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When I was an illustrator, I wrote and illustrated a cartoon strip called "Attorneyman - World's Sharpest Attorney." This drawing shows Attorneyman about to be "tied up" by Lou Sends a/k/a Loose Ends. Being very compulsive (but not as compulsive as Seymour Chwast), I rarely leave loose ends. However, the loose end here is that I do in fact leave loose ends -- even in my paintings. I say to myself (as did Loose Ends to Attorneyman), "You'll take care of it in the morning." Then in the morning I start on another painting because a paint rough is more exciting than finishing touches. Sometimes I never go back to the previous painting. A few months down the road I'll take a guilty look at the unfinished painting, declare it finished, and it looks just fine.
More loose ends: My father was a pianist in addition to being a surgeon. He had a very strange affectation to his playing though. The music he played had no beginning and no end. He just sat down and started playing in the middle of a piece, played for a while, stopped before it ended and then got up and left the piano. We called his pieces "Harrison's unfinished melodies." They had loose ends; were unpredictable, mysterious and sounded just fine.
Loose ends help create more art, mysterious music, and are not so bad at all.
Love the cartoons. Knew you did paintings and portraits, but cartoons are a nice balance to sketch art.
ReplyDeleteI have known a cartoonist for years, from Mt. Vernon, NY, that did them back in WWII while in the Army. He did them for "The Stars and Stripes". Later his work was a regular in "The Saturday Evening Post", "Life", "The New Yorker" and many medical and legal journals, etc.
He had an uncanny ability to cartoon your stories. I had to be careful what I said with him nearby.
His name is Thomas Zibelli and penned his works "Tom Zip".
JB