Staycation

 Hello there!

It’s been a productive week at the Michael Hopkins’ Cartoon/Caricature Factory. I proved to myself, that given the time, I CAN be productive. The availability of time came from the fact that I had a week of vacation from the jet fuel. Although, I originally had other plans for my vacation, allergy season and surprise car issues, got in the way. It turned out to be a mixed blessing however, given the fact that I was so productive in the art department. Besides, I still plan on fulfilling the two original objectives of my vacation soon...more than likely during the weekends, So all’s well that ends well.

The first thing I want to show you is my second JP Patches (Gertrude) caricature.

For those of you who don’t know who JP Patches is I’ll let JP Patches.com fill you in with the history of JP Patches. Follow the link below  

https://jppatches.com/history/

JP Patches was an important part of my childhood and definitely an significant influence on my sense of humor, which of course is embedded in everything that I have created.

Anyways...I created a short montage (is that the correct word?) of my latest JP Patches drawing from beginning to end. 

The next drawing I’m going to show you is my tribute to Eddie Van Halen. Although I was never an aficionado of the group Van Halen, I was definitely in awe of Eddie Van Halen’s talent and the world was a better place because he shared his gift with all of us. Rest in peace, Eddie.

My next creation is another drawing that came to me in my sleep. Something told me to draw a caricature of Jackie Gleason as Sheriff Buford T. Justice. Besides his portrayal as Minnesota Fats in The Hustler (1961) his performance as Sheriff Buford T Justice in, Smokey and the Bandit was my favorite.+

So that’s it for now. Since I’m back at the drawing board I’m going to try and produce more work, we'll see how that goes….

Incomplete

 Good morning world. It's 4am. One fueled and several to go. Sometimes is a pain in the ass to start work at 3am, however it does have it's advantages...most noticeable, getting off at 11:30am. Disadvantages? Starting work at 3am! Ha! Sometimes I think I'm too old for this sh*t, but I do love this job. Sometimes I think my mind tries to talk me into not liking it, but the heart wins over the convoluted brain and I press on...besides, what am I going to do? Draw??? Oh, yea…

What you see above, is an opening paragraph of a blog, uncompleted. It’s from a few days ago at work (as it states it was about 4am). Anyways, I liked it so I didn’t delete it and here it is. I actually took a picture to go along with the incomplete blog (see below).

The blog, the webcomics and even the caricatures are suffering because of the hours I work. Once you get home after waking up at 2:00am, one doesn't feel like doing much else, let along creating. But create, I must.. because I probably can't fuel airplanes forever (no matter how much I like it). I hit these roadblocks to being a successful artist every so often. This is the reason you haven't seen a new blog, caricature, webcomic or caricature in a while. So it’s time to quit whining and start producing art again. 

Here it goes...