Tag Archives: Life list

13

  By Eden M. Kennedy | November 13, 2012 - 8:22 pm | ,
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This is the first unfinished drawing I’ve posted, I don’t want to blow it by just trying to finish it and get it out of the way. The person who requested it asked for a drawing based on this poem by e.e. cummings:

my love is building a building
around you,a frail slippery
house,a strong fragile house
(beginning at the singular beginning

of your smile)a skilful uncouth
prison, a precise clumsy
prison(building thatandthis into Thus,
Around the reckless magic of your mouth)

my love is building a magic, a discrete
tower of magic and(as i guess)

when Farmer Death(whom fairies hate)shall

crumble the mouth-flower fleet
He’ll not my tower,
laborious, casual

where the surrounded smile
hangs

breathless

I feel like I took the whole thing too literally, with the buildings hugging (based on this) and the pseudo Mona Lisa smile, but that’s just where I am, not in a super sophisticated place as an illustrator, just trying to work where I’m at. Maybe it’s done just like this.

We’ll see where life takes us tomorrow.

Bleven

  By Eden M. Kennedy | November 11, 2012 - 6:29 pm | ,
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This first drawing started out as Mark Twain, and then Jackson came up and said, “Oh, Einstein,” so of course then I put his head on a pole and added a bunny. I really wanted to start adding color to these, but if I bust out the colored pencils the people at the end of the line won’t see their drawings until there’s another Clinton in the White House (Chelsea, most likely).

I was not able to find a strict attribution for this quote, because as we all know the Internet loves photos of Einstein overlaid with quotes that he didn’t actually say. So the source was not impeccable (its earliest source is a book of Einstein quotes published in 1996) but of course I didn’t even bother to try to verify in until I’d finished the drawing. So that’s a lesson learned.

The direction for this second drawing was “a crow or crows.”

I didn’t mean for it to turn into a rejected New Yorker cartoon, but I wanted them to be talking and I wanted to incorporate the collective noun for a group of crows, which as you know is a murder. I don’t know if single crows ask to join established groups but I’m pretty sure they’re smart enough to ask politely.

Thus endeth Day Eleven of National Blog Posting Month.

And now it’s Day Ten

  By Eden M. Kennedy | November 10, 2012 - 6:16 pm | ,
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Today’s drawings were done to accomplish two specific requests, one from a kind Twilight fan who asked for an Edward and Bella drawing, and that it not be sarcastic because she sincerely loves Twilight and she didn’t want me being all, “Ha ha, Edward looks like a muffin with pointy teeth.” But my first drawing was so terrible that I couldn’t send it to her. I know I’m supposed to practice drawing people for this life list business (which perhaps means I shouldn’t have used action figures as models), but I can’t in good conscience send out something like this:

I went on to just try to copy the hands-and-apple Twilight book covers, but you know what else is hard to draw? Hands holding apples.

At the moment I’m reading the book What Was She Thinking? (Notes on a Scandal) by Zoë Heller (which is fantastic, especially if can forget you saw the movie), and she has a funny throw-away description of a student’s drawing where the hands in it look like “odd, fingerless trowels.” I, too, am working at Odd Fingerless Trowel level, so I backed out and drew this instead:

Secondly, for the lovely person who asked for a drawing of a sheep or a dog, I did this:

Can you see?? It’s a sheep standing next to another sheep in sheep dog’s clothing. It’s funny because it’s true. Also, I couldn’t remember what sheep have on their feet, is it hooves? I just let them be little pegs instead. If you only had two sheep pegs to stand on it would be hard to keep your balance, but with four sheep pegs you’re good.

Eight Bait Mate Plait Concentrate

  By Eden M. Kennedy | November 8, 2012 - 6:37 pm | ,
4 Comments

I’m still not done e-mailing people to ask them what they want me to draw and it’s been a week! What the hell, me? If you haven’t heard from me, you will soon; or, if you didn’t put a note on your PayPal donation telling me what to draw, you can e-mail me your instructions (fussy at fussy dot org). Honestly, I spent the entire day organizing this stuff and only got one drawing done.

Just to be clear, no one has yet asked me to draw anything with a sneezing fetish or sickness theme, so that drawing capped the least-efficient day of drawing request fulfilling in drawing request-fulfilling history. I guess this one’s going to sit in the box waiting for just the right person to come along, and then we’ll put it on their tombstone after he or she has hacked his or her lungs up or has been struck down by The Ungodly Head Cold of 2012.

And now I have to go make ravioli. Why are there only 24 hours in a day? I need at least 36 to fit everything in.

Some Thoughts On Day Six

  By Eden M. Kennedy | November 6, 2012 - 2:46 pm | ,
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You know what turns out to be everso just a little nerve wracking for someone who has plenty of electricity, a healthy child, and who doesn’t know what it’s like to have no home at all right now? Drawing pictures for people who have given you five dollars. I’m trying to stay loose and just sort of, you know, channel it — and I know nobody’s expecting a timeless work of art, but it’s been a little awkward getting started. However, as part of my life list pledge to draw every day and shame myself track my progress by posting my efforts, I am going to show you some of the stuff I’ve been dropping in the mail.

For my very first drawing I wanted to make an owl wearing overalls. I didn’t question the source of this inspiration, I just went for it. But look:

It’s a sad owl, and he’s got a barn owl face mixed with eared-owl ears, and he’s wearing an overalls barrel, and I have no idea what’s up with the smiling flower pots.

So then I thought, maybe instead of making up zoological problems for myself I should try to draw something that’s right in front of me, so I went outside and I ended up with this:

This wonderful donor specifically asked for a drawing with “no boobs” in it, so my constraint was to draw anything else in the world besides boobs. As you can see, I can work with those kinds of restrictions; they might even free me up. My watchword with writing assignments has always been that constraints sometimes free us to think in new ways, and I think the same thinking applies to crazy little drawings, too.

Thank you again for all the donations, I’m closing it down tonight and sending all the money out tomorrow morning, and I’ll post the total amount of our donation then. I’ve already sent the $200 to Charity Water, so that’s done. I really appreciate the way so many people were able to come out and give.

Two drawings down, sixty-two drawings to go.

And now it’s Day Two

  By Eden M. Kennedy | November 2, 2012 - 7:21 am | ,
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Part of my evil plan in offering drawings in exchange for donations to Charity Water and the Red Cross was to get myself drawing again. I used to draw a lot; in fact, my old sketch books are half diary, half whimsical expressions of my whirling inner vortexes. But part of the whole Camp Mighty thing is to write a life list and then open yourself up to the magical forces that will magnetically draw the things you wrote on your list toward you. So the other day I started a list, and the first thing on the list is REMEMBER HOW YOU USED TO LIKE TO DRAW? YOU ONLY GET BETTER IF YOU PRACTICE, NUMBSKULL. And then I got my idea to exchange drawings for donations, and then you people began to donate! And now I’m forced to draw pictures for you! You are helping me achieve the first goal on my list! This life list stuff is magical. I’m almost afraid to put anything else on it. I might actually end up with my pet skunk flying a helicopter with Martin Starr’s face painted on the side. (Note to self: Keep dream journal separate from life list.)

Here’s a lady who looks like she’s made out of wood:

So, thank you. If you’re still interested in donating, all the info is here and the PayPal button is here:

Also, if you’re not sure what to do with all your leftover Halloween candy, or you want to keep your kid from eating the rest of their haul today, Hulk has a brilliant tip for you.

So Much FunCon

  By Eden M. Kennedy | June 5, 2012 - 3:47 pm | ,
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I went to MaxFunCon again this year and I’m not even sure where to begin.

Saturday I got to sit at breakfast with Bill Corbett. (If you’re a fan of Mystery Science Theater 3000 you might be dying a little right now because Bill was the voice of Crow T. Robot.) Bill and his wife, Virginia, came to the reading Alice and I did in Minneapolis last year and he laughed, loudly, in all the right places. Bill is the tops. (Bill’s Rifftrax partner, Kevin Murphy, is not pictured, but he is also the tops. They are co-tops.)

About six months ago I cobbled together a small life list which included the item “take an improv class.” Since Maggie (who’d prompted me to make the list in the first place) was with me this weekend along with Alice (from whom I’d stolen the idea of putting an improv class on my life list), and both of them had signed up for the improv class, all three of us (along with Alice’s husband, Scott) went together.

The class was taught with kindness and simplicity by Jordan Morris, and it wasn’t due to any defect in his teaching that I fell flat on my face (metaphorically) several times. In fact it taught me a good lesson: don’t try to be funny. When I stopped trying, I actually got a couple of laughs but, wow. Developing a character, a relationship, a location, and an obstacle on the spot with two or more people is nuts.

I had originally signed up for the pub quiz after lunch, but I guess I wasn’t really in the mood for the nap-inducing effects of mid-day drinking and trivia, so I decided to crash the artisanal pencil sharpening class instead. “Crash” is probably a little strong for what I did; “audit” would be more accurate.

Artisanal pencil sharpening may sound to some like the apex of dandyism, but believe me, David Rees is somewhat dead serious about the art of using a box cutter to carefully shave a shaft of yellow-painted, eraser-tipped cedar to a lethal point. It was satisfying as well as somewhat frustrating and awkward, as learning a new skill can be (cf: improv), and it left me with a lot of questions. At one point David posited that the act of carefully sharpening a pencil and then destroying it through use could be viewed as an exercise in futility, and I wanted to raise my hand and say, But isn’t use an act of love? Don’t we transfer, though the labor of sharpening and wearing the pencil down as it transports our thoughts to paper, a bit of ourselves into this humble tool? You’ve sharpened 600 pencils and call yourself an expert, but didn’t George Leonard say that only after you’ve done something a thousand times can you call yourself a master? But because I was just auditing, David charged me a dollar every time I asked a question. I only had three singles so after asking some basic points of instruction I pretty much had to shut up. Also, I didn’t want to be a dick.

I did most of my sharpening sitting on a bench next to Maria Bamford, who as you can see sharpened her pencil to a tremendous and frightening point. She gave David $5 so she got to ask more questions.

The morning and afternoon speakers this year were Mary Roach and Susan Orlean, both of whom had blurbed Let’s Panic!, so it was a tremendous honor to have two women of their stature treat us like peers. We’re not, of course, but they don’t know that (shhh).

I also got a little contact high from shaking John Hodgman‘s hand and having him tell me he loved my license plate.

(Here’s my post from last year.)

Day Fourteen

  By Eden M. Kennedy | November 14, 2011 - 12:18 pm | ,
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The second day of Camp Mighty I looked into the skill sessions. (I’m not sure what happened to me during the Friday skill sessions, but it seemed more important to black out for a couple of hours in a cozy, cozy hotel bed.) The session devoted to sabering open champagne bottles got cancelled because of the rain, so I went into the tent by the pool and discovered a man named Adam furiously making balloon animals. I was kind of like, Hmm, this doesn’t really interest me but no one else is here and I don’t want him to feel bad, so I stuck around. I watched him make a brown balloon monkey holding onto a yellow balloon banana:

When enough people had gathered around, he started handing out balloons and explaining some basics. Always twist with your dominant hand; always twist in the same direction because if you start twisting away from yourself and then halfway through switch to twisting toward yourself, your twists will come undone. Don’t be afraid of the balloon popping, go ahead and just twist the hell out of it. (It’s worth the extra couple of dollars to get the good balloons, though, as the cheap ones don’t hold up under serious twisting.)

I made a dog. Then I figured that if I were really going to learn to do this I should practice a little more, so I made what ended up being a sort of hyper-masculine poodle:

But what I really learned from spending fifteen minutes doing this is that so many skills that look odd or unattainable or mysterious can be broken down into a few simple steps, and that after you practice them and gain some confidence with your materials and with your body, you can do almost anything. Or make a motorcycle.

I thanked Adam and then decided not to go over to the How to Throw a Punch session because I already knew how to break a board with my hand.

I walked over to a small yurt where the How to Give a Great Neck Massage session was happening. There I learned several more things.

  1. “Pull the meat off the bone” is the key to Thai massage in general, but deltoid massage in particular
  2. There are a string of pressure points along the scapula that, when pressed even slightly, will make a person say, “OW” followed quickly by “YES, RIGHT THERE” and “FOR THE LOVE OF GOD DON’T STOP”
  3. You can press with all your might on someone’s head with your finger pads like you’re trying to squish their brains out their ears and it won’t actually hurt them, it will feel good
  4. Don’t massage anyone’s neck arteries or you’ll obstruct the flow of blood to their brain and they’ll pass out

I was gingerly trying to find Cameron’s deltoid muscle when the massage therapist came around, put her hands over mine, and showed me how to lift and gently pull them toward me, and the confidence of her touch transferred into my hands and I got it. It was like when a golf pro wraps their arms around you to teach you how to swing, except not as creepy.

So again: learn some techniques+ get comfortable with the motions + practice = enviable skill that your family and friends will enjoy, plus it will help put an anxious, talkative child to sleep after you’ve been away for three days.