Hi everyone! Cory Wong released a new album! And it’s with the Metropole Orkest!!!
Many times, I have tried to find “space jazz,” whatever that means. I mean, space is cool, and jazz is cool, so the two together should be twice as cool, right?
You could argue that Starship Syncopation is not really space-y (I would agree) or jazz-y (I would disagree), but you are not allowed to dislike jazz. It is simply not allowed. You are, however allowed to listen to the previous collaboration between Cory Wong and the Metropole Orkest:
Festival for the Restival
Totally unrelated to #11ths and b13ths, the Japanese festival in St. Louis was this past weekend!
My parents have been selling okonomiyaki and yaki soba at the Festival for over 30 years. My dad is very proud to serve traditional festival food, which I also got to try when I went to Japan in 2015. Here’s a picture from this past weekend, before a certain COUSIN of mine kicked me off the GRILL because my PANCAKES weren’t GOOD enough for him. ↓
The Japanese Festival takes place at the Missouri Botanical Garden, which is an excellent drawing opportunity but absolute torture for someone who is supposed to be flipping pancakes instead of painting leaves.
I also got to watch sumo for the first time! And not just that, but what the announcer called THE GREATEST MATCH IN SUMO HISTORY! They guy almost lost his shirt!
The Botanical Garden also features THE CLIMATRON, which is like the coolest name for anything ever. I even got some people to pose for me!
Just kidding. They were already doing that. As I was already taking a picture. So I hope that’s okay with them. Not that they will ever know. Okay bye…
This next one was kind of funny. As I was drawing, this guy comes up to me and says, “Oh, are you a botanical illustrator?”
“Uh, no. I just like to draw.” I said.
“Well are you a botany student?”
“Uh, no. I just like to draw.”
“Well surely you work here or something.”
“Uh, actually, I just like to—”
“Where I’m from in Ireland, we have lots of botanical illustrators. Instead of collecting plants, we like to collect botanical illustrations, so everyone has lots of botanical illustrations in their home.”
“Oh, well that’s nice. Maybe I’ll be a botanical illustrator some day.”
“You should!”
I didn’t get to finish the drawing because a certain SOMEONE fainted (see last week’s post about there being 0 days since the last incident), but the story was pretty funny.
The Root of All Evil
You may have noticed that the substack is no longer asking you to “pledge” a subscription. That’s because, if you’d like to, you can give me money now!
If you picked that last one… yikes…
Anyway, I’ve decided that for your generous donation, you’ll receive some fun prints in the mail each month! Above are September’s prints, DADONOMICON parts 1 and 2. Art in the Airport (Louder, Masaki, Masaki) includes a painting of a photograph of my Dad in his twenties, as well as a painting of an embroidery piece done by my Grandma. In Batman’s Workshop is a drawing of my Dad replacing the screen protector on my phone. I really love drawing piles of stuff, and my Dad was an excellent model. We even had a fun Bob Ross moment as I walked him through what I was thinking while shading in the different parts of the drawing!
Here’s what the prints look like printed out. Eventually I’m going to set up a website and probably have prints available for purchase in themed packs, but I’m not quite there yet. Until then, sign up for a paid subscription to get your prints!
You’re gonna make me ink!
I’ve been really into drawing with non-black pens recently. Above is a parody of a movie poster hanging in my parents’ house. Here’s the original:
My Mom tells me that “intact” and “uncut” were fitting advertisements at the time for such a long movie, but I do have some questions for all those supposed Jews in Hollywood…
Anyway, it’s all in good fun. Circum B. Cision made a great movie after all… Quick! look at a picture of my Dad that I’ve already shown you, plus a drawing of Casey!
I’m probably going to do a rainbow series of these monochrome drawings. They’re really fun!
S U P E R S I Z E S U R P R I S E
The drawing above I posted the linework for a while ago, but I’m not sure when I actually painted it. The text refers to a game I’m working on called GLOBAL DOOM 99, where the planet’s water hovers just outside the atmosphere. You probably saw a drawing of this last week:
What happens when the “sky” eventually falls, well… We’ll just have to find out. We might even find out during this week’s playtest!
Above is another drawing that waited a while to get painted. I originally posted the line drawing a million years ago, in my post about FARTBARF. Maybe if I’m smart, I’ll add tags to all of my posts so that I don’t have to go manually digging for everything…
The borzin gamben pebble dragon was a fun riff on the Dragonology study I had done a few weeks before. I’ve got one more bigger drawing from this week, which you can see in the bonus manga section.
You’re Gonna Eat That Vegetable
I’m drafting Cartoodle now.
As in, I’m writing and rewriting and revising and re-dying what will eventually become the thing you actually hold in your hands when you pick up a copy of Cartoodle.
This is supposed to be fun, but for some reason it isn’t. Maybe it will be fun next week. I think what I really wish is that, since I think the design of the game is done, it could just be on shelves and people would buy it. Alas…
Anyway, here’s a sneak peek. Maybe I’ll figure out how to have more fun with this next week. See ya, and thanks for reading!
BONUS MANGA
Another great read! Is there a choice to do a custom donation amount through substack or only various subscription services?
Also, is Into The Woodlands going to be making a return soon?