Tim and Jeremy are both waiters at a restaurant in downtown New York City. During slow times at work, to stave off boredom when it is slow, the two young men draw pictures. These pictures are made using ink and what is called the "Triple Dupe Pad," a book of paper used to place orders in the kitchen. The drawings usually take about a week to make, all the while also being used by fellow employees to take orders; this sometimes leads to other collaborators or in a couple cases, to the loss of the work. The drawings are then scanned and colored in Photoshop where they come to life in stunning technicolor! The subject matter varies from piece to piece, as they are made over a long course of time and under various moods and states of mind. They all retain a playfulness that serves as a coping mechanism after spending a night catering to the endless needs of hungry patrons.

Tuesday, February 11, 2014

#52 "Down in the Mouth" In Color! February 16, 2012

(Click on the image to make it super big)

I was probably coloring this one in exactly two years ago today. I think my computer was in a different location back then. So, instead of facing West, as I am now, I was facing East, looking at the opposite wall. Of course, Tim and I had finished this drawing over the summer of 2011, but we had so many to color that it took me until February to color this one. It's the same thing now, I am always a couple months behind. Sometimes more. In fact, this one marked the last T & J drawing that I worked on for almost a whole year. The year 2012 was a busy year for me and I felt like I didn't have the time to work on these drawings. I was working on writing and illustrating children's books for an iPad App called Mibblio that my buddy Sammy Rubin was developing. I worked on five books that year, illustrating four of them. If you have an iPad, you should download the App and grab a couple of my books; I think you will like them. It was a great experience, but it kept me extremely busy. However, because of that experience, my coloring style changed drastically, as you will see in the upcoming posts.  After such a long hiatus, I got extremely backed up with all of these drawings. Because, even though I wasn't coloring them anymore, we were still drawing all the time at the restaurant. That part never changes. As long as we are working in that place, we keep drawing pictures. At this point, it has become part of the routine at work. I think it is the best part of work sometimes. I think about the drawings sometimes when I'm not there and I wish that I was still working on them when I am at home. I know that this thought is insane. Who in their right mind would want to be at work just so they could work on an elaborate doodle that will someday, years in the future, end up on some blog that only 8 people read? Granted, 2013 was a very productive year for me and I was publishing one of these almost every week. But, I feel like I will never catch up unless either Tim or I quits the restaurant and we no longer draw these pictures. To give you an idea of how backed up I am on this blog: At present, we find ourselves looking at #52 in full color. Last week, I published #86 on Bookface. That means, for me to get caught up, I have to write 68 more blog posts since each picture gets two posts; one for the original Triple Dupe Pad drawing and one for the colored version. Those 8 of you loyal readers know that I write a blog maybe twice a month on average. That means I won't be caught up to #86 for 34 months, or roughly 3 years. Sometimes I write a little more than that, so we could average it to be 2 years from now that I will finally make it up to 86. I guess it's good to have goals.
  I used the word "have" but I guess I don't have to do anything. I enjoy writing these blog posts and I enjoy revisiting the drawings. I don't look at these drawings very much, so it's nice to see them a year or two down the line. They provide a window into the past for me. Some carry pleasant memories, some carry some unpleasant ones, but they all act as a time capsule for me. Some of the drawings I don't even remember drawing, but even those ones carry a reminder of a vague time somewhere in the past. In the mean time, the drawings keep coming down the stairs like the brooms carrying the buckets of water in "The Sorcerer's Apprentice" and I couldn't  be happier about it.

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