Thursday, July 23, 2015

Thompson Sighting!!

Being a proper American now, Ronald Thompson wanted to visit the USS Midway Museum in San Diego. I came along to make it a mini-Blue Sky reunion. I even brought along sketchbooks, and after a few hours of inspecting the place, we sat down for an all-too-brief attempt to capture something of our historic surroundings via that time-honored method, pencil-to-paper:


Thompson was reluctant at first...It helped that I'd brought along one of his own sketchbooks for him. I'd had it since we used it to source those (wunderbar) pages that Ron contributed to the immortal "T.A.G. Annual Sampler." He perused a bit of his old work (which pleasantly surprised him), and those rusty gears began to re-engage....


Lookit this incredible-ness. There's no Thompson like RON Thompson!! 


 Seriously at work.
There were digi-pix a plenty, too.

A steamy day down in S.D. After the ship, we stopped by the Bob Hope Memorial sculpture group next door. It's a pretty good Bob, but a kinda crappy Memorial (can you tell I'm bitter from getting cut out of the commission? The artist who did it was kind of a douche--originally it was s'posed to be divided among 5 local sculptors, but douche-y worked HARD to cut all the other sculptors out of the deal). The Hope memorial is completely eclipsed (and outright dwarfed) by the even more heinous Seward Johnson "Kiss" sculpture. Really tacky. And weird.
We got stuck in downtown traffic--surface street traffic that had every route from the seafront to the freeway blocked solid both ways. It was like Comic Con was going on, but apparently it was just downtown workers, residents, and a whole lot of visitors (we heard lots of German and Japanese...plotting revenge, perhaps???).

But the traffic didn't sour our day--just our armpits. We had a damn good time. Woulda been even better if we coulda roused a few more T.A.G. alums to join us. As Thompson said, "NEXT TIME, DAVIS!!"

4 comments:

MrGoodson2 said...

I've seen this was coming as a draft. Great payoff. All those great shots. Great Phantom jet. That was always Bill Watterson's favorite. http://calvinandhobbes.wikia.com/wiki/Fighter_jet

Thompson is looking good. Love that caricature. Pretty much a portrait.

And Thompson's sketches as usual make you think someone should act as an agent and make sure he puts out an opus of that great work.

Rickart said...

I agree with Ellis on all fronts! I wish I could have been there too!

Tom Moon said...

Oh well heck, ya shoulda called me. I might have been able to go. You were here Wednesday?

Great portrait of Ron.

Davis Chino said...

Tommy! Dude, it was a very last minute thing--but I am coming down to San Diego next weekend for Eric Shannower's "Oz Con." I will be doing caricatures! It will be Oz-sume (oof). If you're in town I might beg to crash on your couch one night!