#64 In Color!!! June 19, 2013

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When Tim and I started this project 5 years ago, we had no idea how far it would go. We were essentially just messing around, drawing pictures at work like we had been for years before that fateful day where we liked a picture enough to take it home and work on it outside of the restaurant. That first picture that I took home is pretty simple, but has all of the insanity of later drawings in it. Take a look at it here.
Tim and I would draw on the Triple Dupe Pad nearly every day we were at the restaurant, always adding (and sometimes subtracting) to the whole thing. We would draw on them while we had our evening coffee before the rush, and then again at the end of the night while sitting on Table 8 drinking beers and talking about the evening that had just recently ended. As time went on, Tim and my schedule became less and less intertwined. We used to work three out of four days together, and so we were working on these drawings a lot during that time. As the years passed, our schedules changed so much that Tim and I only work together for a couple hours on Friday evenings when I come in to wait tables in the evening and he finishes up his shift as the dar bar tender. I am not sure if that fact of not working together has slowed down our output, but we have certainly slowed down the production of T&J drawings.
 I rarely draw these days during the pre-shift coffee break. This is usually because I am much better friends with the bar regulars now, and so instead of turning my back to them and drawing insane pictures of aliens harvesting heads, I catch up with them and visit. Then, at the end of the night, it's usually the same thing. Instead of the staff sitting on Table 8, like the old days, we all hang out at the bar and visit with our favorite regulars. It almost seems wrong to call these people regulars since a lot of them are friends who happened to be customers first. That is how I would describe these people to outsiders. Yes, we met in a server/served environment, but we have gone beyond that relationship and developed a full-on friendship. This happens sometimes in some restaurants and bars, but it happens at our place more, I think. The way the restaurant operates, and the longevity of the staff makes it the perfect place to become really good friends with the staff and regulars.
For instance, years ago, a woman named Karen started coming in to eat. She would come in and sit at Table 11 or 12 (depending on which one was open at the time). She would read on her Kindle and have a glass of wine and eat a little something. Well, after a couple of times waiting on her, I asked how she liked the Kindle (they were new at the time), and from that question on, we became friends. She would come in every Wednesday and Friday for years and years. We became Bookface friends, and we would talk for hours about everything from technology to the Opera and everything in between. Now, you are probably thinking, well, obviously a young waiter and a single woman becoming friends in a restaurant is nothing out of the ordinary. That sort of thing happens every day. The only difference is that Karen and I are completely different people from completely different times. She could be an aunt of mine or some distant relative that would be a peer of my parents. But, because of the restaurant, we are now friends. In the outside world that never would have happened, but in the restaurant it happens all the time. The fact that I have so many friends my parents age and older is directly related to working at the restaurant. And so, I guess it is a little sad that the T&J production has gone down but the reason for the slowdown is a positive thing. I mean, friendship is more important that productivity any day of the week.

#59 "2-5-5-4-7-4-6" in Color!!! July 10, 2013

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Pick up your phone and call the number that is also the title of this piece. Area code +1 (212).
The phone will ring in a restaurant on 13th Street, in between 6th and 7th Avenues in New York City. Depending on the hour, someone might answer the phone, although if it's too early in the morning, it will ring for a very long time, or until you get bored of listening to the constant ringing of the phone in your earpiece/hands-free device. Yes, this is the phone number to the place where Tim and I work, and where we create these art pieces. We draw each of them at the restaurant and only at the restaurant. We don't color them there, since our only source of color is to use the natural colors in the food, such as beets, bitters, and blue #2, or to use the various crayons that we keep in the tea drawer for our younger guests who like to color on the table cloths (I have kept some of those masterworks and will post them here someday). I have contemplated coloring one or some or all of them at the restaurant with said hues, but I continue to bring them home and color them in on Photoshop instead. I like the way that the drawings change. They start off so randomly, so arbitrary, and usually so dirty. They have been lying around a restaurant, being used by servers, bartenders, busboys, and food runners to put in orders, jot down notes, reservations, and phone numbers. During that time, Tim and I are drawing on them, and then they get stuffed into a drawer to live with the rest of the triple dupe pads that have run out of order forms, but have unfinished T&J drawings on them. There, the dupe pads could live for a couple days up to a couple years. That's right, years. I think there are a couple drawings in there now that have been living in the drawer for multiple years. These drawings just won't be finished. I am sure as drawings they want to be finished, but neither Tim nor I can find the inspiration or content to finish them, and so they wait for motivation to find us, so that we can finish them. They must feel left out, because some of these drawings come together in the matter of a couple days. We'll start one of the drawings and it'll just fly through the "system" and be done before you know it, while it's comrades sit in the drawer waiting to be finished for years. Next time you come into the restaurant, ask us to see the unfinished drawings. It's pretty neat to see them in their original environment.
This drawing is not one of those fast ones. If I remember correctly, this one took quite a while to finish. The reason I know this is from the woman depicted on the left-hand side of the drawing holding the #2 sign with the massive growths on the other arm. This is one of my first sketches of a character from my children's book, Jenny Balloons. This is literally one of the first sketches of that character, who would eventually change significantly. In this drawing, she is definitely a woman, whereas in the book, she starts as a baby and only ages to about 16, I believe. However, I drew this drawing of the girl who actually inspired the whole story in the first place. The story goes like this: I was leaving the restaurant late one Sunday night sometime in 2011. I was having one of those nights where nothing was going right and I was annoyed with everything. I get down to the subway and there is a woman dressed head to toe in balloons. She looks like she wants someone to talk to, and I know it's going to be me. I am not in the mood to talk after a long, busy night behind the bar, so I avoid eye contact and walk to the other end of the platform. Well, don't you know, the train arrives and I get on the last car in the last door, and who do I see coming towards me? The girl in the balloon dress. She comes up to me and sits down right there on the floor of the subway and starts talking to me. I knew it! I end up talking with her the entire time back to Brooklyn. She turned out to be a really interesting person. I should have known that anyone dressed in a full gown made entirely out of balloons and adorned with a balloon hat would be interesting. It turns out her name is Katie Balloons and she is an incredibly talented balloon artist. She makes dresses, does sculpture, parties, all with balloons! She gave me a couple of balloons and we said our goodbyes, and I went home much happier than I had been before. The next day I woke up and immediately wrote the first draft of what would become "Jenny Balloons." I drew a rough draft of what the dress looked like that day, and then drew the one you see above later that week. I wouldn't start illustrating Jenny Balloons for another 8 months, as I was working on other books for Mibblio and we were originally going to go with a female illustrator for Jenny. Once I started illustrating that book, I was busy with it for the rest of the year, which is why 2012 is essentially a black hole of T&J drawings. I wouldn't get back to coloring this drawing for about a year and a half after it was originally drawn. By that time, I had spent so much time illustrating all those balloon dresses and outfits found in the children's book, that coloring this one was a breeze. It goes to show you that some things take time to be realized. And sometimes, the final product is worth the wait!
Is the phone still ringing?