Rhino Wear

I was given the task of converting this little sketch of the magnificent Cardboard Rhino into a t-shirt design. Here’s the original source material.

Using that as the basis I did some sketches of my own. I felt I needed to give it a little more movement, and simplify it. Here are four of my sketches (I did about 8 or 10). The one with the arrow is the one I eventually picked.

From the sketches I did a few large drawings based on both the design I ended up picking, and a few of the others. I used a black Sharpie for most, but did a couple in brush and ink. Here is the original photo of the drawing I decided to use.

I liked this drawing best, but I also wanted to use the foot impact element from one of the brush and ink drawings I did. Here’s a photo of that element.

I took both the above element and my favorite drawing into Photoshop and tooled around with them. I made the lines darker and thicker and put the two together. Here’s the basic design, all cleaned up.

I thought color was a good idea, so I did a colored version, too.

I also did versions that would work on black t-shirts. Here they are:


Overall, I’m happy with the results. Dad will be seeing them for the first time on here, too, so if he gives me some suggestions I’ll tweak it and post that, too.

Mother’s Day


A mother’s art takes many forms.

My Sicilian mother saves her creativity for the kitchen. Even after raising 9 children to somewhat-successful adulthood, she takes pleasure in making anything from simple Italian treats to full-scale feasts. (In this photo she is making Sfingi, sometimes referred to as Sicilian Donuts.)

Happy Mother’s Day to you Mom. What’s for dinner?

River Encounter

He stood upon the bank, and thank.
This isn’t as it ought, he thought.
That’s quite a mighty drink, I think.
In which i could get sunk, he thunk.
I see it every day, I’d say.
I watch it every week, I’d speak.
But still inside my head, he said.
Its presence scarcely pokes, he spoke.
– by Conor O’Keefe

Another Cardboard Rhino


Every time we think the population of Cardboard Rhinos is diminishing, we encounter new evidence of Rhino sightings. This one came yesterday, after telling my class at the VCU Adcenter about the Cardboard Rhino blog, one of them told me that have been carrying around a Cardboard Rhino given to them by a friend. I didn’t believe it, but she produced evidence, which I quickly photographed to share here.

So I invite you, the few readers who may have happened onto this new blog, if you have had a sighting of a Cardboard Rhino, in any form, please submit a photo.

Found Music

I was recently trying to watch the trailer for the upcoming movie, “The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford,” and the player really screwed up. It was Windows Media Player, so no big surprise. Anyway, it did some really weird stuff, and ended up just playing the audio from the trailer, and it played only garbled and chopped up into little increments.

I immediately realized that I had stumbled across some amazing music that sounded like what aliens must listen to, so I used the always-handy Ambrosia Software program Wiretap to record the sound.

EDIT: Okay, because of difficulties listening to the music I’ve matched it with a simple animation an uploaded it to YouTube.

Trinity High School Jazz Festival

On Sunday, we went to the Jazz Festival at Trinity High School. It was clear and sunny and the music was surprisingly good. By surprisingly good, I mean that it wasn’t really polished or overly professional and that made it more enjoyable to me. I think it’s easy to forget that music doesn’t come out of machines sounding perfect. It comes out of people struggling to hit notes and breathing hard after a trumpet solo and squeaking the guitar strings and they whisk their fingers to the next chord position. I think I’d rather sit ten feet away from a pretty good high school jazz musician than listen to Miles Davis on my iPod.

Spring Has Come, by Barry O’Keefe

Spring has come

Oh the squirrels are nibblin!
Oh the children’s gigglin!
Oh the trees are jigglin,
Wrigglin, ticklin,
An showin their barely growin
Flarse and greenery

Booming and blooming,
Gushing and mushing,Whooshing, Swooshing
Plooshing,
No excusing
Not to walk outside
Buzzing Fuzzing
Cheeping Chirping
Pistols, pollen fusing
Go Perusing
Down by the railroad tracks
Smelling, belling
Quelling swelling
No Not telling
Winter’s losing
Barefoot cruising

Oh spice horizon!
The grass stopped hidin,
neath the frosty ‘jamas
clouds stopped providin.
Oh I think its well
some liquid fell
instead of ice.