The older I get the longer a haircut takes, despite having fewer and fewer actual hairs on my head to cut. A similar principal is in effect at a grand-master chess match: fewer game-pieces on the chessboard means longer deliberations between moves.

Despite receding hair, getting a haircut now causes me no anxiety whatsoever. Ironically, I most worried about my hair when I had plenty to spare. As a small boy, I saw the world through an unruly mop, but even attempts by my mother to merely WASH my hair caused me to howl with as much tonsil-quavering gusto as being dragged to the dentist.

The drama of childhood dental appointments is easy to understand –my yowling correlated precisely with the actions of a bloke jamming a drill in the nerve-endings of my teeth– but it isn’t immediately clear why anyone grooming my hair caused such dread. Of course, in the 1970s, even grown-men loathed the barbershop but that was mere fashion. My hair-angst went much deeper than that, and was not connected to aesthetics at all. Like some tiny SAMSON, I saw grooming of my hair as an attack on my very self.

No matter how “good” the haircut, even if done professionally at the barbershop a few blocks from our house, I hated it anyway. Mum’s desire to save an inevitable public fracas, not to mention personal expense, meant that the haircuts were more likely to be done at home, by her. There were already 4 of us boys when I was 7 years old, so trimming our hair must have been an unending and utter misery for poor Mum. However, there came a savior: THE HAIR MAGICIAN.

In the 1970s, the K-TEL corporation solved the problems of common folk with little doo-hickeys, whatsits and thingamajigs. A particular point of interest was that each product had been “seen on TV” though only in the commercial that pointed out that fact. One such advertisement promised that a product called THE K-TEL HAIR MAGICIAN would deliver a haircut by merely combing your hair. Why, after a few strokes of this gadget (which looked like a long-handled comb) you’d be the very picture of style! (Such as it was in 1973). All this, without having to pay for a haircut! Mum must have thought all her prayers were answered at last.

I remember sitting out in the back yard on a kitchen chair as Mum swooped in with her newly-bought miracle gizmo. Predictably, as she combed it through my hair, I howled like a banshee, though this time with good reason; a haircut from the HAIR MAGICIAN hurt like holy hell. The K-TEL wizards had cunningly installed razor blade cartridges between the teeth of this comb to do the cutting. In theory. In reality, a few strokes from this new-fangled comb left hair entangled in the fangle, cutting capacity was lost and subsequent styling was achieved by hair being not so much cut as TUGGED out by the roots.

Sadly, a wave of the Hair Magician’s wand did NOT magically transform me into the smiling BRADY BUNCH kid of the TV commercials. Instead, I was transformed into something resembling a mangy dog who’d had chewing-gum cut from its fur with toenail-clippers. In terms of an identifiable fashion style, it could be compared to the punk look, but about 5 years too soon to be either identifiable or appreciated.

The only consolation was that it was relatively easy to blend in, even with such a hair disaster atop my head. Not just because the 1970s was the time when everyone’s hair went wild but also because mine wasn’t the only Mum to fall under the evil spell of THE HAIR MAGICIAN.

Last night, for the first time, Julia and I attended a life-drawing session at San Francisco’s branch of the famous Dr Sketchy’s anti-ArtSchool. It was a lot of fun.

My understanding is that the models are always dressed and posed to a theme and this time it was “burlesque clowns”. Three 20 minute poses and one 40 minute pose.

After several hours of drawing a sexy clown, we went with Julia’s friends Nadine and Lisa (who had also been at Dr Sketchy’s) to Meet my pal Bosco at HENRY’s HUNAN, where we all enjoyed a tasty dinner and several hours of pleasant conversation.

Here’s a Pin-up I just finished last night for John Hoffman‘s NUN WITH TWO GUNS comic book, which is the culmination of several years of doodling on his part. A while back, John co-created this character with his buddy Warwick J Caldwell, and now, after a few years of random drawings by both of them, she finally has her own story, completely written and drawn by John this time around. It will debut at the APE indie comics show here in San Francisco, two weeks from now on October 1st-2nd. I will be exhibiting there myself, and it just so happens that my table, #108, will be next to John’s, at #107. Fun!

Having been asked to draw my version of a no-nonsense gun-nun, naturally I got into the mood by remembering my own beat-downs at the hands of the bad-assed old nuns at my Catholic primary school (none had any guns, thankfully, or I might not be here today). I began by thumb-nailing poses of a gun-toting nun; either blazing away, or crouched atop a cathedral gargoyle. THE DARK KNIGHT in a habit.

Then, realising that such action stuff would surely be covered in either the story itself or the OTHER pin-ups, I started thinking less GUN and more NUN. What would the inner-life of a vampire-hunter nun be like? Maybe she prays with the guns, which have been consecrated and each named for a warrior angel from the bible. Being Catholic, no matter how much she hates those VAMPIRES, there’ll be GUILT about killing them. She wraps THORNS around the hand grips (seen in bottom panel) and when she shoots the demons, she is punished for her sins too.

I thumb-nailed more ideas, and had a hard time deciding which to finalise. Then, researching online, I saw photos of stained glass windows, which were medieval Catholic COMICS if you think about it; telling stories in a visual (and multi-panelled) way, and I decided to use as many of the thumbnails as I could, in one pin-up. I wanted to draw the guns covered in Catholic charms, like those MILAGRO CRUCIFIXES you see in Mexico, and should have added some blood dripping from her hands, but I ran out of time. With all my fiddling, I just got the pin-up to John in the nick of time. Given to him last night, the book is at the printers today!

This old geezer was the crime-boss of the 3 little thug piggies from my last post.

These sketches were done for a fun project that was cancelled. A retelling of all the classic FAIRY TALES where the BIG BAD WOLF is the baddie, BUT this time told from his point of view. We learn that he was set-up in the LITTLE RED RIDING HOOD story, having been framed by the 3 LITTLE PIGS, who were 3 little THUGS in our version.

We were having a lot of fun developing this idea but the needle-scratch moment came when we found out that a film called HOODWINKED was already in production elsewhere. Clearly our timing was bad and therefore the project was shelved.

Get your paws in the air, you damned, double-crossing, dirty RAT!

Here’s one of the water-colour sketches done while sitting at my Comic Con booth:

With his typical eloquence, SLY STALLONE raises a lot of valid points…

Here’s an old doodle of SLY STALLONE; expressing his feelings, mid-1980s style.

Today I went sketching at the DE YOUNG museum, with MATT JONES and his pal Scott. For fantastic drawing subjects, we didn’t need to go any further than the “Art of New Guinea” room, where there is an incredible array of fantastic masks on permanent display. So much so that I had a hard time deciding what to draw!

Being a lightening-quick gesture sketcher, Matt didn’t have to choose; he pretty much drew everything in there in about an hour! Whereas I, in my own plodding way, found two that interested me and tried to study them somewhat in depth.

We then had a tasty lunch at a nearby Burmese Restaurant, followed by a visit to GREEN APPLE BOOKS, and ended the outing with a drink at THE BITTER END. After parting ways, I then had a pleasant hike home, as the sun went down.

Yes indeed, my Sunday was a very Fun day.