Ricardo Lopez Ortiz- Odd Couple

Here's one of my favorite "Odd Couples" Don Quijote and Sancho Panza.

Tara Jacoby - Tainted Love

Kristina Carroll - Odd Couple

Even grumpy old Bridge-Trolls deserve a Valentine.

Scott Brundage- Odd Couple and Tainted Love

Odd Couple

Tainted Love*

*all apologies to Ricardo. I completely forgot about your earlier stripper butt. It's a fine butt. 

Carly Janine Mazur - Opposites Attract

7"x5" acrylic and pen on masonite

Opposites attract, like, you know, polar opposites. Hahaha, ha... magnets... how do they work...

Seems like I misremembered the theme for today, whoops! I'll remedy that tomorrow.

Cynthia Sheppard - Odd Couple

Tim Paul - Odd Couple

I don't think I will be able to finish this today, have to run out and take care of some things, and help a friend, which will probably run late into the evening. So I thought I would post what I have done so far.

Once again, more animals. I'm really enjoying these animals I've been doing. It's new to me.

Narciso Espiritu - Freestyle 3

I've been having a rough couple days. I think I have a creative block or something. Still trying to burn through it, so I drew what came easiest to me. This is Caution, a character influenced from one Halloween night several years ago. Probably even long before that. Like when I was thirteen. Anyway, there's a couple of images of him on my website.

Scott Brundage-Freestyle Sunday

One long weekend and I'm three days behind. Here are some stream of consciousness and subway doodles for you.

Jeffrey Alan Love - The Odd Couple

Today's theme brought to mind Beauty and the Beast to me.  I love fairy tales that retain their sense of menace, their dark edge, rather than the polished and watered-down versions I see so much now. 

Tim Paul - Tainted Love

Still trying to catch up. Here is some Tainted Love.

Marc Scheff - Super Love

I realize I must have been inspired by Jeffrey's post. As mentioned in a previous post, I just bought some acrylics and am experimenting with this new (to me) media. Dry on dry, dry on wet, wet on wet, and some ink pens. And I love superheroes. So much, I even enjoyed the Fantastic Four, both movies.

Chris O'Neill - My Love: 2 of 3

Sarah had a vehicle in high school. An old brown truck that was prone to backfiring. She made it "girly" by putting a pink fuzzy leopard print thing on the steering wheel and hanging necklaces and her sunglasses from the rear view mirror. I'd often hitch a ride home with her after school.

- CHRIS

Scott Murphy - Mountain Love

4"x5.25" Oil on board

I've always had a huge love for mountains. I find them to be beautiful and majestic and extreme and terrifying. I think If I lived in an area with more mountains I would certainly have been a mountain climber even though I'm afraid of most heights. Still, I've climbed Mount Washington in New Hampshire, and made an attempt at Galdhøpiggen, the tallest mountain in Norway (unfortunately to be thwarted by weather). Someday I hope to spend some time in the alps and out west in the rockies. In a perfect world, I would live amongst them and paint them every day.

There is also a heart hidden in there.

Sarah Gay - Love series

"It was first grade

His name was Jacob.

He was the smelly kid

and he loved me.

He gave me a .25 cent ring.

He was my first grade boyfriend."

"We snuck away from our desks

We hid in the coat rack

Jacob had a tiny hole

in his pants.

He showed me something.

I was startled. "

"We shared our first kiss

On the fuzziest carpeted steps

I had ever sat on."

My mother, cousins, and I ca. 1989

Kristina Carroll - Spooning

It's past the halfway mark- time to break out the bad puns!

Carly Janine Mazur - Eat Me!

5"x7" acrylic on masonite, with yummy chocolates

It's been a few days since Valentine's. The last bits of candy are trickling away, and those left just screaming "Eat me!"

Ricardo Lopez Ortiz- I Love my dog

This my dog Sasha, she can be a real butt head sometimes. But I still love her.

Jeffrey Alan Love - Capes

I know that there are many rational explanations as to why you shouldn't wear a cape (either as a superhero or a normal everyday person) but I still love them.

Challenge #7 for Tuesday Feb. 19th

Our 7th Challenge  comes courtesy of Kristina Carroll

The subject is:  "The Odd Couple"

Scott Murphy - Free Sunday

Well we went out and did some karaoke tonight since it was a holiday Sunday. So here's a super quick sketch of our stuffed piranha I did before we left.

Kristina Carroll - Freestyle Sunday

We have a colonial graveyard in the Arboretum near our house. I love the style of gravestones from this era and often walk through the area in the morning. Here's a quick sketch from one.

Alice Stanne - Free Style Sunday

I bought a brand new sketchbook over the weekend and decided to christen the first page today. There's always the struggle of what goes on that initial page to make it the best sketchbook ever, so I just decided to express the idea with the simple phrase first page jitters.

Ricardo Lopez Ortiz- Freestyle Sunday

My lovely girlfriend on the subway ride back from work. I think I captured her exhaustion :)

Chris O'Neill - My Love: 1 of 3

Here's Image 1 of 3 of my autobiographical "LOVE" series. When Sarah & I met junior year of high school, I was this guy. Dyed hair, hoodie, weird blue sunglasses, and NIN blaring in my headphones. Can't imagine what she saw in me!

- CHRIS

Chris O'Neill - Tainted Love

So... This last week was totally a bust... Sorry about that! ANYWAY... here's yesterday's.

Tainted Love = Tainted Meat

 .....Or something....

- CHRIS

Jeanine Henderson—Free style Sunday

Have had this drawing half-done for weeks, so finally got around to finishing and starting to ink it today—so sharing as my freestyle Sunday post

Tim Paul - Love Series complete

So, I really fell behind, and now I'm trying to catch up. We had a challenge of a three part autobiographical series leading up to Valentines day. I did my first one, but I really wasn't happy with the execution. So I redid it along with the other two.

I often joke that me and my husband meet the old fashioned way. At a bar on dollar drink night. We had both seen each other, and thought each other cute. But it was me that made the move. I had copies of a self published zine comic with me, that I was going to give to a friend who didn't show up. So I wrote my number on the back, and while he was inline to get a drink, I went up, and said:

"Hi, I just want to say, I think your cute, and me and my friends are heading out, but here are copies of a comic I write and draw. Read them if you like them, call me, my numbers on the back."

He stopped me from leaving, and asked me what my name was. I told him it was Tim, and asked him what his was. When he told me it was also Tim, I asked what his last name was.
Thankfully it wasn't the same as mine.

So I said, "Well, if anything, this is probably the weirdest pick up you've ever gotten."

"No" he said, "It's the best I've ever gotten."

"Well, on that good note, I'm going to go!"

Right from the start, our relationship was marked with a lot of similarities. Such as I was the only other person his friends had heard say "Got my Christmas Goose Early!" something Tim would say all the time, when someone would touch his butt. Or that we both liked Emmett Otters Jug band Christmas.

One morning, after Tim had spent the night, we went out for breakfast, and on the way home the temperature dropped an it started to rain, making us wet and chilled. When we got back to my place, we both collapsed on the bed. A few seconds later, at the same time, we both said. "hmmmmm cozy" like Homer Simpsons would. Then a few seconds later we both said, "Creepy". We have always said the same thing at the same time, often with the same inflection of tone.

We got married 9 years ago, in what we call our Mass Cult Wedding. Tim entered a contest the W Hotel in Chicago was having, where they wanted 5 couples, straight or gay, come down and get married on the spot. The catch being that one half of the couple wouldn't know, and the other would propose on the spot, if the other half said yes, get married right there! All 5 couples said yes, and we all went upstairs and got cleaned up, made over and dressed.

It was suspossed to be on Valentines Day, but the upper Hotel Management didn't want to give free rooms on what is one of their busiest days, so we had to do it on the 13th. Friday the 13th.

So we got married on Friday the 13th. 

If it's not a little off or weird or against tradition, it doesn't seem to be right for us. 

Scott Brundage- Valentine's Spoils

Stuck in a car for 8 hours, Friday, on my way to VT, had to draw on my ipad in the car.

Luckily, my lady had a good seven pounds of chocolates from her students. I appropriated them all for myself.

Jeffrey Alan Love - Tainted Love Two Times

I missed the deadline yesterday, so here's two for today.  I've noticed before that acrylic tends to stick to itself when I paint on facing pages of sketchbooks.  For the "tainted love" theme I thought it would be fun to paint a man and woman on facing pages, perhaps lovers, separated when the sketchbook is open, together when it is closed and we can't see them.  A secret love.  But when they are pulled apart the acrylic rips and pulls at itself, and wounds them.

Kristina Carroll - Tainted Love

Feeding the Beast - pencil

This is about the love of self-destruction. We all have had something in our life; whether a habit, a toxic relationship or a self-image, that is bad for us but we delicately nurture and feed because it gives us comfort on some level.

Pardon the lateness, I actually did do this yesterday but didn't get close to my scanner in time to post it before bed.

Scott Murphy - Tainted Love

Judith and Holofernes. 

I ran out of space on the bottom of the page for this one unfortunately. Good fun though.

Alice Stanne - Tainted Love

Love potions, make sure you don't pick the one that's tainted...

Marc Scheff - Tainted Love

Cheat alert! This is an older sketch but one I still like. Zombie heartache.

Jeanine Henderson—Tainted Love

Not sure if this completely fits today's challenge topic, but thinking about it made this little forlorn character appear in my head...

Carly Janine Mazur - Tainted Love

Past its expiration date...

Ricardo Lopez Ortiz- Tainted Love

Hey guys, really sorry that I haven't been able to keep up lately. Having a 9-5, plus getting some Illustration work on the side doesn't leave me with as many hours on the day as I would like. But I'll catch up!

In the meantime here's some tainted love.

Tara Jacoby - First Love

Classic love story. 

Fall in love. Move in together. And it all goes to hell.

P.S. Sorry about the series being so late!

Narciso Espiritu - My Love 2: Adventure Time

The months immediately following Stephanie were times of rediscovering myself and adventuring into new territories. Although, these things aren't really that new. I guess it was an explosion of independence.

The way things started between Kasey and I were kind of in the shadows, since we had both just gotten out of relationships. You could say it was good for both of us, to get a release, but it just started out of fun. Like all things that start out of fun, it got serious. See, Kasey's ex-boyfriend, Raymond, and I were just starting to be friends... right before Kasey and I began seeing each other. (Awkward, and of course, big, heavy guilt.) Regardless, Kasey and I were spending so much time together that we created a bond. We ate at new places, explored new places, met new people-- she even got me into a workout routine (a routine I really have to get back into.) With bonding and all that time spent together comes feelings and ya...

Since I was just coming down from a seven-year relationship, I didn't want to lie to myself and say I was ready to fall in love again so soon. More importantly, I didn't want to lie to Kasey. She was and is too bright an individual to do that to, and I was done lying to people. In the end, I really valued her being there for me--really, being there for each other. That summer would have just been filled with ice cream and video games and I wouldn't be half the person I am today. (I would probably be twice the person after all that ice cream.)

(Ray and I are okay now, by the way. Or at least I like to think we are. [Sorry again, bro.])

Narciso Espiritu - My Love 1: Learning About Ourselves

Joining the Month of Love group, I knew that I would eventually be tackling some issues I've been dealing with for a couple years now. It was inevitable. Many people have encouraged and suggested dealing with my issues through some creative process, and Month of Love seems to be an appropriate vehicle. However, making this narrative was a lot harder than I thought. I found myself digging up wounds and tearing up some scars create visuals for "My Love," which explains my five-day delay.

My relationship with this woman, Stephanie, felt both long and short, wonderful and challenging-- like many are. Needless to say, Steph taught me a lot of things. I was stuck inside myself when I met her, and she helped bring me out. I was a messy person, and she helped clean me up. (I can still be pretty unorganized, but I'm trying my best.) She made me a better me.

I learned a lot of things about myself from our relationship, regardless of how we grew distant just as we reached our closest, regardless of our love became more and more great and complicated , and regardless of how we finally pushed each other away, I learned-- I like to think we learned-- more about each other, but more importantly, about ourselves.

I may be less experienced than most people my age when it comes to love, romance-- hell, even picking up a date, but through Steph, I became the person I am today, and found the person I want to be tomorrow.

Part Two: Adventure Time