San Diego at Sunset

:: click photo to enlarge ::

This is why we live here - Last night, just after the Chargers beat the Redskins a few miles up route 8 at Qualcom, I got this eight-shot panorama with my iPhone from Seaport Village on the bay in San Diego. Spectacular. Turning around and looking towards downtown, the clouds were bright pink.

Merry Christmas Everyone

Now, I ask you, is there a better Santa than the Coca-Cola Santa? I don't think so. Take care and I'll see you in 2010.

I'm In Nagel Heaven

Collector's Gallery serigraph 60 x 29"

Patrick Nagel has been my favorite contemporary artist since around the time I was in high school. While I was in art school in New York City I pretty much wanted to BE him, as he was at the top of his game and the very definition of the art world celebrity-of-the-moment. His style perfectly captured the way I liked to draw, and I even practiced duplicating his technique using french curves and india ink technical pens. I'd pencil my design on tracing paper, transfer it to illustration board, fill in the color areas with acrylic or gouache, then lay in the black lines with the ink pen or rapidograph. Eyes were always the most difficult. Trying to get them both to look in the same direction often gave me fits.

Yes, Mr. Nagel was my superstar art idol because he was the master of the clean and precise line, and he painted nothing but fantastically beautiful women - what could be better? I met him once at the opening of his solo show at the Dyansen Gallery in SoHo in '83. As a starving art school student, I couldn't afford to buy a print and have him sign it, but I had brought one of his post cards with me and had him autograph it. He was very friendly and gracious and chatted with me for a few minutes, though I'm sure I came off as somewhat star struck.

The next year he died of a heart attack. He was only 38.

Drawing for Collector's Gallery on the left. Nagel used photocopied enlargements of his pencil roughs to transfer the images to illustration board for final inking. Click images for a larger view.

Over the years I've built a small collection of a dozen or so Nagel prints, and still regularly keep my eye on eBay to see what's for sale and what its going for. A few weeks ago I spotted a print for sale from a guy I had bought one from some years back - in '01 I think. He turned out to be fairly local, so we met at a Starbucks in Huntington Beach to do the exchange, where we sat and talked Nagel stuff for a while. Turns out this guy - Julian was his name - was part of the whole Mirage gallery organization in Santa Monica (Nagel's official publisher) back in the day and said he had a large collection of Nagel's work - signed and unsigned prints from official editions, some one-off prints (directly from Wasserman and Samper in Los Angeles, the silkscreeners who made Nagel's serigraphs) and even some of Nagel's original artwork. I didn't have much money to spend at the time but bought a small printer's proof serigraph - one of only two in existence, he says - from him, and before he had to go he suggested I come down to Carlsbad sometime to view the rest of his collection. Unfortunately that never happened.

The guy could draw.

Back to 2009. After seeing Julian's new eBay auction I decided to email him to say hello. I reminded him of our previous meeting and in his reply he said he remembered me. Turns out he's now living in Reno, working up in Tahoe, and was down in Carlsbad to pack up all his artwork and move it up north. Once again he invites me down to look at his Nagel archive, as he knows how much of a slobbering Nagel fan I am. Not wanting to miss the opportunity again, I arranged to meet him at his storage facility the very next weekend.

Pencil study for the San Francisco Art Expo poster and the final image. On the right, one of Nagel's rare male figures.

So Saturday afternoon rolls around and I take a spin down the 5 to Carlsbad. It's only about 60 Miles from HB. Julian, a tall, wiry guy, looks virtually unchanged since our last meeting years ago, though the foot-long pony tail he used to sport has been updated to a more contemporary spec, now cut short and skillfully unkempt. He meets me at the gate, buzzes me in and we ride the elevator up to the second floor. His storage unit turns out to be a 10'x10' crammed with tons of framed artwork, piles of large folders, cases filled with prints and one very large metal flat-file with about ten drawers full of hidden treasure. He also collects Warhol prints and has quite a few. After 15 minutes or so of sifting through various piles and drawers, he finally finds what he's looking for and pulls out a large folder containing what I've really come down to see: some of Nagel's preliminary sketches - photocopied enlargements of final pencil drawings - and some original ink-on-board drawings by Nagel himself.

Original ink on board for 'Lori' and the final serigraph for comparison.

I am just in heaven looking at this stuff! I've always wanted to take a peek behind the curtain and see Nagel's process - the work he did BEFORE he got to the final image - and now here was some of it - fantastic! Julian let me take some pictures with my iPhone - the quality is crap but at least I've got something. Nagel's pencil drawings are amazing - I think I almost like some of them more than the final prints that were ultimately made from them!

Pencils of two images I've never seen before. Apologies for the rather poor image quality, these were shot with my iPhone in a dim hallway of a storage facility!

Then Julian rummages in a dark corner and pulls out a large, loosely rolled up print, titled 'Collectors Gallery', that's always been one of my top two or three favorite Nagel images (in fact the small (24" wide) print I previously bought from Julian is the same). But this one is a HUGE 60" wide and is absolutely stunning! It's in rather rough shape though: There's one area of one color where some ink bled out a little during the screening process, it has a long scrape across the upper left area and there are several smudgy and dirty areas on it that hopefully will clean up - I haven't attempted anything yet. Because of the bleeding, it was a rejected print from the original edition of only 90 signed and numbered prints done in 1982 - thankfully someone decided not to destroy it. And it is also untrimmed - it still has the registration marks visible outside the image area - I think I'm going to leave it like that. It's my little piece of Nagel history.

Art Therapy For Gearheads

Automobilia - Sneak peek at a few images I've been tweaking in Photoshop for an upcoming art card series featuring photos taken at various California car shows. Eventually these will be available through an online shop I'll set up at zazzle.com. I'm also thinking about doing some posters from some of the images as well. We'll see what develops. Click to view pics larger.

Steve Jobs' Evil Power Button Conspiracy

Once upon a time, back in the age when Apple computers were beige boxes and still had floppy disk drives - probably somewhere in the early- to mid-90's - Mac keyboards included a dedicated key at the far right of the top row which would, when pressed, power up the computer. Good idea, right? If you're like me and your computer is positioned on (or near) the floor under your desk, this useful feature (one of Apple's core competencies) meant no more inconvenient leaning down to hit the power button on the front of the computer.

I'm not sure exactly when the change came, but somewhere around the release of the original iMac in 1998 Apple keyboards suddenly no longer had the power-up key feature and we, the Mac faithful, were once again relegated to the daily ritual of stooping over, as if we were tying our shoes, to turn on our computers. This was not progress. This was not an improved user experience.

This was very un-Apple.

Including a power switch right there on the keyboard was such a no-brainer - so why the change - why the step backwards? Why remove a feature that made working with a computer every day just a little bit more pleasant?

Here's what I think. In 1997, when Steve Jobs returned as CEO of Apple after being booted by the board a decade prior, he made sweeping changes to better the company. Chief among them was a renewed focus on the industrial design of Apple products. The original iMac was a smashing success not only for the way it worked, but also for the way it looked. There had never been anything like its all-in-one concept with its user-friendly form factor (it had a built-in handle!) and eye-popping juicy-fruit colors.

Steve Jobs obviously wants us to look at his creations, not just use them, and it's this vanity that got the convenient power button forever banished from Apple keyboards. Think about it. If you could power up and shut down a Mac directly from the keyboard, then there'd be no need to keep the computer directly at hand and visible - if only to feed it the occasional CD or DVD (and seriously, when's the last time you did that?). It may as well live its life out of the way - unseen inside a desk or cabinet.

But no, Mr. Jobs must have reasoned, this would simply not do. So the keyboard power-up button vanished in a puff of fabled reality distortion field magic dust, and ever since then we've all had to work practically on top of our admittedly gorgeous MacPro towers, and actually reach down every day and physically touch them to turn them on.

But Steve wasn't quite done jacking with us yet...

Notice the 'home' button on the iPhone. It's concave shape makes it easy to locate and use by touch alone - you don't even have to see it. Now notice the power button on the front panel of the MacPro, on the right above. It's a little hard to tell in the photo, but it sits completely flush with the surface of the panel and does not have a concave, easy to locate by touch alone, shape to it. What this means is that, unlike with the smartly designed iPhone home button, it's difficult to reach down and find the MacPro power button by feel. So you have to actually look at the computer when you're turning it on!

And this, my friends, is exactly the way Steve Jobs wants it.

Supercool Retro 'UP' Posters Released!

To celebrate the DVD and Blu-Ray release of Pixar's latest animated movie 'UP', the studio has commissioned these wonderful retro-travel-themed posters. And the good news is, if you're a fan of the flick or just dig the artwork, you can download high resolution (12 x 18 inches at 300 pixels per inch) versions. I grabbed mine through Ain't It Cool here.

Most of the posters were designed and illustrated by Paul Conrad, a freelance artist formerly with Pixar Animation Studios. You can see more of his amazing illustration work on his website SuperRobotMonster.com

More Shameless BSK:BLK Store Promotion

For the discerning consumer who craves unnecessary adornment, I've created the BSK:BLK store on Zazzle - see their whiz-bang flash animated plug-in above. I've just uploaded the first in a series of art cards featuring my automotive photography and graphic manipulation. This set of five cards follows the 'American Muscle' theme and features an artsy rough pastel look to the images.

Buy one or buy 'em all - I think you get a discount and a nice little box to keep the cards in if you order ten, so that'd be my recommendation. Here's a look at the first five - click below to enlarge.