Sean Rubin

Whenever I think I've gone completely boring, something bizarre happens. I've been attempting to reorganize my living space at home and decided I should convert one of the little drawer sets I used to store clay into a notecard holder (At this point in my life, I have more notecards than clay). Anyway, one of the drawwers got stuck, so I had to take it apart to figure out what was pressed into the back of the case. Naturally, what falls into my hand is small sheet of papyrus, origins of which I'm not entirely sure.

Most people find bugs or gum in furniture, I find papyrus sheets.

I think this is the beginning of a pretty busy summer, at least in terms of illustration. Naturally it's going to be a busy summer in other terms, too. I'm heading out to the Gobi Desert this weekend, and should be there until the beginning of July. In the meantime, I thought I'd post the first colored draft of the upcoming BELLMAKER cover, for an audio book by Brian Jacques.

A pleasant bizarity equals running about up-campus with not even a blazer on the 12th of January in West-central New Jersey.

Happy New Year!

For the curious, there's a new illustration on the art page, under the "Curriculum" section on my website... not much to say other than that, however.

~.~.~

State contenti, umana gente, al quia;
ché se potuto aveste veder tutto,
mestier non era parturir Maria;

--Purgatorio

Roughly?

"Be content with your questions, ye mortals, for if you were able to know everything, there would have been no need for Christmas."

Un buon Natale!

If anyone really wants an explanation, let me know.

At last the Rat, with a tremendous yawn, said, `Mole, old chap, I'm ready to drop. Sleepy is simply not the word. That your own bunk over on that side? Very well, then, I'll take this. What a ripping little house this is! Everything so handy!'

He clambered into his bunk and rolled himself well up in the blankets, and slumber gathered him forthwith, as a swathe of barley is folded into the arms of the reaping machine.

The weary Mole also was glad to turn in without delay, and soon had his head on his pillow, in great joy and contentment. But ere he closed his eyes he let them wander round his old room, mellow in the glow of the firelight that played or rested on familiar and friendly things which had long been unconsciously a part of him, and now smilingly received him back, without rancour. He was now in just the frame of mind that the tactful Rat had quietly worked to bring about in him. He saw clearly how plain and simple -- how narrow, even -- it all was; but clearly, too, how much it all meant to him, and the special value of some such anchorage in one's existence. He did not at all want to abandon the new life and its splendid spaces, to turn his back on sun and air and all they offered him and creep home and stay there; the upper world was all too strong, it called to him still, even down there, and he knew he must return to the larger stage. But it was good to think he had this to come back to; this place which was all his own, these things which were so glad to see him again and could always be counted upon for the same simple welcome.

--'Dolce Domum', from Kenneth's Graham's Wind in the Willows.

Why I rarely post anything brought about by insomnia.

Should probably redo this. It seems to have potential.

My first foray into promotional materials with the Princeton ODUS:



(with incredibly excellent font format and selections by Josh White '04)

So you should all come! The quality of our A Cappella groups defies reason.

This post only took a couple of months... although I did the sketch while watching the Arrested Development marathon on Fox this evening. I'm finally getting that show. Anyway.

Books seem to be the new rats. I say that because... well, quite a few people will probably remember my 'Rat Stage.' Hundreds of rats, all over everything. I had even considered doing a whole website around rats, but it never panned out. Finally, I have a site up, and the first thing you see is books. And I notice I enjoy sketching piles and piles and shelves and shelves of the things, in complete messes. I couldn't say why.

I actually hope to continue the book-pile phase in college. I really enjoy drawing libraries, although other people seem frustrated by them. You just take one object, create variations, and repeat endlessly in seemingly random order. I have no idea why that doesn't get on my nerves.

Sketch-


(The windows are from a Durer woodcut of Saint Jerome)

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------LONG ISLAND

"THOUGH brilliantly sunny, Saturday morning was overcoat weather again, not just topcoat weather, as it had been all week and as everyone had hoped it would stay for the big weekend-- the weekend of the Yale game. Of the twenty-some young men who were waiting at the station for their dates to arrive on the ten-fifty-two, no more than six or seven were out on the cold, open platform. The rest were standing around in hatless, smoky little groups of twos and threes and fours inside the heated waiting room, talking in voices that, almost without exception, sounded collegiately dogmatic, as though each young man, in his strident, conversational turn, was clearing up, once and for all, some highly controversial issue, one that the outside, non-matriculating world had been bungling, provocatively or not, for centuries."

**

The first day of the last summer.

I'd really rather not do an intro post, but I will anyway. Every time I try to establish the meaning of a new adventure, the adventure invariably takes an entirely different course. And so, I'm going to let this journal do what it will, when and how it will do it, and not shoot the arrow too far or short to begin with.

My website (finally) is in progress. Right now the only URL that will take you there is http://www.seanrubin.com ... Lots of snaps to my buddy Storm for setting this up. For some reason, the style I settled on seems like a mishmash of Deco, Japanese, and techno-dribble fandom sites. Go figure. Even when it's finished it'll be pretty modest. People are already asking me to include certain features in future updates.