b is for bookcover

i made this one a long time ago, and i never got around to completely filling it up... and there's no mystery as to why; it was right around then that i got this computer. still, the collagework on the front is pretty nice. i dig the patriotic colors. and it was clear i had already fallen head over heels with ian holm-as-officer-ash. he's on there twice. morrissey's on there, too. i was still in the upstairs bedroom. i remember working on it... i mean i remember cutting and gluing everything down. sometimes i miss making the books, but i love to type so much its hard to go back. i think i only filled in about a fifth of the pages before i 'hit it,' and went on to something else. still, i like the 'stars and stripes' feeling it has. but i always felt all the angles were just a little bit crooked, and that bugged me. still, it beats the hell out of all the people out there that are walking around with plain, boring, naked, 100% un-decorated notebook covers. (click to really enlarge.)

denizens of darkness

wow... this is an older one. i used to keep all my text, hand-written, in those marbled mead notebooks. double-spaced. by hand. every cover decorated. every page decorated. here is an older one jean-lucien recently scanned for me. there's some slight water damage on ronan vibert's face, (that's ronan vibert as the star in the center with the goggles) but i consider slight damage like that more like, battle scars. the spot in the lens is a miniature of a still from some terry gilliam animation. i cut the phrase out of a time-life book on ocean exploration or something. the medallion stars at the top are; left to right... john-rhys meyers from 'velvet goldmine,' ; william s. burroughs, ronan vibert from 'jeeves and wooster,' ; ronan vibert from the bbc's 'the scarlet pimpernel,' ; i think that guy in black and white is harry thaw... the father of evelyn nesbit's baby, and finally, twiggy. i remember gluing all of it down. it seems like a long time ago. click-to-really-enlarge.

magick

here is a shard of a notebook illustration i think jean-luc was largely responisble for. i think i spot john lennon from 'magical mystery tour,' but apart from that, it looks like the rest is mostly paint. but it works. and its lovely. i don't know if its just something about paper grain, but the more its cut and copied and pasted, it seems to take on a lovely deft watercolor quality. its all painting, after all.

cool wave

this is an older note embellishment made by jean-lucien. the color and the composition are, as usual, faultless. it features a watercolor lip gloss chart in the background... and, as if that weren't cool enough, there's also a short-haired first-season davy jones and an inset of the legendary 'it girl' clara bow. i should make time to sing her praises later. but for now, dig on this. imagine, all the hundreds of thousands of bland and boring notebook pages out there, and my darling jean-lucien takes pains to deocorate almost every single page with color and cutting such as this. soooo cool.

overlooked

here's a lovely piece my partner jean-lucien made featuring the legendary jack nicholson very close to the year he filmed the shining. you're a naughty one... saucy jack, you're a haughty one, saucy jack. man, i love this piece. it has a luminous stained-glass glow... the snake near the top was actually snatched from alex the droog's bedroom, ...tying together the kubrick connection. ahhh, jack... he's got too much to do. on an artistic note, jean-lucien's talent for matching random colors is evident in this slide. it works. i love it.

vampire art

and yet, here is another notebook banner. it features ronan vibert, two ways! man, i must be sitting on literally hundreds of these, and they're so groovy! i love the shades of pink we manage to come up with, and god bless ronan vibert.

crowd pleaser

here is a slice of emerald notebook art featuring two hand-snapped stills, and other embellishment.

needless to say, the featured players are davy jones and eddie (i met him) izzard. dig it.

piano

this one is almost two years old, too. but i love it. its dreamy and sound. i love the overweight rafe and all the sky blue and pink. there's not much deep meaning, but its pretty.

as the flames rose...

...to ronan's nose. ronan vibert in roman drag. slathered in grape candy flavor. with hard rock sugar. it makes a hell of a notebook banner. so dig it.

longhand

...is hot! here is another of my handwritten hardbound journals. the habit of placing the titleword in the lower right-hand corner started when i had to switch from Mead notebooks to a store brand. Mead books had the barcode on the back, but the goofy storebrand slapped it right on the lousy front. so i took that as a 'sign from god' that maybe i needed a little something in that corner, so i began placing a handmade single word down there to cover it up. from then on, my books all bore a single word. and hey, is morrissey hot or what, girls-and-open-minded-guys? i love the expression on his face...he looks like some guy just walked in to whom he gave the mysterious pop star-cold-shoulder the night before. dig it.