In my instagram post, i promised more of a story. But now I can’t remember the story so give me a second to remember what I promised…

Ahah, I remember now. It was mostly about a parking lot. A small parking lot outside of a coffee shop in Mendham New Jersey, thirty minutes away from home. I drove out here to draw this setup, because it was the only day it worked in what’s apparently a very busy schedule of mine. Classes, openings, shuttling kids to things, working. It’s hard to shoehorn everything in. A parking lot. Big enough for 6 cars. Maybe 8. Bucky’s tent & oven took up two spots. The people playing cornhole in the lawn took up none. They were on the lawn.

I was in the parking lot. Smack dab in the middle of the parking lot, in prime running-over area, sitting in a plastic lawn chair I stole from the families playing cornhole. It was some kind of spring/summer Friday night celebration. Unless they do this all the time outside Simple Coffee in Mendham? If so, that’s pretty cool. Mendham is the place to be.

This pizza is the pizza to eat, too. Holy shit. (Can I swear in here? It’s my own blog? I can do whatever I want? Nobody’s reading it anyway? Excuse me? What do you mean no one’s reading it?! Fuck. Why am I even doing this? OK. Yeah ok. I’ll keep going. Goddamnit.) Holy shit their pizza is good! I don’t know how many can fit in the oven at one time, but it’s probably one or two. People were putting in orders for pizzas they’d get an hour later. And they were like “yeah, cool.” It’s that good. Worth the wait. I don’t think I’ve had crust that crispy…maybe ever.

A pizza was my payment for this painting. Money too. I made money from it thank god. My days of doing things for free are over. Close to over at least. I’m still a sucker for volunteering my time.

Alright enough complaining. There are things I really love about this “job” of “art entrepreneur”. Things like this opportunity to go out to Mendham, which I wouldn’t normally do. I get to discover new places all the time and meet new people and new food and views and things. I also practice practice practice. What’s FASCINATING is that when you practice stuff, you get better at it. Who knew?!

What were the challenges here? Getting the proportions of all the people right. The guy putting the pizza in the oven ended up kinda tiny, compared to Dom, the owner of Bucky’s. But I somehow managed to finagle it so it worked. I think I initially had his boots where the rumpled ends of his pants are. This worked out well, because he’s a lanky fella and Dom’s a pretty big dude. What I wish I had gotten was Dom sharing a laugh with some friends of his who showed up. Most of the time, he was focused and probably sweating like crazy, prepping pizzas. But he’s got a great huge smile that would’ve been awesome in this piece - not like I’m unhappy with it. I think it’s great!

Another challenge is always the other people I want to get in to an illustration. They’re fleeting. They’re not always there. Sometimes I draw ink lines where people end up being, and I wish I had left that space blank so that people can be there. It’s hard to sketch out a whole drawing when I’m not really sure where people are going to be. I guess I could maybe use pencils, but this sounds like cheating to me. It wouldn’t be genuine.

Stay tuned for more rambling inisghts!

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