Take 25% all the artwork in my Etsy shop! Sale runs through Dec. 4th, 2025!

Order early to avoid holiday shipping delays. Free shipping on orders over $35.

It’s been quite a while since I have engraved in proper end-grain wood blocks. Up until now I have been very happy using resingrave but, alas, that material is not being manufactured anymore. I’ve spent the past year or so trying to find a suitable alternative. Corian countertop material allows for very fine lines but is chalky and gross to cut into. Boxwood or lemonwood would be great, but they are not available here in the good old U.S.A. and can get very expensive to have them imported from England. I even started to consider making my own maple blocks but I fear table saws and really wouldn’t know what I was doing. Then, a few months ago, I found out that there has been a block maker right here in the Midwest for years. So, here we are, with a fresh stack of large end-grain maple blocks ready to go. I have a couple of ideas and will hopefully have something to show in a month or so. Stay tuned.

I’ve been using this Web site as a place to show and sell my art for nearly twenty years. In that time I have sold exactly zero prints. I know I haven’t exactly been P.T. Barnum when it comes to self-promotion, but seriously, zero? I have even offered prints for free with no takers.

Well, today is the day that all changes. I am now selling my prints on Etsy.com! This means they’ll handle the billing and shipping calculations and you can sit back, relax and send me all your money!

You can still browse my work on this site and if the art happens to be for sale there will be a big old link in the sidebar for you to click. Impulse buying is allowed.

This weekend the family dragged me to a scarecrow building contest. This is a contest intended to allow kids to be creative and show off their stuff as budding young artists. Of course, my wife decided it would be a great opportunity to kick some underaged-art-noob butt. Pictured here is her winning entry in the category “most likely to scare a crow.”

My family and I just spent a weekend in LaGrange, Georgia visiting with relatives. Among the highlights of the trip, aside from the obligatory breakfasts at Waffle House, was an evening spent roller skating at Red’s Roller Rink. When we walked in the place they were blasting “Ice Ice Baby” so I knew this was going to be a fun time. I hadn’t been roller skating since the late eighties and it took quite some time to get my roller disco legs back in action, but once I got going, it was hard to stop… literally. Anyhow, I also enjoyed the Jesus mural at the far end of the hall. Here’s a full view:

My daughter created her first “Hello World” program to today. It was programmed in sidewalk chalk++.

This is going to be a poster for an upcoming Nonagon show. It’s based on an earlier image I made about a decade ago that I never did anything with. Hopefully I will be able to finish in a day or two so that we can get these Xeroxed off in a timely manner.

“As a last ditch attempt to hide the truth from the public (and, I suspect, from themselves), the censors have claimed that they prefer to have the industry accept new ‘voluntary’ guidelines — backed up by the threat that if filmmakers don’t ‘volunteer’ to muzzle themselves within six months, the tanks will start rolling in.”

“It is the job of our intellectual leaders to expose these smokescreens and sound the alarms against would-be censors. They haven’t been doing their job, so we have to do it ourselves. “

from The Censorship Smokescreen By Robert Tracinski

Well, I just finished watching the first debate of the 2000 election. Here is a doodle I made of Al Gore during the broadcast. All the pundits talk about how great a debater Al is, but I just can’t get past his overplayed emotions and his I’m-talking-to-a-6-year-old delivery. Hey, and has anybody seen his eyebrows!?! My ol’ uncle Mervis P. Napkin once told me, “Never trust a man who ain’t got no eyebrows… they gets all that sweat in their eyes and that ain’t right.” There’s definitely something above his eyes, a weird lump of skin or something. Perhaps some silly putty clumps?

They do a lot of Democrat/Al Gore design pieces in the design studio where I work. They make a point out of covering up or cropping his wispy bald spot in the photos they use. I wish they would just airbrush in some Dekaukus/apeman eyebrows. It just ain’t right. Or as Mr. Gore like to say in his best, condescending tone, “That would be unconscionable, and that means… BAAADD!!

This is about the extent of my studio space. Because I can’t get too sloppy, I don’t really have a place to print my blocks, I usually move to my kitchen for that. What’s missing from this view is the TV and Stereo which are usually on while I work.

Despite the photographic chairoscuro of this scan, desk is usally very well lit. Like many woodcutters/engravers, I have have a whole bunch of tools for cutting, yet, I seem to revert to the same couple of tools (seen on the lower middle) all the time.

Here is my current series of woodcuts in progress. The two on the bottom which are completely black are the ones that I have already printed.

These days Nova’s drawing and painting supplies have taken over my space. You can see a hint of the print I am currently working on (when I have the time and energy to do art).

My first in a series of posts about Election 2008. Your choice this year: a huge government liberal or a big government conservative—neither of which showed an ounce of leadership skill during the bailout crisis.