Not enough weekend

So it's Sunday... it's overcast outside, making me slightly demotivated to get out back and do a little yard clean up. I'm trying to watch some football, evaluate some bokkens for a guy back in Iowa, start one of the books I just bought from Amazon, set up the new iPod Shuffle I got, because my Nano has to be sent back to Apple for a recall issue, clean up the garage, so I can take down the last baseboards to finish the wood flooring project in the family room, and find some time to relax with the time I have left. By the time Monday rolls around and it's time to go back to work, I'm wondering where the weekend went, and why I'm so tired. Ha, ha... yeah right.

I just posted a couple old pencil drawings on facebook, but I'd like to tell a little story about them first.

Back even before I joined the Navy, I became an aspiring artist.

In high school, I dreamed of becoming an architect. Frank Lloyd Wright was an early role model of mine, and I read and collected everything I could on him. I visited Taliesin West and was convinced that this was what I wanted to do as a career. Unfortunately, my dismal GPA and the ever present draft for the Vietnam War, kept me from pursuing anything close to this.

In an effort to satisfy my artistic side, I started taking commercial art classes and messing around with freehand media.

I was a huge Ed "Big Daddy" Roth fan (still am). In high school, I met him at a car show at the state fair grounds, and was so overwhelmed by it, that when I finally had the chance to talk with him, I couldn't think of a thing to say or ask.


Anyway, while I was studying art when in the Navy in 1972 at UCSD, among other things, I made numerous pencil drawings. I had a lot of free time while on the ships during our Vietnam tours' of duty, so I needed something to take my mind away from everything going on around me. These are the only two I did that survived until now. My dreams of becoming an artist were there for many years, but never quite managed to go from interested amateur, to the real thing. Life has a way of twisting your hopes toward other directions, and although I still have a mild interest, I just don't have the time to pursue it. These are just the some of the remnants of times gone by. I hope you enjoy them.

This first is one I drew of my sister. It's obvious I looked at her with a teenage outlook of a sibling. I need to give this to her. I think she'd enjoy seeing how much she has changed.


I'm not sure about the history of the second one. Vietnam was certainly on my mind, so I can only assume its impressions were strong in me.