by Marty Coleman | Jul 27, 2010 | The Internet - 2010 |
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Day #2 of Internet Week at The Napkin Dad Daily
Much of my life is on the internet. I blog, I chat, I email, I store, I sell, I buy, I befriend, I advise, I listen, I enjoy.
But I also tend to disappear into it. I forget I need to go out to brick and mortar stores to try to drum up business. I need to meet people. I need to actually go out and fish.
It has it’s place, and it’s a good place overall. But it isn’t the only place, nor is it the most important place.
Drawing and commentary by Marty Coleman of The Napkin Dad Daily
Quote by anonymous. If you happen to know whose quote this is, contact me. Thanks.
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by Marty Coleman | Jul 26, 2010 | The Internet - 2010 |
Day #1 of Internet Week at The Napkin Dad Daily. Unless I can’t find anything else on the internet, then it will be day #1 of Peeing Week I guess.
I help run the Tulsa Digital Photography Group. We had a photo shoot last year with models dressed up very nice, as if they were going out for a night on the town. We photographed them in a urban atmosphere, metal walls, rusted backgrounds, brick, graffiti, etc. The resulting photos were really quite cool.
I had one that showed a women kneeling down and another bending over holding her skirt. I titled it ‘Drunk Girls Looking For It’ since they both looked drunk, reaching for something off camera. I thought of it as a funny title. I wrote below it that it was actually two models from a fashion shoot. The photo was in a set that showed it wasn’t really a photo of drunk girls.
I posted it on my flickr site along with all the other photos from that shoot and lo and behold, almost a year later it is my most popular photo. Why? Because the title. People search all the time for ‘drunk girls’ apparently. The photo isn’t bad or show them in compromising positions. I kept the title the way it was.
But if you see the other photos of drunk girls that come up in that search, it will definitely give you warning to not let yourself get in that situation for sure. Some are just funny, but some are downright mean, with the girls (and plenty of guys if you search for them) drawn on or put in very embarrassing situations. That is malicious and hurtful, not just silly.
You can’t control everything on the internet or in real life. But you can be smart about what you let out into the world.
Drawing and commentary by Marty Coleman of The Napkin Dad Daily
Quote by anonymous. If you know of the quote author, please let me know.
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by Marty Coleman | Jul 25, 2010 | Sketchbook History Tour, Sunday |
Sketchbook History Tour – 1973.
I have sketchbooks dating back to 1971. Each Sunday I will post a drawing, going through the years.
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| Sunbather at a Country Club, 1973 |
During the summer after I graduated from High School I got blown up in a boat explosion. My recuperation took place at my parent’s home in Virginia. I got a job life guarding at a local pool inside a country club. I used my off time to continue drawing. A frequent visitor to the pool allowed me to draw her sunbathing. Sunbathers are great models for artists of course since they sit still for long periods of time. She was no exception.
Drawing by Marty Coleman of The Napkin Dad Daily
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by Marty Coleman | Jul 22, 2010 | Encyclopedia of Characters |
Wormy Worm goes WAY back. When I first moved to Tulsa in 1994 I joined a company making educational software for kids. We had to come up with games and projects as part of the overall design of the CDs. One of the games included a worm character and thus was born Wormy Worm.
Wormy Worm is a great observer of the world around him. He witnesses the foibles and eccentricities of people and animals and has wise things to say about what they mean. I think Wormy Worm is one of the wisest characters in The Napkin World.
Drawing by Marty Coleman
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by Marty Coleman | Jul 21, 2010 | Encyclopedia of Characters, Heat |
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It’s summer and it’s hot so it’s time for Sunny Sun to enter the Pantheon of Characters in the Napkin Dad’s Encyclopedia.
Sunny Sun is positive and happy, a natural life giver. She can get angry though, and sometimes burns people who don’t pay attention to her.
She shows up in the napkins frequently, often representing the idea of persistence. Keep on keepin’ on and Sunny Sun will show up again eventually, no matter how she tries to hide behind her friend, the sweet Puffy Cloud or his scarier cousins T. Hunder and Tory Nado.
Sometimes S. Sun can be seen multiple times in the same sky. That is a mystery how that happens.
You can’t go wrong following Sunny, she will never let you down.
Drawing and commentary by Marty Coleman of The Napkin Dad Daily
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by Marty Coleman | Jul 20, 2010 | Heat, William Penn |
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Day #2 of Heat Week at The Napkin Dad Daily. It’s 97ºƒ (108º heat index) / 37ºc (42.2º) Here in Tulsa, Oklahoma (USA) again today.
“It’s not what you say, it’s how you say it.”
Have you ever heard that line spoken to you? I have. They didn’t like my way of talking and that kept them from being able to hear what I was saying. In most cases it was my fault. I was saying things in a way that obscured rather than clarified. It’s like a graphic design advertisement that is so wild and over the top that you can’t read any of the words on it. That isn’t a good strategy if you are trying to communicate.
The same goes for arguments regarding ‘truth’. The overheated blowhards who rant and rave against whatever their flavor of the week is aren’t doing their cause any favors. The hot air they put out is entertainment for their minions but it doesn’t build a foundation of intelligent and thoughtful argument. It’s simply the scorching wind of heat without light.
The antidote is to be cool and thoughtful in your response. It may not seem to be the most entertaining and often doesn’t have that satisfying adrenalin rush that an angry rant has, but in the long run it is the most effective way to put your argument forward.
Drawing and commentary by Marty Coleman of The Napkin Dad Daily
Quote by William Penn, 1644-1718, founder of the state of Pennsylvania
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by Marty Coleman | Jul 19, 2010 | Caroline Schroeder, Heat |
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Someone told me I should do a series on heat since it has been so hot this summer around the entire North American continent (and parts of Europe I hear). So, it’s Heat Week at The Napkin Dad Daily!
One of the easiest things to do is change your mind due to being intellectually enlightened. But changing behavior from your heart, your core, that is very hard to do by cool intellectual thought. Of course eventually if you change your mind about something you might find yourself changing your attitudes or behaviors down the road, incrementally. And it’s likely they will be long lasting as a result. But a sudden transformation? Not as likely.
Heat on the other hand will cause changes faster than you can say ‘fire truck’. That is why AA and other addiction programs talk about a person having to hit rock bottom before they will change. They have to feel the heat of their life falling down all around them. Maybe they lose everything, are at the end of their rope. That sort of heat leads to change. You see it often in religious conversions as well as behavior changes.
The problem with heat related changes is they can often be short-lived. The emotion, the danger, the fear all lead to a promise to change, and will to change, but once the heat has passed, it takes a cool light to continue to lead the way, to make a change permanent. That is why threats of hell or damnation or some other fear based idea aren’t good. They make people feel heat, but they don’t help them see the light.
So, whether with yourself, family, friends or your children always be ready to supply the light when the heat has died down, which it eventually will.
Drawing and commentary by Marty Coleman of The Napkin Dad Daily
Quote by Caroline Schoeder, no information available. If you find any, forward it to me please, thank you.
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by Marty Coleman | Jul 18, 2010 | Sketchbook History Tour |
Remember last week I mentioned I had counted up my sketchbooks and I found I had 29 of them? I decided to to through them and pick out one per year to post on Sundays for a while. This is from the first sketchbook (1971-1973). I was 17 when I painted this, my junior year of high school.
This portrait is of a family friend, Bruce Hall. We moved to Darien, CT because of his mother, Helene. My mother met her in a grocery store in Maryland in the 50s. Over 15 years later, when we were going to move to the east coast from the west, we focused our home search in the same town where Helene lived.
I don’t remember any of the specifics of why I was doing this portrait of Bruce, but I suspect Helene was encouraging me to do it. She was a great artist, working in painting and sculpture. She was the second major influence on me as an artist, after my grandfather, who had passed away by this time. She encouraged me and pushed me to understand what being an artist was really all about.
Helene was a brassy, ballsy broad in the classic definition (think Rosalind Russell in Mame). She took no prisoners when she saw pretention or hypocrisy. She was funny as hell. All obvious reasons why my mother and she became friends from a simple grocery store encounter. How I would have liked to have been in that aisle when they met, I can just imagine how funny they were and how they caught each other’s attention as a result.
She once challenged me to try to create something as good as a Picasso sculpture I saw at the Museum of Modern Art on a visit there with her. I said the typical ‘Anyone could do that’ and she stopped me in my tracks and said, then do it. I actually did attempt to create a wire sculpture (this was when I was about 13) and failed miserably. The lesson was learned. It wasn’t a question of IF you could do it. It was a question of DO YOU DO IT. When it gets to that question the bigger question arises. WHY are you doing it. And that changes you from being a critic to being an artist.
Helene is now 91 or so. She is taken care of by Bruce and his son, Evan. Both great guys!
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by Marty Coleman | Jul 16, 2010 | Betty Rollins, Having Sex - 2010 |
Day #5 of Having Sex Week at The Napkin Dad Daily
Wait a second, isn’t this a sexist comment? Maybe, if you think being a ‘sex object’ is wrong under any circumstances. I define ‘sex object’ as being the object of sexual desire.
It is true in the great myth of Venus. She is stripped of a well rounded set of human traits, reduced to represent one thing, sex. The most famous of her images, the sculpture ‘Venus de Milo’ is without arms, unable to do anything but stand there, frozen as an object. Of course, that isn’t how the sculpture was created, but it’s current state makes it a great example of what I am talking about.
In the media, that idea of sex object is stripped down to its most basic elements. There is an objectification on top of objectification until you get to where there is nothing but an unknown object and a single minded desire for that object. That type of ‘sex object’ is pretty empty and eventually unfulfilling for both the object and the objectifier.
But in the complete human experience, a real life lived by a real human (male or female), being the object of sexual desire isn’t off the table. It is available to the well rounded person who wants that. The problem comes when that becomes the primary means of feeling value or getting attention and affection.
So, by all means, be a sex object if you want. It can be fun and playful. But watch out for that taking over and being ALL you are focused on being.
Drawing and commentary by Marty Coleman of The Napkin Dad Daily
Quote by Betty Rollins, 1936-not dead yet, American author and reporter.
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Don’t forget – Cards of all sorts; birthday, condolences, bon voyage and more, are available at my site on Zazzle.com Coffee cups too!
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by Marty Coleman | Jul 15, 2010 | Having Sex - 2010, Mae West |
Napkin Dad cards available at Zazzle. Birthday, condolence, going away and more.
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Day #4 of Having Sex Week at The Napkin Dad Daily
Here is the issue about emotion in sex and love. Men often have too little of it (emotion that is) and women often have too much of it.
For you women, actually it isn’t just that men have less of it than you do. It’s also that they don’t know they have it in the first place. They feel just a hint of something, but they don’t investigate it. It is left unformed and uninvestigated. Men are often not even aware it WAS a feeling they had, and if they did realize it, they aren’t sure what that feeling represented. They don’t name it and categorize it.
For you men, actually it isn’t that women just have more of it than you do. It’s also that they investigate deeper into the emotions they do have. To them they are a mobius strip of never ending investigations. And not just their emotions, but yours as well. They figure you are exploring yours as deeply as they are their own and so they want to know what it is you are feeling. They are working at defining what it is they felt and where it sits in relation to her other emotions and yours. When you aren’t able to say what it is your feel, it’s easy for them to think you either are hiding something or don’t feel anything.
That is why sex is often such a emotionally bonding experience for both men and women. It isn’t primarily about words. It’s about motion and sensory experience and the emotions are created through those things. Sex is good that way.
Drawing and commentary by Marty Coleman of The Napkin Dad Daily
Quote by Mae West, 1893-1980, American playwright and actress. Read her bio, she was an amazing woman well ahead of her time. Incredibly creative and ambitious. I didn’t realize she wrote many of the plays and movies she starred in.
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