A Little Sketchy

So continues my project of illustrating the informal fallacies using snail imagery. The argument from authority is important enough to boast two Latin names,  argumentum ad verecundiam  (argument to respect), and   ipse dixit (he himself said it). I prefer ipse dixit because it's nicely percussive, like a swear word. In my drawing, I wanted to emphasize the symbolic power of authority over a mass of people, but also the delicacy and uncertainty of the matter inside the heads of figureheads as well. I don't mean to imply here that all authoritative figures are full of hot air, but more that we don't always know exactly what's keeping them up there, unless we operated the balloon-filling station. Like a parade baloon, authority grows, dies, and moves slowly, while ideas move quickly, like little particles of helium, and we can only hope that our figureheads remain, well, full of it. Let's get down to brass tacks, so to speak, and puncture authority a bit

When I was seventeen, I filled a one-month vacancy at a historically-themed boardwalk called Alaskaland .* All the shops were housed in reclaimed pioneer cabins, and I was required to wear a very Presbyterian-looking calico frock to maintain historical authenticity. My job was to man the counter in a historically-inauthentic soft-serve ice cream establishment called Frosty Paws. Frosty Paws' owner was a stickler for consistency. Our flavor selection ranged a whopping six flavors, and never more than four at once. The owner required that I weigh my sweet creations after dispensing them in order to assure a standard 8 or 16-oz. serving. Before the month was out, my cone-holding wrist could count to 8 oz. as well as any dealer of addictive substances. Furthermore, I had mastered the symmtrical twirl of the cone to create a regular spiral, an art which later, in the college cafeteria, lent me that charming, robotic air that every freshman covets. How would I have reacted if Ralph Wal

The slippery slope  fallacy posed an obstacle to my creative process. Someone else has already come up with a memorable, concrete metaphor. I suppose I could have thrown up my hands and drawn a snail at a water slide, but that would have been a cop out. This blog is about (mostly) original material. The slippery slope fallacy involves predicting that one small move, say, dropping a hook, will ignite a series of actions that lead to whale-sized results. Once you give them an inch, start down that path, open that can of worms, the worms escape and chastise you for your horrible taste in canned food. The fallacy knits causes and effects together as if they are logically connected.  If they happen to be logically connected, you don't really have a fallacy. You have a valid prediction. In the case of my fish, however, fallacy abounds.  The food chain doesn't always work in nesting-doll order, from large to small. Sometimes slender lampreys feed upon the skin of larger sharks,

I have photographed my most recent painting in various stages to show my process. The title, TOPOGRAPHIC RELIEF , begs some kind of play on words, though I copied it faithfully from my model. I plastered the words on top because I enjoyed some real relief in stepping away from digital art for a period. Of course, it doesn't take long to recall the perils associated with rendering without Control + z. The painting equivalent involves dabbing at things with a moist Q-tip. I decided on the project with the intent of of gaining knowledge about U.S. geography. I have a fondness for infographics, particularly those that involve midcentury fonts. This typeface reminds me a bit of Vera Humana . I thought about creating a political map, but I enjoy the rippling lines that topographic maps entail, and also, elevation maps take longer to go out of date. The painting is a very literal exploration of the states through topography. Literal doesn't mean exact here. As I quickly disc

Behold Buffalo Exchange's Halloween banner, which references the iconic cover of Meat Loaf's album, Bat Out of Hell .  I redrew the entire piece in Photoshop, tweaking the layout to allow my substitution of the motorcycle with a buffalo. I understand that bison seldom blast fire from their hindquarters, so I tried to adjust the flame to look more like a fiery geyser spewing the ungulate and his rider from Beezlebub's home turf. As I drew, I tried to engage the spirit of the artwork by listening to some heavy-ish rock selections from my own library. My choices were few and largely inherited from my brother, who co-hosts a semi-ironic metal radio show at the University of Alaska called Larry and Harry's Heavy Hymnal . His name is Andrew.  Me--I wasn't familiar with Meat Loaf's music. However, the name "Meat Loaf" and title of Bat Out of Hell , to say nothing of the typeface, inspired certain assumptions. As I culled a few music video

My 1.5-month hiatus has been due to an eyebrow-deep miring in revisions to my children's book illustrations and other projects*. As anyone who has finished a creative project knows, revision work spreads like sticky mud over everything one touches, often binding one in a standstill, while seldom beading into neat, polished units suitable for publication. I will attempt to knead some of this stickiness into a little lump and so give it the value and emphasis it deserves.      I received feedback about my illustrations for the children's book, Lucy's Dance , from my cultural consultant about a month ago. One of the most challenging of the revisions required me to redraw the qasgiq huts that show up at the beginning and end of the book in the historical Yup'ik moments. My reviewer urged me to make the huts appear as though they were made of sod, and not of grass. This request puzzled me a bit at first, considering the definition for sod is grass rooted in earth clumps. I

My snail fallacy posts can get a bit abstract, so it's nice to have a project that brings me down to earth a bit, or, in the perspective of this drawing, to a hover slightly above earth. Buffalo Exchange and Beauty Bar Denver  commissioned this adjusted rendering of 13th Ave. as one side of a flier for a night of music involving one Garth , influential house DJ of Wicked San Francisco, and one DJ Nedza . Beauty Bar, besides offering a fine combination of martinis and manicures, provides the unique experiences of reclining in an actual 1950s hair dryer chair, and drinking at a counter underlaid with glittered emery boards. I'm not required to advertise here, but I couldn't help but take a few photos at the opening. Nearly all my work for Buffalo Exchange is referential, and this piece references a famous cover of the New Yorker, depicting New York, specifically, 9th and 10th Ave.s, as the center of the universe.  I felt well qualified to complete this i

The argument  Ad Nauseum  is not that abdominal discomfort that often accompanies watching commercial television--but it's close. It is a strategy that involves repeating a conclusion many times to urge its acceptance rather than offering proof.  The term Ad Nauseum   means surfeit  to the point of sickness . For some of us, it calls to mind, unpleasantly, eating too much theater popcorn  and before watching the owl attack scene in the movie  Thrice Midnight .  With such associations, how is anyone sold on this fallacy?   I've encountered  Ad Nauseum  in three flavors: First, a brute pummeling of repetition, a.k.a. the supersoaker approach. Here I refer to your filibuster, your parental injunctions to pack an umbrella, and yes, your Hulu commercials that might, through sheer persistence, convince you to back up your files on Mozy. Second, the subliminal approach. Conclusions may sneak in regularly through a subconscious backdoor. Usually, this happens when they are woven

The Argument from Incredulity (AFI): I cannot explain or understand this, therefore it cannot be true. The AFI is a reactive fallacy, an irrational form of rebuttal to opposing ideas. Arguing from Incredulity takes arrogance, gerrymandering the borders of possibility to suit an incumbent imagination. If it cannot fit my brain, it cannot fit the world, either --a solipsistic thought at best. A special kind of character fancies his brain larger than the world. That character is Vizzini from The Princess Bride . Vizzini: "He didn't fall?" Inconceivable!" Inigo: "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means." Inigo wisely sticks to semantics in his response. Inigo dabbles a bit in wordplay, and knows better than to question Vizzini's overall strategy because, well, Vizzini is never wrong. Genius though Vizzini may be ("Ever heard of Plato? Aristotle? Socrates? Morons."), his hubris and his intolerance for &qu

Before I return to the snail fallacies, let me show a line drawing of the Red Queen from  Alice in Wonderland  for a quilt design. Cuddly, no?  I didn't ape any one popular rendering of the queen, though costumes are influenced by engravings of Queen Elizabeth I. Of course, I ran a background check on the Red Queen before starting. Behold: two red queens populate Lewis Carrol's/Charles Dodgson's literature. The Queen of Hearts of  Alice in Wonderland  is more obviously ill-tempered, given as she is to bellowing "off with their heads" and cheating at croquet. Of course, she's a dominant playing card, and an allegory to Queen Victoria of England. The Red queen in  Through the Looking Glass  is a chess piece who presents an exaggerated evolutionary hypothesis: "It takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place," or that it takes a constant effort and adaptation to maintain a competitive position. Similarly, "Red Queen" marketi