This image, created in… I think junior year of high school, was a comedic masterpiece, in the sense of the irony of the project versus my personal stance at the time. The intent was to compete at making an anti-drug “ad” for a local agency. The kids in the school would then vote on the project they thought was the best one. I tied with a film that had been created as a heart-string manipulating sob-fest for a kid who had died drunk driving the year before. The film was a pity-festival for the kid, who had driven drunk and gotten himself killed. I didn’t really understand what it had to do with discouraging drug use, it seemed like more of an effort to make a martyr out of someone who did something stupid. Anyway, I wasn’t terribly upset: I did tie, after all. The prize was 500 dollars which was split down the middle by the winners.

The irony comes into play when my standpoint on substances at the time (and relatively currently) comes into play: I didn’t see anything wrong with a little drug use and experimentation. I guess there’s a difference between that and addiction, but not in the eyes of the law, and not in the eyes of my teachers at the time. Also, I felt that it was funny, beause despire drawing a cartoon character sitting in a puddle of his own vomit, I felt that the stylized depictions of the drugs around him seemed to glorify drugs. I wasn’t a user myself, but there was something very comical to me about it all, because the people who came up to compliment me on my fine work often offered to get me high, or were high when they complimented me.

Of course, I knew this going in: the design was meant to appeal to the broader audience to win the vote, not to the anti-drug foundation it was actually being made for. I don’t know if it was ever printed or used anywhere beyond being hung in a piece of cheap posterboard in the hallway of the school. No, I didn’t buy any drugs with the 250 dollars, by the way.

More old stuff… This is an alien thing I started drawing and adding to over the course of several math classes in high school. It’s just so overloaded and complex that it’s hard to get a handle on it. I think the little guy painting on the blubbery alien gut is the best part. It seems to have elements of everything that was influencing me at the time. Completely over the top.

For those who are unaware, there is a little coffee house on Martha’s Vineyard with a beautiful aesthetic and some great music on many evenings. I’ve also been filling up (the owner) PJ’s iPod on a regular basis since last summer, so the daily tunes are often directly from my head. I’m sitting in here right now, it’s freshly painted with new art from the new barista, Angel, on the walls, and it’s a cozy, great place to be.

In fact, I designed a large portion of my website here, sitting on the couch in the corner, occasionally showing whoever was around the progress and looking for suggestions on what to change and what to keep. The place is Che’s Lounge, and it’s off Main street in Vineyard Haven, on Martha’s Vineyard, down a little alley just before the bookstore. Stop in and have a coffee and hang out, if you’re around. Their website is currently unfinished but it features a documentary, Colin’s poster artwork, and so on. I may get around to doing some concert reviews on here in the future.

The first in a collection of posts containing older works, I drew this one in a journal I was writing, in 2000 or 2001 I think. I was heavily into Invader Zim at the time and I stole a lot of obvious influence from it. I think it started with the house, then that guy in the background holding the beaver for whatever reason, the garden gnome, and finally the little tweaker in the foreground. I took the image and colored it in photoshop, painstakingly with a mouse, and came up with something I was happy with. Actually, I posted the original line drawing on the Something Awful Forums and someone else colored it before I got around to doing it myself. He took an extremely different style, a grey, bleak tone across the whole image. It was good, but my color madness took hold.

This is an approximation of what the background image looked like before I started making it whiter and whiter to let the text show through, by the way.

Click on the image for a larger version.

I’m sitting in Beetlebung and I just finished the background image, which you can see behind this post. Also did some code tweaks and all around made the site look prettier and more cohesive. It looks better with the Century Gothic font installed, but the font family system means it will at least be legible in any browser. The next big stage is getting the sections up and working, which will take a little longer.

I’ve got to prepare my show for tonight on wvvy now (just came back on the air), so listen up at 8 PM if you get the chance. Here’s a direct link to the audio stream from the station.

Keep checking back. I’m going to try to make a point of updating this at least once a day, and suggestions for more categories/sections/etc are welcome. I definitely desire for this project to be interactive and perhaps even collaborative on some level, despite the my name being on top of the site. This is the ground floor.