The Belle Isle Aquarium

This past weekend, my wife and I had the unique opportunity to take a behind the scenes tour of the closed down Belle Isle Aquarium. We had met Vance Patrick, who is the president of the Friends Of Belle Isle Aquarium a couple of weeks before at a one day opening of the aquarium to the public to show that steps are being taken to re-open the building. On that day, between 200-300 people showed up to look at empty tanks, but that proved that there is interest among the people of the Detroit area. 

We met Vance in the morning and he began showing us around. If there ever was a guy to drum up support it's this guy. His enthusiasm is contagious and you can tell just by listening to him just how much passion he has for this place. He showed us the holding tanks in the basement, which keep the various carp all winter long until April when they will be taken to the outside pond that separates the aquarium and the conservatory. We then proceeded to just about every nook and cranny of the place and heard stories about how the Detroit police and fireman would use the basement for their retirement parties and how it was also used as a speakeasy during prohibition. One can imagine how easy it would have been to get liquor from Canada to the island during these times. What a perfect place for such a thing. 

It's sad to see the state of things inside the building, because since its closing the City of Detroit has been using it as a warehouse to store all sorts of useless crap and to hear the stories about how it's almost impossible to get the most obvious and necessary things done because the city keeps standing in the way. This is just another example of why Detroit just can't get it together.

For those not familiar with the aquarium, it was North America's oldest continuously operated public aquarium having opened its doors in 1904 and closed in 2005. It's located on Belle Isle in the Detroit River just a bit upstream from the downtown area. 

The aquarium was home to a variety of fish and other sea creatures numbering to about 1500. These included not only wildlife from the Detroit River and the Great Lakes, but numerous fresh and salt water creatures, as well.

Here are the shelves that once held tanks of fish for whatever purpose they needed.

The two pics above show the carp in the basement holding tanks that will come spring make their way to the outside pond.
And since this is an art blog, here is a cartoon that I whipped up that has a little something to do with the aquarium.

So, check out their website and donate if you can. The FOBIA are making positive strides and will re-open the aquarium soon.

Muck Man #4

Star Wars Galaxy 4 sketch cards, part two

Here are 90 more cards from the Galaxy 4 set that I worked on. And yes, there is the one Jar-Jar card that I did.

I'd also like to thank whoever sent my info to Galactic Binder for the linkage. That was nice. 

P.S. General Grievous is really fun to draw.

Star Wars Galaxy 4 sketch cards

Here are the first 90 sketch cards of the 308 that I did for the Star Wars Galaxy 4 card set that will be released by Topps sometime in February. This set was a long time coming for me and was pleased as punch to have been able to be a part of it. It was fun as all heck to draw all of these great characters from all of the films and I also feel that it's the best card work that I've done so far. For the most part these were all done in black and white, but I did throw some color in here and there and experimented some. I'll try to put all of them up at some time or another, warts and all.

ink.re.ments

The following two cartoons are the first of an experimental strip that I started and have been tinkering with for some time now. It's experimental in that my usual approach to cartoons is mostly slapstick in nature complete with cheesy drumrolls (now there's a visual!) and even cheesier cliches. Well, ink.re.ments will be mostly biographical in that the stories told have actually happened to me or I was a part of in someway. And it may be just a story told and not a gag at the end. There will be some tweaking and exaggeration, of course. This is a cartoon strip after all. We'll see how it goes.

The deep sea diver is me as I ponder these past and somewhat current events. I hope that the inclusion of this guy at the beginning of each strip won't be too much of a distraction, but you the reader (hopefully) will be able to tell me that much. 

This first one is, of course, based on my dog and what I was lucky enough to see of her in those first few months. Who am I kidding, this is a constant.

Some of these strips will be an inside joke, like this one below, but I'm hoping that I can work around that and make it enjoyable and entertaining nonetheless. I showed this one to the friend who gave such an inspiration and I think that I scared him. He wasn't expecting a cartoon to made out of it. I can be cartoonishly dangerous. So, all names and faces will be changed to protect the innocent. 
The next installments will be a two parter based on an event when I was a young lad and had my first run in with the law. 

Indiana Jones Masterpieces Return Cards

Here are my 8 return cards for doing the 200 cards for the Indiana Jones Masterpieces set put out by Topps. Interestingly enough, there are none of Indiana Jones himself, as my wife pointed out so disapprovingly. What can I say? These were my favorites. If there is any interest in them, shoot me an e-mail.

Happy Birthday Sandra!

Here is the Michigan fall pic that you requested, Sandra! Sandra (who takes some very cool pictures) collects pics from her internet peeps for her birthday and I am a day late (in fact, almost 2 days late!) So, Happy Birthday, Sandra! I hope that you had a good one.