Homemade Wrapping Paper

Homemade Wrapping Paper:

Not quite half-assed....maybe almost a quarter?

When the gifts are not inspiring, one can always make an effort on the paper...(or just give up and draw on a napkin.)

In the olden days, when my sons were runny nosed small children, if I hauled out a giant sheet of paper and some paint, they would enthusiastically pitch in.  Now that they are adolescents who know how to blow their own noses, no such luck. 

So this was all me, sad to say. But let’s just imagine how good it could have been if others had been involved.  

I am going to cut it up into pieces and wrap small uninspiring items it it, so perhaps that will be an improvement?

Golem, Zombie and Friends

I am delighted to have the Undead Guy and some drawings included in “or, The New Prometheus” in the Humanities Gallery at Long Island University in Brooklyn. 

The show is curated by Nancy Grove and commemorates the 200th anniversary of the publication of Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein...or, the Modern Prometheus” 

Also included, fine works by Judith Shea, Todd Lambrix, Andy Ralph, Matt Freedman and Elizabeth Harney

March 5-30, 2018, opening reception March 7th 6-8 pm if you happen to be in downtown Brooklyn.

We Belong Dead

"I became myself capable of bestowing animation upon lifeless matter."

Inktober 2017 / Hideous Progeny Drawing 6

Unfinished and poorly photographed as I missed the daylight today, but my son tells me I should post it anyway as to not fall behind.

I guess this one is about the intersection of the love of zombies and the hatred of homework. I will try to explain tomorrow when I finish it and take a better picture. 

Dark Souls Avatar

 

Me before I put on my makeup.

The above caption comes from my older son, aspiring meme generator that he is.

His avatar in the Dark Souls 2 game is a sort of zombie who seems to have very brightly colored wisps of hair...or maybe that is the "healing factor"? I cannot say for sure.  I couldn't really get a grip on the detail on the armor either, but I thought the combination of the greenish zombie face and the flossy yellow pink of the hair was nice.

Garden Warfare 2 Birthday Cake

Agent Orange and the Pirate Zombie from "Plants vs. Zombies 2" on a birthday cake.
And Pirate zombie with strategically placed birthday candle:

Quite remarkably, our older son turned thirteen this week.

In related, remarkable only to me news, I have completed my baking and frosting duties for the foreseeable future.

This is a good thing. After staying up appallingly (and embarrassingly) late to squirt frosting on this cake, and then hosting a dozen adolescents at our apartment for an afternoon festival of video games, whacking with Nerf swords, and rubbing of frosting on various surfaces, I feel like I might have had my eightieth birthday this week....

My son wanted me to make the whole cake into an iphone and the image a selfie. While I thought that a lovely concept, I did not manage to pull it off. He did not announce his choice of characters until 8 pm last night, so he is very lucky that he got anything beyond white frosting and the "Happy 13" text.

Zombie Santa and Skeleton Rudolph

That's a red flashlight in the reindeer skull's nasal cavity, if that needs to be said.

It's all just holiday build-up from here on out.  We are not especially observant of any particular tradition beyond the giving of presents to our children. I've done a lot of asking...like, "So what are YOU planning to GIVE to your grandma?...or aunt?...or father?" Because, of course, it is better to give than to receive.  Or at least it is best to not annoy the adults around you with your greedy requests to the point where they decide to give you nothing.

While it is true that I could use some brains for the holidays...despite my somewhat jaundiced parental perspective on the holidays, the drawing of Undead Santa and Very Dead Rudolph is not for my kids. It is for for "Deck the Halls," a holiday auction  to benefit The New York Academy of Art, where I teach occasionally...

I teach sculpture at the NYAA, and most definitely not the drawing of zombies on napkins, just to be clear.

Cast of Characters Who Could be in "Goosebumps" Movie

...take one of those abominable group selfies...

My younger son and I finally saw the "Goosebumps" movie over last weekend. His brother was going to a fun birthday party, so he was feeling terribly under-served and required some compensation. As far as I was concerned the movie was pleasant, but not particularly memorable.  My son thought it was great and immediately wanted me to pledge to take him to the sequel, whenever it might be made and released.

While we own several "Goosebumps" books, and I have tried to convince my horror-loving children to read them on many occasions, the series has just not been very popular in the past at our house.  I must confess that I was unaware what a publishing juggernaut the series has been...350 million copies have sold worldwide, and it is the second most popular children's series of all time, according to Wikipedia.

The movie's specific and rather dopey plot aside, "Goosebumps" the movie's charm is that it is a compendium of funny horror characters and therefore transcends the possible failings of each tale of scary zombies, creepy clowns, malicious lawn gnomes, deadly werewolves, etc., etc.

Being an 8 year old, my son was willing to attribute the original creation of many of these sorts of characters to R.L. Stine and the Goosebumps franchise. I reminded him that certainly the idea of werewolves, zombies, the abominable snowmen and ventriloquist dummies among many others predate Scholastic Publishing, some by tens if not hundreds of years.

And, on a more personal note, several of these characters appeared in my recent sculpture show "Popular Monsters," so perhaps I am particularly not willing to cede all credit to Mr. Stine.

Today's napkin is a reunion of sorts of characters who could appear in a best selling children's book series, in a major motion picture, or in my small, unsaleable sculptures.

Zombi Rambi with "Scorch Trials" Background

Our younger son's wish to see the "Scorch Trials" movie with a friend who is also a "Maze Runner" fan had been thwarted for almost three weeks, so I felt that I had to make it finally happen yesterday. In all of my parental guilt about not gratifying this wish before, I failed to give significant thought to the content of the movie. I did slog through all of the Maze Runner books back before the first movie came out to make sure it would not  not too scary...but over the weekend, they were not fresh in my memory.

So while I did know about the zombie-like "cranks" in the second and third books, I didn't realize, that they would be behaving horrifically like full blown zombies during so much of this movie. 24 hours later, there doesn't seem to be any obvious zombie-induced psychological scars and phobias in either of our kids. Perhaps it is too early.

But since zombies are still on our minds today, I thought maybe a cuter, more humorous version of the undead might be appropriate for a napkin.

We were introduced to the idea of "Rambi" by the graphic novel "Ricky Rouse Has a Gun." The story is set in a Chinese amusement park that is heavily "inspired" by American pop culture. Costumed characters in the park include the Dark Knight-like "Ratman," a bottom-heavy version of a flying elephant named "Bumbo," and the titular big-eared rodent as well as "Rambi," the red bandana-wearing mercenary deer. "Ricky Rouse"  was not written for  kids, and required significant editing, but our sons definitely appreciated the humor (and the violence.)

Perhaps I should add that neither child has seen the movie "Bambi" or "Rambo," but they still get the joke here.

Walking home from our viewing of "The Scorch Trials," my older son claimed that he has seen "some of nearly every zombie movie ever made" courtesy of YouTube, and was therefore an authority on that genre.

I hope he is just boasting.

Zombie Ewok With Candy Corn

If you can't have brains, maybe corn syrup and food coloring will do?

Clearly, I need to get these Ewoks out of my brain. Just like I will soon need to purge the candy corn from my digestive tract.

Perhaps it is needless to point out, but zombie Ewoks are not a new concept.  There seems to have been quite a bit of "The Ewoking Dead" going around a couple of years ago.  I was thinking in particular of a sketch by Austin Madison from 2012 of a zombie Ewok pulling gore out of a helmet. I am not sure if he was solely responsible for the Ewok Zombie concept or just an outstanding practitioner.  Finding the answer to this sort of question violates my "no more than 5 minutes of research regarding napkins" rule.

At any rate, there are also limits to what I can draw for second grade lunch, so no dripping blood here, just some confectioner's glaze and artificial dyes Red 3, Yellow 2 and Yellow 5.

The Zombie Horde Brings Fruit and Vegetables

...and one turkey sandwich.

The kids always love a "zombie episode" of any TV show.  They have yet to see an actual zombie apocalypse movie, but are somehow familiar with all of the conventions of the genre and delight in seeing them applied to a sitcom.

This napkin has been laying around the house in varying stages of incompletion since the tosillectomy. Besides having made the mistake of choosing an excessively complex subject matter, I realized early on that I wasn't going to be able to keep it from becoming too creepy and too green.

One cannot stray far from the "Plants vs Zombies" style cute and cartoony treatment of the undead without them looking too scary....or too much like the jolly green giant.

(Those orange things are supposed to be carrot sticks, by the way.
And maybe this is a "Zombie Salad" - title thanks to Frank Baker via Facebook)

Scorpion from "Injustice" with Zombies

Archer's latest fixation on a video game that he has not actually played has been "Injustice: Gods Among Us," and the Scorpion character in particular.

As he carefully explained to me this morning, "Injustice" is a Mortal Kombat style fighting game which features DC characters....with the exception of Scorpion who is an import from the Mortal Kombat universe.

Archer asked for Scorpion to be fighting at least two zombies.  When I started perusing creepy images of Walking Dead style zombies last night, I came to the conclusion that friendly "Plants vs. Zombies" members of the undead was a better bet for a lunchtime image.

One hopes that they are able to jolly Scorpion out of his bellicose mood before he punches one of their heads off.

Desmond Pucket and Lio Pack a Zombie Head For Lunch

Mark Tatulli's cute but ghoulish comic strips featuring Lio (in green on the right) have long been popular with our older son. Tatulli's most recent book, "Desmond Pucket Makes Monster Magic" (Desmond is on the left) won our younger son over as well.

After all, who among us does not love the idea of an exploding zombie head?

Zombie Assassin's Creed III Connor With Zombified Zombie Hunter

The widespread popularity of zombies has finally sunk in around here and I got a request to draw my sons as members of the living dead.

The kids are definitely too young for most zombie movies, but Archer has at least a half dozen video games where the guiltless and gleeful bashing of zombies is the both the goal and the pleasure of the game.

So it was certainly not that they weren't thinking about zombies, but last week for the first time, they  decided that perhaps being a zombie might be cool.

Maybe not as cool as caving in the head of many zombies, but cool nonetheless. 

And cool enough that Ansel wanted not just to be a "Zombie Hunter," but as he said: a "Zombie Zombie Hunter."

Friendly Zombies (From "Regular Show") Bring Strawberries

The Not So Evil Dead bring fruit for Kindergarten lunch:

Zombies just never lose their charm for my sons.

They particularly enjoyed the "Grave Sights" episode of "Regular Show" where the regular characters use sports equipment to efficiently dispatch the malicious undead in a scene strangely reminiscent of "The Evil Dead"

Office Zombie for Archer

The latest game for the boys is "Office Zombie" because it is impossible to have too many games in which you beat up zombies.  Who did we guiltlessly torment before zombies?

Owly and Maverick from Zombie Ace for Archer

Archer rediscovered the Owly books by Andy Runton yesterday.  Luckily, Owly is able to play nice with zombies from video games.  (Maverick from Zombie Ace anyway)  Archer points out that I forgot the white patch on Owly's stomach.  My apologies.

Characters from No Zombies Allowed for Archer

Archer found that he could bond with another kid at camp yesterday by discussing their mutual interest in playing No Zombies Allowed.  It seems impossible to have too many games involving green zombies with bad teeth.

Archie from Infect Them All for Archer

Archer's recent love for monsters led him to Infect Them All, a vampire themed game,which much to his delight, stars a character named Archie.  As he has been oblivious to the recent pop culture obsession with vampirism, the topic is pleasantly fresh for Archer.  And the game has an appealingly nasty quality to it.

Rabid Ron and Zombie Frank for Archer

Zombie Farm for Archer