Project “Ice Cream: Italy” continues.

I’ve made it through many of the Gelaterias in Florence and have begun searching other towns.  Along the way we took some pictures:

Lucca

Barga

Volterra

A photo of the most important attraction to be found in Florence.  I feel it’s my duty to sample ice cream in every shop that sells it.  This may take a while, there are a lot of them here!

And for you traditionalists, a few pictures of old buildings…

And the Arno river, from our hotel room…

As soon as I finish with my ice cream project, I’m going to do some sketching.

Two news items to report.

First: I’ve started the seventh chapter of Seven Extraordinary Things.  We have reached the crisis point of the story, and the characters I’ve tried to make sympathetic, I’m now putting through misery.  When you think about it, writing is a sadistic practice.

Second: I’m going to Italy for a short vacation.  Florence, to be exact.  But 7XT will continue while I’m away from my studio.

In case anyone is wondering, Ziggy is headed to camp for some well deserved R&R.  It is my sincere hope that the neighborhood won’t be overrun by the forces of darkness in his absence.

When I was in High School a friend said that he had recently seen one of my drawings.  “I recognized your style,” he told me.  This caught me by surprise.  I wasn’t aware I had a style so I asked him to describe it to me.

“Oh, you know,” he replied.

I told him I didn’t.

“It’s the way you draw things.”

I asked for an example.

“Like your clouds, it looks as if you could stand on them.  Or the way you draw faces with the eyes slanted to one side, and hands that look like talons.”  He continued on, but I’ve mercifully forgotten most of it.  What he considered my “style” I considered a laundry list of my mistakes.

Webster defines style as a particular manner or technique by which something is done, created or performed.  I always assumed style had to do with the choices you made, and at that point in my artistic development I wasn’t aware of having made any.  I was trying to make figures look like they had anatomy, women look pretty and clouds look like, well — clouds.

After this conversation, I set out to develop a style.  My objective was simple.  I wanted my figures to look like a combination of Frank Frazetta and Neal Adams, but with the sense of mood and caricature Bernie Wrightson brought to his work.  I wanted my line work to have the control of Charles Dana Gibson, but the freedom of expression of Heinrich Kley.  That wasn’t too much to ask, was it?

Apparently so.

Nowadays I make more choices when I draw, but I have never conscientiously chosen a style for myself.  If people can recognize my drawings I still believe it is because they have become familiar with my recurring mistakes.

(NOTE:  if you think it’s impossible to ink with the control of Gibson and the spontaneity of Kley I encourage you to look at some of the pen and ink work done by James Montgomery Flagg.)

A new chapter begins, in which Greg faces the consequences of his choices.

Cooper's Hawk

This one was taken (by Lynn) in our front courtyard; a part of our house featured briefly in Nocturnal Battle.  It’s amazing how much wildlife (natural and supernatural) you can find just outside your door.

Having a cast on her arm didn’t stop Lynn from snapping this picture of a Cooper’s Hawk in our back yard. Call me weird (my mom always did) but I find it comforting to know there are birds of prey in the neighborhood.

One more week to go before the cast comes off and Lynn can resume her hobby of fighting crime on the weekends.  But I’ve asked her to be more careful in the future when she’s leaping from building to building in pursuit of a suspect.

Some people have reported problems logging on to www.sevenextraordinarythings.com.  This was apparently caused by the volume of traffic to the site, which was more than our original web hosting plan could accommodate.  As problems go, this is a good one to have.  To address it 7XT now has its own dedicated server.

If anyone continues to have difficulties with the site, please let us know.  Or, if anyone who was having difficulties finds that their troubles have vanished, we wouldn’t mind hearing about that as well.