Miz Daphne Malloy

Before I came up with Bert the Graphics Dog, I had an idea for a different mascot for my business, Vintage 66 Graphics. I went with kind of an anti-hipster alternative chick by the name of Miz Daphne Malloy, and while she is awfully cute, and certainly has loads of promise, she is on hold for now. I strongly suspect she will resurface one of these days, so don't you fret about her.

More Lost Restaurant Sketches

Last week I did a post about an old billboard for the Pixie Kitchen Restaurant, so I thought I'd post a little sketch of the actual building. This is from an older photograph, and I believe that this was how the building looked originally. There was a later addition, which pretty much doubled the floor space.

The Castle Restaurant was a roadhouse and quite a hot spot for jazz back in the day. It was located in Gladstone on River Road just off the Super 99 Highway. Someday I'll be posting a more in depth post about it, but quickly I'll mention that it was one of the neatest buildings ever, basically a mini castle, and as I recall it started off as a lapidary shop. It fell into disrepair and was torn down a few years ago to make way for some god-awful crap homes.

*Note: Been having trouble getting Blogger to work correctly, so the right edges of the images are cut off. If I make them smaller to fit better some of the text goes all wonky. I think I would give my left nut for something to work the way it is supposed to. Just kidding—about the nut, I mean.

Zombie Shake

This is just a page of sketches, the people heads are just filler, the main focus is the zombie milkshake, I really don't know what it means—it just came into my head one day.

Pixie Kitchen Billboard

This sketch was inspired by some fond childhood memories. It is my interpretation of one of the many billboards I used to see along Highway 18 when my family and I would be on our way to Lincoln City at the Oregon Coast. The Pixie Kitchen was opened in the late 30's (as I recall) in a little hamlet called Oceanlake right along Highway 101. At one point there was even a short lived amusement park called Pixieland just a few miles North, back on Highway 18. Sadly, both are long gone.

My interpretation of a billboard for the Famous Pixie Kitchen along Highway 18.

Inspirations: Character Ideas

I'm always on the lookout for characters that I can riff off of and whatnot, but it can be kind of awkward if they realize you're sketching them, especially if it is unflattering and they want to see your work. Anyway, I recently stumbled on this treasure trove of ready-made characters from the real world over at the Poorly Dressed Blog. I've put up some examples here, but if you want to see more head on over.

Here's a lovely little charmer.


Nice dog, Tough Guy, and the white wine is a nice touch.


Jumping Jehoshaphat!

Sketches: Character Studies

I've been working on some character sketches of myself for an informational project, basically, I'm going to be using sequential art (comic book format) in a series of essays on my Vintage 66 Graphics Blog, about the basics of  graphics and will be geared for the small business owner. The goal is to keep it really simple and entertaining, but at the same time passing along some useful information. I think it's important to keep the graphics simple in this project, because I don't want them to overshadow the information. I still haven't found the final charcter, but here are some sketches that I have worked out so far. I may end up using an animal of some kind rather than myself, but we'll see. I know the last one isn't going to work, I've only seen one full episode of Star Trek, but still I know what happens to red shirts.

Shaking Things Up

I've been thinking some things over lately, and I believe the time has come to shake some things up here at A Walk on the Wiles Side. This began as my sketch blog, but more and more I'm realizing that there are so many other elements that influence and contribute to my art. Music is certainly a big one, and so is literature, but even other artists, both past and present leave their mark. It's really just a big distillation process. So, I want to try an experiment and expand things here a bit to include some of those influences. 


Way back in 1977, before my girlfriend was even born, I went to my first rock concert, which featured KISS with Cheap Trick opening. I was eleven years old, and it truly changed my life forever. It opened up a whole new world of passion and excitement and the thrill of live rock-n-roll. Anyway, I stumbled across this clip of them performing one of their classic tunes with their current lineup. It's good to see that more than thirty years later they've still got it. 
Enjoy!


[And yes, I do realize that the video box has crossed over into my sidebar, but that is something I'll need to figure out a little later].


Watch KISS playing Black Diamond (with a cool Whole Lotta Love interlude) live in Budapest