Desktop Doodles

Sometimes you just need to doodle!

Deep in the darkest jungles of the Orange Counties (California & Florida, how cool is it that both Disneyland & Walt Disney World are in Orange County?)

There is a scene in the film "Pleasantville" where the Jeff Daniels character (the man who runs the diner) explains that his favorite thing in the world is to paint the Christmas decorations on his store windows. From this he realizes that his favorite thing to do is to paint, that is to do art. When I was in Junior High I was convinced by my Social Studies teacher to apply to be in"Leadership/Student Government". I really just wanted to be her Teacher's Assistant, but she would not sign my TA application unless I also submitted an application to Leadership/Student Government. I guess her(Mrs. Miller, 7th Grade Social Studies, Kolb Jr. High School, Rialto, CA)plan worked, as I was accepted into Leadership, never became a TA and stayed active in Student Government for several years.  Since I could draw I found myself the head of the "Publicity Department", which is to say I was the head poster maker. My Jeff Daniels Pleasantville moment, that time of the year I always could not wait for was the run up to the annual Disneyland field trip! Kolb Junior High School had a yearly trip to Disneyland, back when private parties were much more common at the Magic Kingdom. In those days there were "off season days" when the park would close early to the general public and would be open in the evening for special events.

Okay, so this is not my drawing...it is from a children's book...but it is a depiction of showing up in a school bus to Disneyland.  Just like for the annual Kolb Junior High School Disneyland trip...except it was at night and we were not cartoon characters...but otherwise very accurate.

Now our school was never able to rent the park just for us, but somehow we were able to piggy back on another organizations event. Specifically I remember we attended one year the same night as the employees of the TRW Corporation. This yearly event was probably the social highlight of my year, tons of kids went, and there were bus upon bus caravaning from Rialto to Anaheim for the event. It seemed like a pretty long drive at school bus speeds...maybe 70-90 minutes? We would gather at school at dusk, board the busses and head off...in those days Rialto-Fontana-Rancho Cucamonga did not melt into each other and there was no 210 freeway so we took a lot of surface streets through the barren abandoned vineyards to get to the interstate. But it didn't matter it was always so exciting going to Disneyland. I don't remember how long the parties were...I suppose we got there around 7PM and stayed until 12 or 1AM? I remember the school bus parking area was fairly close to the turnstiles and of course this was before California Adventure (I was in Junior High from 1989-1992).

I have enjoyed drawing Sleeping Beauty Castle since I was in elementary school. This is a drawing I did recently(not in Elementary School) using an iPad app, it is more than a doodle...but it has the same fantasy scale and detail I tended to include in my Junior High posters and my "napkin" doodles.

In order to drum up enthusiasm for the event and to pre-sell tickets I would draw tons of posters to put all over the campus.  Since I was a (and of course remain) a huge Disney nut my specialty was drawing Sleeping Beauty Castle. I have loved the castle as far back as I can remember and learned how to draw it more or less by memory by 5th or 6th grade. In fact I had to teach the class some sort of lesson as a school assignment in Elementary School and I picked teaching the class how to draw Sleeping Beauty Castle as my subject.  Although I did not know it at the time I was using what "The Simpsons" called the "Lombardo Method"(from the episode where Marge takes up painting..."Marvelous, Another triumph!") which is the technique of breaking down the subject into basic geometric shapes. This way you can use even a rhombus to draw an adorable bunny or in my case a fairy tale castle! I wish I had saved or photographed these drawings and the Jr. High posters. I drew from memory various vignettes of Disneyland. They didn't correspond to scale or actual reality(for example the mountains or castle might be much larger than in real life) but they captured the "feeling" of Disneyland. Some of my subject matter was the monorail riding along Harbor Blvd near the giant Disneyland sign, or maybe a view of Space Mountain, and of course many sketches of the Castle.

A fanciful view of "The Rivers of America", doodled in spare time using the mixed media of office supplies(recycled xerox paper, hi-lighter markers, and felt tip pens)

Lately I have taken up doodling these "back of a napkin" style sketches of my happy place. And all these years later they still recall my junior high posters...scale is a bit off, somethings are not in the right place...but the feeling is there. Being doodles, I sketch them from memory...so the details aren't quite correct...maybe a real Jungle Cruise Launch doesn't have that smokestack or the awning is a little different. The Mark Twain has three full decks and not two(or maybe not I didn't check), they are just little exercises to pass some time while a computer boots up or a file saves. So they are drawn on scrap Xerox paper and use markers and highlighters...all just for fun.  The full color sketch is a "Paper by 53" iPad app drawing...that took a little more time, but it is similar in spirit so I included it here.

Cinderella Castle doodle from Walt Disney World as seen from Tomorrowland .

Mid Mod Md

A big part of my job has me on day long driving trips inspecting facilities and designing modifications for them. So spending so much time in the car I get to see a lot of territory and the various types of roadside buildings that dot the way. The capital region experienced tremendous growth in the 1950's and 1960's. Post war prosperity resulted in lots of rural land being overtaken by suburbs filled with all of those New Dealers, Eisenhower Republicans, New Frontiersman, and Great Society types. Maryland in particular has a facinating crop of Mid Century Modern buildings that I have collected snapshots of. In Southern California somber modernism was fairly common but there was also alot of buildings with a whimsical playfull quality. Not as much in DC, afterall this is Washington! , filled with important people! Doing important work! So the modernism I guess reflects that. This stuff is a grab bag, a Church, a Department Store, a Bowling alley, I took alot of these shots in Prince George's County, Maryland. It isnt an overwhelming amount of material but then I was expecting everything here to be monumental neo-classical, instead it's mostly brick and white plaster. Which I shouldnt have been so surprised afterall back home the predominant style is Spanish/Mission revival. At any rate here is some of what caught my eye.

The first is a Church, it is in a pretty spectacular space ship style. From the abstract steeple to the flying saucer chapel, this is a beautiful church. I especially like the floating statue on a plane of mosaic tile, and the folding plate zig zag element evokes Gothic arches.

The second was originally a Hecht's Department Store a local DC chain. Hecht's was absorbed into Robinsons-May before being absorbed yet again into Macy's. The floating planes that act as a background for the signage, and the fieldstone ruble walls are elegant ways to dress up the box, imagine pulling up in something with tailfins! This was originally an outdoor mall, a ridiculous concept in this climate-hot and sticky in the summer, and cold and snowbound in the winter. Eventually they put a roof over it, but "lifestyle" centers are en vogue again so you never know when they might tear of the roof and make it a pseudo-Main Street USA development. In fact across the street from this is a very example of this with a faux downtown planted at the base of three towers done by Edward Durell Stone(Architect of the Kennedy Center)- something for another post.

Here is a very Wrightian/Organic looking structure complete with porte cochere. It is now an "International Supermarket", but could equally pull duty as an evil villains lair, perhaps if it were perched on top of a National Monument just out of view with it's own private airstrip.

Here is a Giant Grocery Store.(well it isnt very big but that was the name, it is being turned into an Aldi- which should look really good in this space) This has a very Miesian neo-classical seriousness. I love stripped down colonades like this, not only is it sleek and modern but everyone of them is a homage intentional or not to George Washington's Piazza at Mount Vernon, which I think is very appropriate.

This last fellow could be anything really, the plywood arches were a motiff tacked on to enliven otherwise very regular facades. In fact my hometown city hall the rather overnamed "RIALTO Civic Center" has a similiar device. But in this case it is no mere outpost of government, this is in fact a bowling alley! In California it might have a rock wall or a soaring roof, something themed to the Nth degree, but here it is the still delightful yet restrained fellow you see here. Which frankly is really overdressed by local standards, now I must give them credit, there seem to be many operable bowling alleys here in greater DC but most are a plain box with a glass door, they have painted graphics to "enliven" them but are otherwise as unadorned as a utility shed. This example has loads of architecture- a colonade, the plywood arches, plantings, plus it is still being used as a bowling alley, most of the So Cal greats were demo'd long ago.