Commandosaur...?

Here's another of those Sculpey sculpture gifts, this time a wild one from Kevin Eastman.




I'm pretty sure this bad boy is Kevin's take on a Commandosaur (the dinosaur/commando characters I created and later expanded upon with Steve Bissette in our collaboration back in the 1990's).




I love the detail on this one, and the paint job is great. And those TEETH! Yow! -- PL

The Dudes at the (rocky) beach

While I was searching through my vast digital photo archive trying to find an image suitable as a header for my "Ask PL" posts, I stumbled across this nifty image, in a folder labeled "Murph's weekend", of me and most of the Mirage dudes. It was from May of 2001, and I am embarrassed to say that I don't recall right now exactly what "Murph's weekend" was about, although I suspect that it had something to do with his wedding. (Help me, Murph!) But I thought the photo was cool... it was taken at Odiorne State Park, just south of Portsmouth, NH. Unfortunately, Mike Dooney isn't in frame because he's the one taking the picture. And do you like how I carefully angled my head so that the brim of my cap cleverly blocked most of the light from hitting my face? -- PL

UPDATE: I found the "fixed" version of the above photo, the one which includes -- via a little Photoshop tweaking -- Mike Dooney. So here it is! (Actually, it's not EXACTLY the same photo, but one very similar to the one above.) -- PL

Green Triceratops

Here's another item from my Sculpey sculpture collection, this time a nifty little Triceratops from my pal Steve Lavigne. Once again, you can really see the artist's drawing style reflected in the sculpture. Cute, huh? -- PL

Jim Lawson dino puzzle

One thing that I have been doing for fun at some recent comic conventions I've gone to are what I call "original art puzzles". I make these by buying puzzle blanks from a craft store (these are blank white puzzle-thickness boards which are pre-cut with a die which leaves enough cardboard in the spaces between the pieces to allow the puzzle to hold together, but little enough that it is easily broken apart when desired), drawing Turtle head sketches directly on each puzzle blank with a large marker, and then breaking the pieces apart and packing them in a small plastic bag with a header card (below).


It's something fun and different from the standard sketch on paper or print, and I think it appeals to those people who like Turtles and puzzles.



At one of our joint appearances a couple of years ago, I had some blanks with me that I hadn't drawn on yet. Jim Lawson took one and drew a cool dinosaur on it, and gave it to me. Nice, huh? -- PL

Teal Wing

This is the last of the "gift sculptures" for a while... I have about half a dozen more, but I'll have to get out to the old studio to take photos of them.



This one is by the great Jim Lawson, as you have probably guessed from the distinct style -- it's Jim's portrait of me with my old teal-colored Honda Gold Wing.



The Gold Wing is one of my all-time favorite motorcycles. To date, I have owned four of them (I still have two -- the first one I bought and the latest one), the teal Wing being the second. The Gold Wing is just a phenomenal ride, especially the newest model. The first one I got -- back in 1990 or 1991, I think -- I originally bought as part of a sidecar rig. That was fun, but when Jim Lawson convinced me to ride out to San Diego years ago, I decided to uncouple the Wing from the sidecar and take that across the country. I can't imagine making that kind of trip on any other type of motorcycle. It ran perfectly and handled great. Its awesome stereo system made riding on some of the more boring stretches of road more palatable. And kicking back with my feet on my highway pegs and the cruise control set at 65 was quite relaxing.



I love the fact that you can still see some of Jim's fingerprints in the surfaces of this sculpture. -- PL

P.S. I hope Jim doesn't get mad at me for revealing this, but it's pretty funny: Jim told me that, when he was making this gift for me, he had to find a piece of plastic of the right color, size and thickness to shape into the Wing's windshield. Looking around, he found it... a mint-on-the-card "Scratch" figure from the Playmates TMNT toy line! The plastic of the blister pack was perfect for the windshield. (It should be noted, however, that this was long before that figure became known as one of the rarest and most collectible of the TMNT line.)

Triceratops on motorcycle

How's this for combining two of my favorite things? Here's another sweet Jim Lawson sculpture. I think this may have been a birthday present.



Jim perfectly captured the energy and fun of his sketches in this piece. It has a real "Bade Biker" feel to it, and I think may in fact date from around the time that Jim was doing that series. -- PL

Serendipity

Serendipity.

What a great word! It's defined by Merriam-Wedster's 11th Collegiate Dictionary as "the faculty or phenomenon of finding valuable or agreeable things not sought for".

I had a bit of serendipity today. My wife and I took advantage of beautiful weather during the early part of the afternoon to take bicycles from Northampton to Florence on the bike path, all the way up to Look Park, a privately-owned but open to the public facility which is one of the gems of this area. It's a great park.

As we were riding the paved road around the outer edge of the park, what should we come upon but a show of vintage japanese motorcycles! I had no idea such a thing was happening at Look Park today. and had to stop and check out the old iron.



Fortunately, I had my digital camera with me (well, I very nearly always do -- it's one of the handy things about wearing shirts with four pockets) and was able to snap a few shots of some of the cool bikes. Here are two of them:



I consider the Honda CB750 to be one of the -- if not THE -- most beautiful motorcycles ever produced. And not only is it a gorgeous piece of two-wheeled artistry, it's also a model which changed the face of motorcycling when it was released.



This other Honda is an SL350, the same model I had in high school and college and a few years afterwards. It's even the same color as the one that I had. That SL was a great bike -- I beat the crap out of it and it kept running with very little upkeep. It was my first "grown-up" motorcycle. (And as I was preparing the photograph of the SL350 for this blog post, I noticed that there's a Segway leaning against the tree directly behind it. Cool!)

Actually, the more I look at this photo, the more I think this may be the first model of the SL350, with electric start -- I had the second model with just a kick starter and a different type of frame.

Serendipity... you gotta love it! -- PL