Thursday, February 28, 2008

A Show, Sketch, Film, and Birthday Walk into a Post

Show

It ended up raining during the reception on Saturday night after all. But despite that, we still had a great turnout. People came in waves throughout the whole evening and everyone had a great time. My small camera is pretty much ready to die, so I hope you'll excuse the lack of photos. I'm waiting to see if anyone else grabbed a few. Here's one Alex took of me answering a few questions.


Sketch


Inspired by the critical mass viewing of early morning paintings, a few of us went out Tuesday morning to paint. The sun was a little dodgy, and to be honest, I'm out of practice in both, plein air painting and waking up early, so I avoided being overly ambitious by sticking to a watercolor/gouache sketch in my book.


Film

I finally watched The Great Race the other night with Alex. I say 'finally', because it's a classic that I've wanted to watch for nearly ten years, ever since I caught a brief moment where Jack Lemmon's character lights a match along his teeth. I could never find a copy of the film in a video rental, and I don't watch much TV (where they apparently play it every year). But it was recently reissued on DVD, so we Netflixed it. It was pretty funny, especially how every character in the film resembled a cartoon character in very obvious ways.


Birthday

Today is my thirty-first birthday. That's an odd number to get excited about, so I insisted that Alex not get me anything this year. So what does she do? She goes and gets multiple gifts. She began celebrating my birthday before I even realized it was here.

I chose "P" which turned out to be a DVD of Pixar's animated shorts. What a gal!

11 comments:

Julien alday said...

Argl, I'm crawling to the keyboard, but nothing will stop me that day: JOYEUX ANNIVERSAIRE, MIKE ! ^^ C'est toi le meilleur. ;) Hope all was well with the show.
Cheers.
J.

Tom Scholes said...

Happy Birthday Buddy! :D

Bill Robinson said...

Hey Mike, thanks for stopping by my blog - nice sketch up there too. Can't wait to go out and paint with you guys sometime. (Gotta practice at home first, or I will be put to shame, haha.) Happy Birthday, too!

Anonymous said...

Hi Mike,

It was nice meeting you at the Early Birds Show. Honestly, your Plein Air is very mature and solid. I imagined that you were an older person. Really nice work.

BTW, The Bay Area has some real nice waterfalls.

http://www.waterfallswest.com/index.shtml

The best one is inside Mt Tam called the Cararact Falls. Lots of casading falls.

cK

Bruce said...

Happy B-day, Mike! And great sketches, as always...

I caught the Great Race back in the summer and it's one of my favorite childhood movies. What a treat.

JimmyG said...

Oh wow! HAPPY BIRTHDAY Mike!!!! I'm not going to ask what the "S" one was ; )

Matt Berger said...

happy birthday, sir!! what a grand little comic. i like it. your facial expressions are priceless. ;)

Anonymous said...

Oh darn, I didn't know it was your birthday, but here I am saying Happy Late Birthday! I hope you enjoyed it, and it was nice to see you at the reception on Saturday.

Mike Dutton said...

I apparently lost my replies to all of you, which is pretty annoying. My apologies.... but thank you everyone for the fond birthday wishes. I had a great one, even if it meant getting a little older.

Thanks cK for the kind words about my work. I enjoyed meeting you at the reception and was appreciative of your many insights into everyone's work.

Julien, please... no more crawling, my friend. Take care of yourself and risk nothing on my account! Thank you as always.

Tom - Thanks dude. :)

Bill - If you catch my latest update - the Petaluma Alleyway, you'll see there's very little need to get in preemptive sessions. I bomb out more times than anyone else!

Bruce - I can't remember everything I wrote, but I do remember being stoked to see you using your Edward Gorey portrait as an avatar. Right on!

Jimmy - Socks, man. Socks. :) I was really excited too. Like genuinely excited. You have no idea how badly I've needed new socks.

Eduardo - Thanks. :) It was good seeing you at the show. Good to see you constantly plugging away on your work as well!

Okay, hopefully I won't lose these responses or else I'm just gonna "Thanks all" and leave it at that.

Mike Dutton said...

Oops, left out Matt. Sorry Matt. -_-

Hey, there's another facial expression for ya. Thanks as always for leaving your comments.

Unknown said...

Wow- totally late, but Happy Birthday!
2/27 is my wife and sister's birthday, so you can be sure I'll remember yours from now on. No thinking on my part!
Love the new sketches as well. Looking so so good.