Every year for many years Ellen and I have colored Easter eggs at Ellen’s sister Ann’s house. These are the eggs we made this year. The egg artists were Ann, her husband Dave, our friend Tim, Ellen and I. Each year a judge is chosen to award winners in a number of categories. Ann’s daughter Ina was the judge this year since she wasn’t able to join us for the coloring. At the end of this article I will link to some previous years’ articles which have some how-to examples, but over a lifetime of doing this, we’ve figured out some techniques and tricks. For instance, the geometric shapes are done with tape, either Scotch magic tape or masking tape. This year Tim also tried black electrical tape, and on one egg above it’s still on the eggs, making for a cool black and green pattern. We decided he had to remove the tape for the judging, though. Thin lines of various kinds are made with the wax crayons that come with the Paas egg coloring kits. Thicker lines are done with rubber bands. Dark colors are the result of multiple color dipping, and to get more intense colors we double the color tablets and vinegar. Here are the award winners chosen by Ina.

Santa and the Doodle-li-boop mp3

Rerunning an old post, here’s a Christmas song you probably haven’t heard. They don’t make them like this anymore, which is just as well. From my childhood 45 rpms collection. The more famous version is by Art Carney, this is a cover by Sam Ulano.

This and all images © Todd Klein.

In 1977 I was hired by a small press horror publisher to illustrate a collection of Lovecraftian humor stories gathered and edited by Darrell Schweitzer to be titled, “Eldritch Laughter From Beyond.” I completed all the art, including a wraparound cover and sent it to the publisher, but it vanished mysteriously when the publisher went out of business shortly after, and was probably destroyed. I was able to get photocopies of some of the art before it was mailed, and the best of them are here. If you’ve spent a lot of time on my website, you may have seen these already, but I thought I’d roll them out again for those who haven’t. I no longer know the authors or the story titles. I had fun doing these, but the experience of losing the art, the opportunity to be published, and any payment soured me on doing this sort of thing, and I didn’t do any more. The illustration above sums up how I often felt about doing the art, usually late at night after I’d finished my day job at DC and my freelance lettering for them. Continue reading →

Today is the 11th anniversary of this blog and my website, begun July 3rd, 2007. As of today there are 3,342 posts containing 3,319,104 words. I haven’t been posting as often in the past year due to other priorities, but I still enjoy having this blog and plan to continue it. Most of my readers find me through Facebook, where I link to the blog on my own personal page and my “Todd Klein, artist” page. If you’re one of those, or if you’re bookmarking it or finding it elsewhere, welcome. Tomorrow, being the 4th of July, everyone in the U.S. gets to celebrate, often with fireworks. If you’re going to, have fun, and be careful.