John wastes paper

EARLY AURAL IMPRESSIONS DEPT: When I was eight years old I heard Walt Disney's "Treasure Island" for the very first time. That's right, I said "heard," not "saw." You see, one rainy Saturday when my brother and I were visiting my Grandmother, she played for us a 4-disc, 78 rpm recording of the movie's soundtrack that she had bought for our father when he was eight. AND MAN!!! I can't tell you how vividly these records played in my young mind! The voices! The sound effects! The music! They all mixed together in my child-sized brain to paint a picture of every exotic location and every larger-than-life character. And the character that left the biggest impression on me was poor old  Ben Gunn , the pirate who had been stranded on the island of the title years before, left to die by that dirty Long John Silver and his mates, and who (spoiler alert here!) secretly squirreled away the entire buried treasure – as something to do on his

"ISN'T IT TIME YET?" DEPT: I just can't wait until tomorrow night's Oscar show! Yeah– I'm a real Academy Awards junky. I haven't missed one since 1974! To help myself cope with the wait, I dashed off these doodles of Ellen Degeneres, this year's host. I wish I could do her more justice, but my skills are failing me tonight. As far as I'm concerned, Ellen is right up there with Johnny Carson and Billy Crystal as the all-time best hosts of the ceremony and I'm looking forward to a thoroughly enjoyable (and long) Sunday evening :) Digital, 11.5 x 8.0 @ 300 dpi.

"BUT, WHAT I REALLY WANT TO DO IS DIRECT" DEPT: In the early 1980s I was lucky enough to be part of a group effort to develop and sell a television series titled "SONSHIP." We went so far as to shoot a trailer to show investors, but nothing ever came of it. A few years later, the concept and storyline morphed into a feature film and I was asked to visualize characters and other art direction aspects. Three of my concept boards are shown here. The first one visualizes some of the bad guys; the second shows two of the good guys - including the lead character; and the third shows the two young protagonists, who at this point in the story don native disguises to elude their pursuers. When I look at these drawings today, I'm struck by two things: 1) although you may not see it, I really see the influence of illustrator Jean Moebius in my line work. I had just discovered him and was really taken with his loose style and incredible imagination. And 2) I see how

MAKE IT UP AS YOU GO ALONG DEPT: Thanks to some very kind people who overlooked my lack of talent, my inexperience, and yet were still willing to pay me money, I had a minor career as a production designer back in the mid 80s. These were all local commercials and industrial films, but I had a blast designing props and sets for them all. Being a huge movie fan, I was able to offset what I didn't know with extreme enthusiasm for the work. And I had the good fortune to work with an excellent set builder, Steve Hoyland. He had the patience of a saint and treated me well. The drawing above was a set for one of the local television commercials I was hired for. Actually, Steve had gotten the job (from director Grant Spot - yes, that is his real name) and he hired me to draw up some set concepts. This commercial was hawking a new product, Blue Diamond Almonds' Almond Butter - which was just like peanut butter, but made with almonds. Grant and Steve needed two sets: one (shown

MORE "MORE OLD CRAP" DEPT: I designed and illustrated this brochure cover for one of DWR's visitor centers some time in the mid 90s. The assignment wasn't necessarily supposed to be an illustrative one. I could have used a nice photograph if I'd wanted to. But one was not available because, as the axiom goes, "To take a picture of a pretty girl, the first thing you need is a pretty girl." And the exterior of this visitor center was not "a pretty girl." The grounds surrounding its front were barren and dominated by a large expanse of grey, cracking asphalt, meant for the herd of visitor's parked cars they must have been expecting. However, the center has a great view of the lake behind it. After all, the name of the center is Vista Del Lago! So I chose to illustrate that aspect, designing a simple, almost mark-like, graphic that played-up that view. It's composed as if the center and lake were seen through a telephoto lens, stack