Month: June 2018


Chovie Clipper Hoists Anchor


Gosh, it’s been a long time since the Catblog was updated. Here’s a watercolor I did down in San Pedro at the old Ports O’ Call center. It was a charming place in those days, many quaint buildings, seafood restaurants and views of cargo and pleasure craft waiting at the docks. Several times, Cathy and I would start sketches of ships only to have them take off from the moorings half-way through the painting! The old Chovie Clipper didn’t disappoint me, she stuck around for her portrait and I had a good time painting her. The colors in the scan aren’t as pretty as the original. It’s 10″ by 14″, a little bit larger than I usually paint. If anybody wants it, just Paypal me fifty bucks with your address and I’ll send it to you. UPDATE: One of my wonderful readers has bought the “Chovie Clipper”! Thanks, Jenny!

 

Felix is from 6-5 to 6-11-1933. Felix gave Danny’s father’s pants to a hobo last time, containing the old man’s paycheck in the pocket. With the aid of a bulldog and a dinosaur bone, the intrepid little cat retrieves the dough and gets a big feast in the 6-10. Felix gets kicked, socked and pummeled as he bounces in and out of the house on an old bed spring in the Sunday page. This really feels animated to me, could have been a storyboard!

Myrtle is back! Originally appearing 3-7 to 3-13-1949, I love the Sunday page as the family gets their first television set. I remember our old black and white set from my childhood so well, in fact I can’t remember a time when we didn’t have a set of some kind. Yes, there were a lot of fights on the air, but also some great old cartoons and comedies, and puppet shows! Mrs. Smaltz’s cat figures in the first three dailies, teasing poor Bingo. She looks a lot like Hyacinth, who appears in the Sunday, but is not the same cat. I like the feeling of sadness in the 3-12 daily, as Samson discovers the body of a dead rabbit in the bushes and they have a funeral for it. I’ve buried a couple of beloved cats and a poor dead bird or two, so this one has meaning for me.

 

A double helping of Kat, from 7-12 to 7-24-1943! Offissa Pupp standing behind one of Garge’s fat tree trunks has a pleasing design to it in the 7-15 to 7-17. The little touches of wood planks and potted plants  in the foreground of the 7-16 once again reveal that Garge considered the Coconino characters performers on a stage. The “Bam” and “Boo” talking tree gags of 7-22 and 7-23 are very silly, yet somehow still resonate in that offhand Herriman way. Who else could put over such jokes? 

We’ve been struggling a bit since the last post, with cast iron drain pipes from the upstairs bath tub developing a leak which stained the downstairs drywall with dirty wash water. The odor was not pleasant. I got tricked into paying more than 500 bucks for a company to do an evaluation of the water stained walls for asbestos content! What a rip, the guy who did the asbestos checking was here only a half an hour. He found no asbestos. A retaining wall near the patio outside collapsed (it was unreinforced), and we had to put up a new wall. Our wonderful handyman, Jaime Toscano did the work, he’s so good. The septic tank filled up with water, which turned out to be from a leaky galvanized pipe that was stuck in the middle of the tank. This pipe feeds a hose bib out back; what a lot of wasted water. My wife’s art gallery, the Tirage in Pasadena, is closing down after more than 35 years and we will soon be getting many of her paintings returned to us. The Tirage was a very good gallery, well run by hard-working folks, but there is a declining interest in fine art for purchase by the public. I’ll be posting a few images of Cathy’s paintings in future Catblog posts. Thanks for reading, don’t forget about us!

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