tomversation

Look! Up in the sky! Umbrellas!

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Umbrella Sky is now part of Giralda Plaza in Coral Gables. I attended the ribbon cutting on Friday night where there was food, live music and lots of neighbors.

I’ve seen this project online over the years and it’s so cool to have it right in my neighborhood.

The umbrellas will swaying over Geralda Plaza until the end of summer.

Coral Gables is the first city in South Florida and the third city in the U.S. to host the Umbrella Sky art project, an internationally recognized public art display that has taken part in Paris and Lisbon.

“This captivating art project is a great example of our commitment to increase art and cultural experiences in the City Beautiful,” said Coral Gables Mayor Raúl Valdés-Fauli. “Umbrella Sky will undoubtedly drive more people into our downtown, but we hope they stay to dine and shop while here.”

Umbrella Sky is the creation of Portuguese Company, Sextafeira, which means Friday in Portuguese.

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I wanna be like Kylie Jenner

Kylie Jenner is my inspiration. I want to be just like her. I want to sell lip gloss. Well, not exactly, what I want to do is have 110 million Instagram followers or at least a bunch of them.

Forbes magazine just named 20-year-old Kylie the youngest self-made billionaire. She is worth $900 million and in a year she should reach the $1 billion mark, making herself the youngest billionaire ever.

She created Kylie Cosmetics and does most if not all of her marketing and advertising on Instagram to her millions of followers, costing her nothing. She leverages her social media following.

In the past I published my comics on Instagram and I had quite a nice following, I plan on doing that again. My audience is there. I would like to start publishing daily on Instagram, Facebook and on a website. Instagram especially is where the audience is.

I’ve always said that social media is so great for so many things. The comics come up in people’s feeds, they don’t have to seek them out and they are unobtrusive. There are a few cartoonists that post to too many groups on Facebook I’ve noticed. One guy posts to almost 40 comic related sites, the only trouble with that is if you post all at the same time, they seem to all come up at the same time, which annoys the readers more than enticing them. I’ve taken to hating the cartoonist and his work due to the fact that it overpowers my feeds! Not a good idea.

Do it the Kylie way. Post on your own pages and create a following through shares and likes, the best part of social media are the shares and tagging and things like there were fans are doing the advertising for you by word of mouth. All you have to do is post quality content. Constantly.

I would love if you followed me on one or more of my social media sites where I will start publishing Tomversation comic panels daily in the fall.

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tomversation.toons/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/tomversation
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Tomversation

I’m back home

So I’m home, back in Miami after two and a half weeks up north. I didn’t want to leave New York this time, 100 degree temps and all. Usually I’m ready to come home by the end of a trip but this time I did not want to leave. But now that I’m home, I’m glad to be home. I’ll be back in NYC in October for ComicCon week and November for Thanksgiving week.

I’m thinking the reason I didn’t want to leave NY is that I barely watched any news when I was traveling. At home I seem to have the news on in the background all day. Maybe I should stop watching the news at home and it will improve my quality of life.

We had a condo board election last night, I tied for the fifth place on the five member board and I let the person who I tied with have the spot, I really didn’t want it. While I put myself on the ballot, I didn’t vote for myself, if I had, I would be in the position now. But to be honest, I had second thoughts after signing up and I really didn’t want it, but still I was hurt that I didn’t get more votes. I guess we build ourselves up in our heads and think we’re so great, but when others don’t it hurts. But if I didn’t vote for myself, how could I expect others to?

I was president of the condo board for six years, that was about 10 years ago, I hated every moment of it, I tried to get out of it for so many years, but it’s a small condo, so it wasn’t easy to find a replacement, so I’m not sure why I wanted back on the board this time, but I dodged a bullet, simply by not voting for myself. But still, who are those people who did not vote for me and why didn’t they vote for me?

Sort of like being nominated for an award and not winning.

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Hello Dolly!

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Saw “Hello Dolly” the other day, starring Bernadette Peters. She’s been taking over for Bette Midler, who will return later this month.

The show was incredible. So fun, so beautiful, the music is fantastic. When Dolly/Bernadette came out all in red at the top of the red staircase and started singing the “Hello Dolly” song with the waiters in the scene, I got goosebumps.

During the show I kept picturing Bette and Barbara Streisand, the original Dolly, in the role, going back and forth in my head from Bernadette to them and back again.

The play is so much fun. And so colorful, every scene is more colorful than the next. I don’t want to ruin anything, but some surprises happen during certain scenes and they just blow you away.

At a couple of points in the show, Bernadette had Victor Garber, who plays Horace Vandergelder, cracking up, out of character, like they used to do on the Carol Burnett Show. So great.

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Seeing double; a good sign

I’m feeling very good about things these days. This Manhattanhenge proves it. Isn’t it good luck? I captured this shot the other day.

I also see the two people who bought my comics out of the blue as good luck, the fact that they were back to back unrelated buyers. For years this was the case with me.

I always had good luck. I willed things. I was always in the right place at the right time and I think maybe 10 years ago or less, things started changing. I was always a minute or two late for something, not in the right place at the right place anymore.

I sell promotional items. Almost once a week, I would get signs – I would get double orders withing minutes, if not seconds of each other. If Pepsi ordered frisbees, Coke ordered frisbees, within a minute of each other. If a high school ordered flags, within a minute another high school ordered flags. If a guy name Oscar ordered something another guy named Oscar ordered something. This became the norm.

It has been a long time since that happened, but the two ladies buying comics within minutes of each other was a good sign.

The next day I got another double order – for post it notes. But they were not regular square post it notes. They were thought bubble shaped – you know, like from comic strips. Comic strips! There is the tie-in. But get this – a guy buys them and then within a minute another guy buys them.

They aren’t a regular item, in fact, the last time I sold that shape post it note was to the first guy who was reordering the pads from a previous order from the year before. He was in New York state, the other guy is in Springfield, IL. Another weird happy coincidence and they are comic strip related.

I’m seeing good things ahead. I could go on and on about the signs I have received over the years but all this doubling stuff means a lot, especially to a Gemini like myself.

Selling my comics out of the blue

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So I sold some cartoons this week and I didn’t even try. In fact, it all came out of the blue – twice! Being a Gemini, things happen to me in twos and that happened this week.

I’m in New York for a couple of weeks. I received a couple of emails from a couple of different people. Both had seen my cartoon panel, “Tomversation” online, one lady said she was doing a Google search and the other, I’m not sure, I think she was just going through my work on Huff Post and Medium.

Ironically, they both reached out to me asking to purchase some comics! One lady was a realtor and she was interested in a real estate “House Hunters” comic I did, she wanted to purchase the rights for a newsletter or something. She also asked for more real estate related comics, which I’ll send her once I return home to Miami from New York.

The other lady purchased a bunch of comics for a magazine, I believe. I billed them both through Paypal and I sent them high resolution comics to reprint. They paid right away and that’s that.

Not bad. Here I am on vacation, minding my own business and my comics are selling!

I’m thinking of starting daily publication of “Tomversation” starting in the fall. I think I’ve gotten enough of the run-around from syndicates, newspapers and the rest. I was just told by the head of one syndicate that he didn’t like my work or my drawing style. Yet, this is the guy who runs stick figure and crayon-type drawn comics with no imagination of any kind. The Universe has better plans for me.

Revisiting a ‘haunted castle’ 30 years later

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When I hear “Domino Park,” I think of the small park on SW 8th Street in Miami, where the old Cuban men play dominoes, but there’s a new Domino Park in Brooklyn. It’s the site of the old Domino Sugar refinery. They created a new park and ultra modern condos are going up along the park, you can see it in the rendering above.

What I love about Domino Park is the old, haunted? Domino plant itself. You can see it in the photo below and you can see it sort of renovated above. Apparently they are going to leave most of it alone. It was built in 1856. Domino Park will redefine the neighborhood just as Gantry Plaza Park redefined the Long Island City waterfront a hop skip and a canoe ride up the river. I visited Domino Park this week with my cousin Roni we checked out the neighborhood and had lunch. This is near where I was born in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, a quite different place than the Brooklyn of years ago.

I love this old building in all its decreptness and always have since the day I came upon it in the mid 1980s. I was lost in Brooklyn and ended up right in front of the plant. It was blacker then, full of soot and scarier and bigger. I turned the block and there it was, all Harry Potter-like. I didn’t know what it was but I was intrigued. I couldn’t get in, but the front gates were open and I stared at it for awhile. I’ve thought of it so many times over the years and each time we passed it when on the Circle Line boat ride or on a Ferry, I would stare at it, imagining the inside.

Now thirty years later, I’ll be able to go into the old building, in what looks like an glass-enclosed bar/restaurant on the roof. That part is not complete yet, but I’m looking forward to it. I feel the old plant is haunted. It sits right next to the Williamsburg Bridge and is so easy to get to, it’s right on the waterfront, a few blocks from the center of Williamsburg hipsterhood.

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Drawing at the Met

Michael and me

Beautiful views from the Met’s rooftop

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Michael’s drawing

I met my cousin Michael at the Metropolitan Museum of Art today in New York. He texted me to tell me he would be there – drawing. He was with a friend and he said they both do that together – draw. You may remember Michael was the one who took me around the Spider-man exhibit that time at the Society of Illustrators.

It sort of reminded me of that time I came upon the school kids drawing at MOMA and I ended up doing a story for the Huff Post about that. In this case, I knew the artists.

I went over and it was nice. They took a break after awhile and we walked around exploring the new exhibits. What’s funny about that was that Michael marked his spot so he could go right back to it to continue his drawing in one of the sculpture courts. But when we went back there was someone in the exact spot – the resident artist! Of all the places in that whole huge museum, they resident artist sat in Michael’s spot! We didn’t say anything, we just went on to look at more exhibits.

We are supposed to go to the David Bowie exhibit this weekend at the Brooklyn Museum, but I canceled to go to The Hamptons instead. Priorities. Guess we can go to Bowie next week.

Great comics I just discovered

I came upon Off the Leash Dog Cartoons by Rupert Fawcett on Facebook. I love social media for finding new comics. Rupert posts all over the internet, on Facebook alone he has almost 1 million fans! you can see his work at his website here: http://offtheleashdogcartoons.com/

I love how true and close to home the comic is and I love that it’s in black and white. Not enough comics are in black and white these days. Rupert has Off the Leash animations on YouTube, too.

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Another comic that I came upon on Instagram is Meeting Comics by Andrew Neal. This first comic is so close to home that its sad, but excellent. As of yesterday these poor kids were being taken away from their parents and locked up in cages. As of yesterday that effed-up policy has changed.

I like that Andrew posts the comics as a photo image of the drawn page, also in black and white, and I love where he adds post-it notes to make changes or cover up mistakes. It’s such a common practice with cartoonists, but Andrew just puts it out there in glorious ultra yellow.

You can see his website here: http://www.meetingcomics.com

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Ivortoons by Ivor Healy are mostly puns, but so funny. His work has appeared all over from the Wall Street Journal to Woman’s Weekly. He’s quite clever, I found him on Instagram.

You can see his work here: http://www.ivortoons.com

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He says my style is rushed

I had sent my work to one of the heads of one of the major newspaper syndicates. He gave me a lot of good advice, which I appreciate. He did say something quite puzzling, he said my work looked rushed – that I drew too fast. These three drawings are samples of my style.

First off, he is right, I do draw fast, I’m not sure how he knew but I guess its his job to know. But is it a bad thing that I draw fast? That’s just my personality, I do things fast. I don’t think it diminishes the drawings. I see so many comic strips that look as if they were drawn fast, I mean people can’t even draw hands for gods sake, but that is the cartoonists’ styles, in fact many of them draw other things that I’ve seen that are totally different than their comic strip style.

Just this morning I was looking at a blog of a cartoonist who draws his comic strip very simply but he had other drawings on his blog, greeting cards, or something like that, which I really enjoyed, they were quite detailed and sort of a fine-line drawing style which is nothing like his comic strip style. And there is a woman cartoonist who does the same thing, when she draws things other than her comic strip, the drawings are quite different, more refined and detailed.

I don’t like to pick on other artist’s styles because art is art. Who am I to judge, which did make me wonder about this comic head who judged my art. I mean, I can understand him judging the comic as a whole, but since when is a cartoonist’s drawing style judged by an editor? There are so many comic strip and comic panel artists in the newspapers and magazines like The New Yorker, who have a very simple, fast style, but the finished work is perfect.