#62 "Blue Shirt, Period." In Color!!! June 6, 2013

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Picasso's Blue Period only lasted for 3 years, but the name will live on forever. It is said that he was severely depressed at this time, as his friend had just committed suicide. His subject matter turned to the fringe members of society; beggars, prostitutes, and thieves. At the time, the paintings were not well received by the public or by Picasso's own art dealers, although now they are some of his most popular works and the name itself is synonymous with "the brooding artist." I'm sure every artist goes through a "blue period" of some sort, even though the artist might not be actually painting in blue. In Tim and my case, I doubt this could be considered our blue period, but when I posted it to Bookface, I did mention that we were now entering our blue period. I was merely making a joke about this two-headed artist's choice of palette for his little masterpiece (that and the heavy use of the color blue throughout the picture). On top of that, the title of this drawing is a play on the uniform we wear at the restaurant. When I first started, the uniform was a blue, button down shirt with a tie of your choice, jeans, and a bistro apron. For the most part, the uniform has stayed the same, but we do have a couple people on the staff now that have taken some creative liberties. Phillip tends to wear a lot of color and a lot of patterns both on his shirts and on his conservatively wild ties. He has real style though and his shirts are always pressed so he can get away with it. I still maintain the original "uniform" most of the time unless I am behind the bar, although Dien has been wearing wild shirts behind the bar for nearly 20 years. There are waiters in this picture, although they must not work with us as they have some crazy attire.
It's hard for me to pinpoint when Tim and I had a "Blue Period," if we have had one at all. The thing about an on-going project like this one is that a lot of the work is done at such different times and over the course of so many days that there is probably blue period aspects in many of the drawings. But, since there is other "periods" in the same picture, you can't tell the difference. Also, 2013 was an incredibly productive year for me and the whole "Mind on Loup" series. Since I had essentially taken 2012 off to work on children's books, 2013 saw a huge increase in production in the "Mind on Loup" drawings. Not that we were drawing them faster, it's just I had a ton backed up from 2012 and colored them in at a furious pace. In fact, I put out about 30 colored versions in 2013, so that marked the most productive year ever. To put that into perspective, this year I have only put out 18 and the 3 years before that I put out 52 combined. It's a lot of numbers, I know, and I will stop with all this math. The long story short is that the Blue Period for the "Mind on Loup" series is impossible to trace. I'm sure Tim could show you some of his drawings from a low point in his life, and I could certainly show you some pictures that I drew while depressed, but they would probably be on different pictures in different time periods. Also, since the drawings remained uncolored for sometimes almost 2 years, the original drawing and the colored version would have almost nothing in common as far as mood is concerned. I may have been depressed while drawing the purple cloud or the orange mechanical fish(?) but by the time I got around to coloring it, I am not even sure I remember what the thing is that I am coloring.
In a lot of these drawings I can remember drawing the subjects and I can remember specific events surrounding the drawings. This is not one of them. The only thing I vaguely remember about drawing this one is the thing on the far right-hand side, because Edie could not believe it and questioned me tirelessly about what it was. Even then I had no real answer. Now, looking at this drawing, I could not tell you without the help of my records when it was originally drawn. Anytime between now and 2011 would be my guess, although I kind of know that it was much closer to the latter. Not that any of that matters. I think that once this project runs it's course there will be good ones and bad ones and ones that are just part of the project. I think this one will be the one that will symbolize our "Blue Period." Why not, right? If we really did have a blue period, why not have it be this one? This one will be the stand-in for our depressed, brooding period where all we worked in was blue ball-point pens on blue tinged Triple-Dupe pads whilst drawing pictures of Smurfs, blue prostitutes wearing Craz-berry Ring Pops and only listening to the artist Blu.

#62 "Blue Shirt, Period." June 6, 2013

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New York City certainly has it's share of pests.
They say that the rat population in New York is 8 million, meaning one rat for every person who lives here. I like that idea and I will continue to spread that myth even though there seems to be a much smaller number of rats living here. But, like anyone who has grown up with cartoons on the mind, the idea that there is one rat for every person makes for a great cartoon idea. I like the idea that there is a "rat Tim" and a "rat Jeremy" and so on and on until every person has a rat doppelganger. Like in the movie, "Ratatouille" the rats are having their own lives and going about it in a parallel miniature New York right under our feet. Some of the rats wear glasses, some of them have funny haircuts and tattoos. Sometimes they get into KFC and run around for the camera crews that show it on the news.
Thankfully, we have never had any rats in the restaurant. We've had other things, but never rats, thank goodness. As long as I have worked there, we have had cats. The first one was old when I got there, and though he was very loved by the staff and the late-night patrons, he wasn't very good at his job. Namely, catching mice. Now, before I go on, I just want the light-hearted readers to know that mice are a part of living in a big city. They live outdoors, but like any warm blooded creature, they like being warm more than being cold, so if they get the opportunity to be inside, the are going to take that opportunity. Sometimes, this means that they will live inside a huge building complex with multiple underground entrances that houses over 100 apartments, multiple restaurants and other businesses. So when you are in a New York City restaurant, remember that there has been, or currently is, an active pest presence. So anyway, this cat was pretty old and didn't have the will to hunt anymore. I resented him for that and I would always tell him to do his job and get rid of these little dudes. Well, he never listened to me and soon he died.
We replaced him with a brother and sister duo by the names of Coco and Felix. Coco was the star, and Felix was the workman. Coco would come upstairs at 10 or 11 and lounge on the bar liked she owned the place, which she kind of did since she was a "child" of the actual owners. We would put out plates of ice and she would lick the ice and the people at the bar would go gaga over her. Felix would hang back in the basement until everyone was gone and then he would do the patrol. This was the case for years and years until the NYC Health Department started cracking down on all furry residents and started giving out grades. Before the grading system, it was just pass/fail. Now they grade you. It's a racket though, as it is just another way for the city to squeeze money out of it's business operators since you can essentially pay your way to an A. When this system was first put into place, you might remember, the restaurant got a "C." I talk about it a little more extensively in this post from a couple years ago. Well, the cats got kicked out and we ended up getting an "A," but then we had mice. And those mice were brave. They didn't care about business hours or waiting until everyone had left the place to start foraging for the occasional french fry. No, they came out all the time. It was crazy. For a year or so, we had a really big problem with the pests. That was, until we finally had Felix come back to live there again. Now we have our friendly little buddy back with us and are once again pest free. We even maintained our "A."
I guess I started talking about pests since this one has some sort of bug being gassed while an evil Wibblesmack looks on laughing. I realize that this image might not even be the focal point of this piece, but I feel sometimes with these sprawling drawings, I have to pick one thing to discuss, since finding symbolism in a piece like this is usually difficult at best. I think some of them have overall themes, but this is one of the pieces that is a bit more abstract. I realize that sometimes these can hit you over the head with the themes, but this one is more like lightly patting you on the shin. Or brushing up against your rat doppelganger's tail.