I was thinking that for once I knew EXACTLY what to write here.

But that was WEEKS ago, and I forgot the words of it.

I still have the shape of it though, so don't worry - I'll do it later.

In the meantime, a couple of things:

You may or may not have noticed that this website has been frozen as if by magic, as if this is Narnia or someplace and now we have only dark stillness all around. I'll not bother you with apologies or excuses, because I've used up mine, and besides, isn't it more important to use my powers to wake everything up section by section so we can yawn our way back into life and purpose in the new year? Yes I think so. More on that in 45 seconds.

Here's one of the things I did while I was gone from here, a CD layout project for Mayimba Music:

Also, to recognize this new year and my 29th birthday, I would like to do a small public pledge renewal: Rest assured, dear imaginary readers, we here at Looka Look are going to keep doing our best whether or not anyone sees it, oh heck yeah.

This is NOT the same thing as not caring whether or not anyone sees it.

We might wish to find a way to someday monetize our love, or at least to pull in esteem from the world with our gigantic nets. I guess that wanting those things is a requisite for getting them too, but if we're leaving our nets and our guile in the closet we're still bringing our love and wearing it on our heads, and we're unashamed. 

The wish that goes first is the wish for a few more hours in the day - just 3 or 4 maybe - so that we can DO MORE, and do it better and better.

We just found out last night that the Doma Music Series will not go on, having been brought to an untimely end by evil-doers. This is sad Doma, for all of New York City, and for us personally - not only have we thrown in our spare instruments and amplifiers, our pro-bono poster work and our most loved loved ones, but also we really REALLY enjoyed being in the audience every week.

Just imagine, us culture-loving but home-bodied pre-occupied going-out-averse grumps living in this city of great culture but also great crap getting handed a regular series just down the street that is EXTREMELY GOOD ALL OF THE TIME. It's like a tasting menu on a silver tray, lovingly delivered - all we had to do was show up, no decision making required, no sifting or searching, no risk of disappointment. Because unlike so many things in life, we were guaranteed to be satisfied at the very least, sometimes stupefied with pleasure.

All of our hearts are a little bit broken.

Here's a link to an interview given by Ben Perowsky on WBGO, one of the geniuses in the wings (and also most of the time on the stage) of this extraordinary and now defunct experiment, just hours before the gavel fell.

Thanks Doma, and thanks Ben. We loved it.

There's still a lot that we want to do here - it's still not quite humming - but Raph and I got a working model of CarlosMartinCarle.com up for you to peruse and enjoy. We'll keep you updated as the bells all get ringing and the whistles start to whistle. Right now it's a cracker-jack box, but one day it will be a sort of humble Rube Goldberg machine - not the kind that activates ball bearings and robot arms and ends up cooking you breakfast, but another kind of Huff-Carle-Huff analog to that.

In the meantime, enjoy this tie-in: This is probably our second-to-last Doma Poster, so our not-quite-a-year of scrambling to scrape together creative sign-posts for one of the most unfortunately well-kept secrets in New York is winding down. We're going to try and end it spectacularly, so look out.

Next week Ava is going on an overnight field trip with her school. In an ingenious stroke by the teachers, they have each student come with sealed envelopes with letters from their parents, one for each night they're away. Ava insisted that it wasn't just for parents though, babysitters could do it too. So, in my usual last-minute-before-the-last-minute way, I made these:

Lots new to put up here and to talk about, but not right now.

Except last week in the store I read a little more of it and realized that it's not JUST a book on the Philosophy and Practice of Cartooning, but a breakdown of the Cartooning Course that Ivan Brunetti sometimes teaches.

So I thought, well I guess I had better DO it. And bought the book. And then I read the whole thing.

That was actually my first mistake.

The way to do an experiment like this is sincerely and with full attention - the only way to do ANYTHING really - and knowing what comes later and the way exercises are used and explained, combined with knowing certain things about my own mechanisms and limitations really spoiled that.

I should've only read what I needed to know to do the assignments, and then put the book aside until I was ready for the next little bit of information. (So if you're following along at home - which I HIGHLY RECOMMEND YOU DO - DO NOT SKIP AHEAD.)

But oh well, too late! I'm going to do it anyway, and try my best to do it in the correct spirit. I'll write more about Ivan Brunetti and about the book itself as the weeks go on, but for now here's week one:

SUMMARY

First assignment:

Draw a car 6 times. First time, give yourself 3 or 4 minutes. Then 2 minutes, then 1 minute, then 30 seconds, then 15, then 5. Do it again with a cat, a telephone, and a self portrait. (I skipped the castle. I don't know why.)

Second assignment:

Draw cartoon characters from memory. Spend 10 or 15 seconds on each one. Do at least 25 of them. (I thought that this one would be really fun, but it turned out to be both fun and sickeningly UN-fun and completely humiliating all at once. I guess that is the point, but it really made me ashamed to learn that I can't remember for example what Charlie Brown's hair looks like. I was so tempted to cheat and look at some but I was trying to do it earnestly as I mentioned so I controlled myself, but oh man. You THINK that you know what Mickey Mouse looks like, or Garfield, or Calvin or Hobbes, or Bugs Bunny, what their faces look like or their ears. But it turns out that a mental image of real solid certainty is not actually an image but more of a FEELING, and those are a lot harder to access for reference. I challenge everybody to do this exercise and send us the results, because forget my own shame it's FASCINATING. I'm prepared to have my shame compounded, especially if Raphie jumps in. Also, consider the fact that I'm putting these gross drawings up publicly proof that I'm trying to be TRUE.)

Third assignment:

Make a grid of 100 squares. Draw what you want and let the stream of your consciousness guide you, but spend only 5 or 10 seconds on each square. (I couldn't draw anything recognizable in 5 seconds. I tried to stick to that but kept lingering, silently cursing, going back to the 5 seconds, failing, wandering, the whole way through. I really did try not to think too much but to just do my first impulse but kept wanting to draw interesting teeth and then because a TV was on kept failing to not draw what was on the screen. And fighting bears in armor.)

You can go back to the top and read about what Ivan Brunetti wants you to learn from these, but what I learned is that maybe I'm not cut out for this cartooning thing and maybe I should cut my losses. Come back next week to find out what in the world is going to happen now.

There's more in the middle of the story that I'm going to just skip. The end, though, was a half-full garbage bag of fur, fur sheddings covering every inch of my apartment like the ashes of Pompeii, fur pieces in the corners of my eyes and in my nostrils, and one black black mood.

So I took the leftovers and made something for myself - it was one of the handiest mood-into-object hat-tricks I ever did.

Here's what happened:

Then there was a flurry of similar activity - Masks and faces, ear-headed balaclavas... I almost started to make a whole knitted body-suit, but I stopped when I learned that re-purposing domestic arts for transgressive means was already a THING. That's not my thing. I did it for fun and coolness.

This all took place many years ago, but I was thinking about it on the subway the other day. Knitting season is almost here again, and I had a huge skein of merino-silk blend that I got at the West Tisbury Ag Fair burning a hole in my imaginary pocket. Also I was reading through a sketchbook by the Canadian artist Marcel Dzama, and was so furiously engrossed in it that I almost missed by stop. What is it about some artists? It's kind of gross-feeling to admit it, but sometimes when a set of sensibilities crosses so closely with mine and there's a kind of real adoration of everything they do but also a kind of real feeling of recognition ideas-wise, combined with youth and success and good looks, I find it impossible to love them purely. It's like this person would be my rival, if I was at all in the game. They would be my enemy if I could locate a glove to throw down. Or, maybe, they would let me be in their club if... something. If I did something.

It's real petty. Sort of pathetic, yes. But true at least, and not at all unhelpful actually.

Anyway, don't you think that if Superheroes were real they would have better luck knitting themselves a costume than sewing one? *I* do. Sewing is HARD.

Someone told me that they liked my comics during the black-ink stage, and that I should document that some time. I thought that sounded interesting, so I did a little document of one two-page batch from beginning to end, writing down the date and time that each piece was finished. I'll probably have to do it again though, because I wasn't too careful about taking the pictures, and they're kind of bad.  But here's this for now, kind of fun:

1. Pencil border outlines, clean slate. 7:22 PM, July 31st.

2. Light pencil sketches. 1:16 AM, August 1st.

3. Dark pencil lines. 3:39 AM, August 1st.

 4. First inking. 12:44 AM August 2nd.

5. Pencil colors. 1:14 AM, August 3rd.

6. Water-colored pencil colors. 12:48, August 4th.

7 & 8. Colored and watered borders. 3:28, August 5th.

 9. Final inking. 11:48 PM, August 6th.

1. Pencil, pens, brushes, left to right

a. 0.5 mm Pentel "Forte" A55. Best mechanical pencil I have ever touched with my hands. I recently found that Staples has discontinued selling these. Heartbroken.

b, c. Blacky and Woody, my years-old good buddies

d. I got into the habit of buying super-cheap paintbrushes and thinking they were perfectly fine. But then I accidentally bought this 20-something dollar one and realized my mistake.

2. Calli brand non-clogging, pigmented, waterproof calligraphy ink, jet black india 010. I tried a LOT of india inks with very attractive bottles and labels over the years. Sometimes they dried too slow and I had a smeary mess, sometimes they dried too fast and my pen tip clogged. Sometimes they reacted badly to water, and I wrecked my whole page UP.

Goldilocks-wise, this kind is just right, but I do find that when it's hot and humid out it gets sluggish, which is understandable but also frustration city.

3. Bless the heart of R. Esterbrook for probably saving my life. I found a box at a flea market one time and bought it - that was the Radio variety, the kind Charles Schulz used to use. Eventually I made my way to the 048 falcon tips though, and it changed everything. Each box comes with a warranty, and tells you which number agent examined them to assure uniformity of writing excellence, and contains the stamp of the Esterbrook Pen Company of Camden New Jersey U.S.A.

The only problem is that they're not made anymore, and a person has to do some hell and high water to find them. Oh well, I'm stocked for another few years - after that I might have to find a new way.

4. My first and most lasting love, Caran d'Ache water-solubles. These guys were standard-issue in my grade school, and I've never found anything better. I was given a gift of the 120-color box of these probably 8 years ago, oh man, what a gift. I'm still working through that set, but I replace the colors heavy in my palette every few weeks.

5. Water well for when I water up my colors. I got three of these at the flea market. The guy selling them told me that their original purpose was for single-use cream for peoples' coffees at Diners, back when all dairy was delivered to doors in glass by men.

6. Ink rag, linen, once white and a little bit age-yellow, given to me by my magnificent grandmother, certainly not meant for this purpose but to be a napkin that you would give to Eleanor Roosevelt if she pops by unexpectedly for lunch. In my defense Granny, I only ink stain the ones that have holes that can't be repaired. The other ones I keep ironed, just in case.

This post was meant to be a two-parter, with real ACTION and INTEREST in the second half. But I'm afraid I've worn out any reader including myself with this, but nevermind - I'll put the rest up next week. And this will stand as an object lesson to you and me both. People sure love to talk about their tools.