayog City 2024

I drew this this morning.

It's ugly and it's beautiful.

Sufjan Stevens - The Transfiguration

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Aluminum can #1

Watercolor and pen

Los Angeles 2016

A friend of mine once told me that she liked Mark Rothko because she liked how he applied paint.

That got me thinking.

What I need, I thought, is a simple image to serve as a vehicle for the application of paint.

With this thought in mind I began painting fantasy aluminum cans.

Some of them turned out very pretty.

Here's another one.

Aluminum can #2

Watercolor and pen

Los Angeles 2016

These days I'm not so ambitious. When I want to apply pigment I just freakin' apply it.

All blue

Colored pencil and alcohol

Calbayog City 2024

8B pencil

Calbayo City 2024

I know this drawing is finished because it's dinner time.

Btw, I love Filipino food.

Perfect day

LOU REED

pencil drawing, Calbayog City, 2025

Today is my birthday.

I'm 74 years old and it's a perfect day.

Live long and prosper my friends.

🖖

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Come to me

OTIS REDDING

pencil drawing, calbayog, philippines, 2024

I haven't been drawing for a couple of weeks. I don't know why.

Shit happens. Sometimes shit doesn't happen.

This morning I went through some old drawings looking for inspiration and I found this drawing from last year.

I like this drawing. I probably shouldn't like it because it's half done, but who among us can claim to be complete?

And she talks to me. She has attitude. She's like a character from some hard boiled novel.

She exudes plot.

Magic that I will never fathom.

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Unicorns and Jellyfish

colored pencil, Monrovia, 1997

This morning Sean, my nine year old son asked me,

"Dad, what's more believable, a unicorn or a jellyfish?"

My son's gone to school now but I'm still mulling that one over.

Here's a couple of older drawings.

Happy Friday.

still life

pencil drawing, Hollywood, 2017

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