September was prostate cancer awareness month. For me, and every other person that’s ever had, known, or loved someone that’s fought cancer – every month is.
Like Star Wars? ( Hate cancer? ) Me, too. Here’s another one from almost four years ago : That’s no moon!
Take care of yourselves, people. And please, get checked.
-Scott
P.S. I’ve posted ( and drawn ) a lot on my cancer journey over the last six years. If you want to know more go here : Prostate Cancer
A flyer I churned out for our Halloween performance.
Happy Halloween!
Alacran Court invited “The Rubber Band” back to play for their annual Halloween block party. This year we had a band of middle-schoolers, called “Dencity”, open for us. Dencity played through a set of five songs – including a couple of originals – before we took the stage. I wish I had their guts back when I was their age. It took me another 30+ years to gain the courage, I guess. Better late than never. We played for an hour before retreating to our respective halloween festivities.
The Rubber Band was invited to play at Rancho Bernardo’s annual Oktoberfest festival at Webb Park on October 11th. We opened for Par Avion, an instrumental surf music-inspired band from Santa Monica, to a crowd of 900 beer aficionados.
The local paper and ( no joke ) Union Tribune picked up on the event, and ran articles in which we were published. As our lead vocalist announced to the crowd ( jokingly ), “Yeah, we’re kind of a big thing.” We almost laughed him off the stage.
The Chieftain interviewed us. Other local papers, including The San Diego Union Tribune, re-published the article. My co-workers at Twin Peaks Center found out and surprised me with my own copy in the main conference room.
Would we do it again? Absolutely. However, we couldn’t have done it without the help of a lot of people…
Thank you Eric and John from San Diego Event Pros for making us sound so good. You guys are awesome!
The Rubber Band played for the neighbors’ of Chieftain Court at their Labor Day block party this weekend. We kicked it off with a set of songs from 60’s through early 2000’s. In a little over a month ( October 11th ) we’ll be playing at Rancho Beer-nardo for Oktoberfest, so it was good to get in some stage time.
John Hatcher, our bassist, mastered the audio, combined it with with video we captured using a GoPro, and posted it on our new Rubber Band YouTube Channel. Here is just a few of the videos….
And that’s all, folks! Thank you, as always, for your continued support. And….if you could subscribe to our YouTube channel, that’d be great …..m’kay.
Originally, I named it “Scott’s Jewels” and used it solely to showcase programming projects that I had been working on. Over the last ten years, however, it’s become a platform for showing off my illustrations, comics, musings, and more recently – music. I guess my interests have changed over the last decade – or, more accurately, I’ve finally decided to let them out of their respective cages.
Like any teenager, Drawn and Coded – specifically the logo – needed what my daughters call a “Glow Up”.
Here’s what I came up with…
There were, of course, some “failed” experiments. At first, I was kind of caught up on the whole “computer” thing. Keeping with the new direction I’ve taken, however, it didn’t make much sense – I haven’t posted anything technical for over a year.
Next, I wanted to emphasize art and music, but having a guitar fretboard front-and-center didn’t jive with the name, “Drawn and Coded”. Then there was Jodie’s remark, “You don’t paint. Why do you have a paintbrush?”
So, there it is – all glowed up. Now I can finally get back to drawing comics!
The Rubber Band played at yet another block party on June 13th to celebrate the end of school and the start of summer break. We played for about an hour-and-a-half, running through about twenty songs.
Good photographs were few and far in-between this go around. I stole this one from a GoPro we clipped onto the speaker stand.
I think everyone had a good time. The only complaint was a lack of water bottles – but that’s what happens when six guys plan a party. Beer? Plenty. Water bottles? None.
My oldest daughter, Ashley, and I.
The band is going to take a much needed break for the next two weeks before hitting it hard for our upcoming gig at Rancho Bernardo’s upcoming Oktoberfest celebration, “Rancho Beer-nardo”.
May is bookended on one side by Mother’s Day and on the other by my wife, Jodie’s, birthday. Throw in Memorial Day, busy kiddos, and a new job and I was surprised to get this comic done. Well, almost done – I’m posting it now ’cause I didn’t have time to color it when I gave it to her on Sunday!
The New Job
I guess it’s probably time to make an official announcement. Before I started working as an “Artist in Residence” at Rancho Bernardo High School (RBHS) I had applied for a Programmer Analyst position with Poway Unified School District – and was subsequently turned down. Well, about two months into assisting in art class I got a call from the district office to see if I was still interested in the programming position.
Honestly, I had to think about it. The art position I held was part-time, without benefits, and had very little chance of being renewed for the next school year. Compared to a full-time position with benefits at a much higher pay the decision should have been easy, but it wasn’t. The problem? I really liked teaching art and working with the kids. It was very fulfilling.
I ended up taking the programming position, but made it clear that long-term I’d want to be back in the classroom. My new supervisor seemed to be on board. She’s the executive director for Poway’s CTAAE Department, a mouthful of an acronym that translates to : “Career Technical Adult Alternative Education”. If you live in Poway and Rancho Bernardo and get the “Adult School” booklet in the mail, that’s one of the things my department does. My department is also in charge of CTE, or “Career Technical Education”, which spearheads a lot of the “alternate” classes that I used to like so much when I was in high school so long ago. My daughter, Ashley, for example, took a Computer Graphics course last semester at RBHS which was sponsored by CTE, and loved it!
It’s only been a few weeks, but I feel like I made a good decision. I like the work, the people are great, and for the first time in a long while I feel like I can make a difference. And who knows? Someday I might get to teach one of those CTE classes myself!
On a more personal note, I’ve yet to have the any of the anxiety attacks that used to plague me while working as an Application Development Manager at my last job. I’m beginning to realize just how unhealthy that place, and my manager, really were.
What does J.T.P. stand for? I got a different answer every time I asked…
My friend, John, reached out to me and asked if I’d be interested in drawing him a logo for his band, J.T.P. As luck would have it they were all in town and planned on having a series of rehersals in John’s living room.
“Mind if I stop by to listen and get some ideas?”, I asked him.
He agreed.
John had been sending me J.T.P.’s recordings for a while and I liked their covers. He told me that they have been playing together since attending college at The University of Georgia in the 90’s.
Now spread out across the United States, they rely heavly on Apple’s GarageBand, a music editing application, to “knit” together their various tracks ( guitar, bass, vocals, etc… )
At their rehearsal I listened, sketched, and took some pictures.
Here they are : Steve Posner, John Hatcher, Paul Dye, and Brad Anderson
If you’d like to listen to some of the J.T.P.’s music, you can find it on YouTube at @JohnnyHitsTheGroove.
Lastly, here are some of my quick sketches. All hand drawn on a 5×7 notepad with a mechanical pencil.
For the end product I went with vector graphics using Inkscape, prefering a format would be sharp, crisp, and could be easily resized. Vector graphics take me longer to produce, but they have a certain durability and reusability that I prefer over hand drawn stuff.
My friend, Ben Good, gave me this idea for a comic – or, rather – his van did!
Teaching
I’ve been assisting in art class at Rancho Bernardo High School as an “Artist in Residence” and loving it. I really enjoy working with the students and am blown away by their talent. Thirty years ago I was in their shoes, taking art at a different high school in a different time. It might surprise you, but I didn’t have a great experience in my art class. It would be twenty years later before I’d take another. Part of me wants to make sure that these students have a better experience than I did. And, if that means attempting awkward poses for their figure drawing course, so be it. Art is a serious thing, but it should never be taken too seriously.
While RBHS was out on “Ski Week” ( a one week holiday bookended by President’s Day ) I got the opportunity to substitute for middle school English at Classical Academies in Escondido for a few days. Middle schoolers are squirrel-ly counterparts to their older high school peers, for sure – but I enjoyed my time there, too.
The path to teaching takes time and money, however. For starters, I’m looking at one year of coursework and another year of unpaid student teaching. Furthermore, Computer Science isn’t an “approved” subject matter in California – not yet anyway. I would need to pass a CSET, an exam proving my expertise in an “approved” field, to teach Middle School and above. Yes, Art is an approved field, and I am considering it amongst other things.
So, yeah. I guess I want to teach…
Still in Remission
For those of you who have been following my cancer story, I am still in remission. I just had my quarterly bloodwork, and there is still no evidence of disease. That’s not to say I don’t think about it a lot. The boogeyman is always there, and the boogeyman is me. When I was undergoing treatment, I drew a lot as an escape. Five years since my surgery, it’s still an escape…
Like it? You can wear it, too. I have it available as a t-shirt on TeePublic.
Music
Now that I’ve been playing in a band, music has become yet another outlet for me. I’ve been posting some questionable poetry on Drawn And Coded for a while, but what I haven’t shared is that I have also been writing songs. Up until recently the lyrics always came easier than the melodies. Suno, an AI music generation service which I wrote about in my last post, helped me bridge that gap. Suno is not perfect, but if I feed it my lyrics along with details on how I want them to sound, it’ll create a complete song. If I refine my criteria ( for example, if I change the timing, the key, the vocal style ), Suno will eventually produce something reasonably close to what I want.
After playing with Suno enough I realized that I wanted to accompany myself playing my own songs, or basically “cover” them. Before artificial intelligence this statement would have sounded gibberish, but now? Not so much, Unfortunately, whereas Suno can create a remarkably realistic and good sounding song, it’s horrible at transcription. I’ve yet to find a tool that does an adequate job of automating the process of converting audible music to sheet music, so I did it manually. It was a painstaking laborious process that resulted in many changes to what Suno had originally created : the chord progression, timing, structure, lyrics, and intonations all had to be changed to make it playable and singable by ( gasp! ) me.
My first song, “Survive”
This is my first song. I call it, “Survive”. It’s rough. It’s not perfect. But it’s mine, and I am proud of it…
Thank you Ben Good and John Hatcher for your help. Also, thank you to my stepfather, Don, who used to sing and play guitar every night before bed when I was growing up. Don, I don’t think you ever realized how much of an impression you made on me.
Here are the lyrics, if you’re interested…
Survive
[Intro] Why do you have to be there? And come back into my life. Why can’t you just stay sealed up? Where you cannot traum-a-tize.
[Verse] You hurt me, burned me, you scarred me deep. You left me all for dead. A horrible void you left for me. I need you outta’ my head.
[Pre-Chorus] From the outside all is normal. No evidence of disease. But my mind still wanders back to you. Distracted and un-eased.
[Chorus] I will NOT give into you. I will NOT sat-is-fy, I will take you to the grave with me. At best it will be a tie.
[Verse] There are nights where I’m not sleepin’… ‘Cause of what you did to me. Thinkin’ of what mighta’ been… …and of what still could be.
I’ve found myself in re-tro-spect. In this vacuum you left behind. Why can’t you let me live my life? Free from you. Dig-ni-fied.
[Chorus] I will NOT give into you. I will not sat-is-fy. I will find myself! You will see. I just need to try.
[Bridge] I’m not the same I was before I don’t think I’ll ever be. I’ve picked up the pieces you left behind. And made myself a better me.
[Outro] I will NOT give into you. I will not sat-is-fy. I’ve found myself no thanks to you. It’s time to say good-bye. Good-bye. Good-bye.
The Rubber Band
Meanwhile, the “Dad Band” that Shawn Burgwald and I started over two years ago is still going strong. Some Dads have left, and others have joined. The current roster is Shawn Burgwald ( Lead Guitar ), John Hatcher ( Bass ), Kenn Matthews ( Vocals ), Colin Young ( Drums ), Aaron Pipkin ( Keyboard / Guitar ), and Me ( Rhythm Guitar / Backup Vocals ). We’ve been playing together regularly and have even “broken out of the garage” and played live a handful of times now. Kenn Matthews is our lead singer, but occasionally I get a chance to stretch my vocal chords. Here we are at a practice a couple of weeks ago…
The end of the year is rapidly approaching and, after a quick audit, I’ve realized a substantial backlog of projects that I have been meaning to post about. With the holidays on the horizon now is as good a time as any to catch up, so here goes…..
First up – a new Vandervort Realty Logo. Jodie’s real estate brokerage is growing and has expanded into property management. Although that doesn’t necessarily warrant a new logo, I couldn’t help but add some flare to the one that I created for her in 2021. My real reason for the gussying up? I wanted to surprise her with an applique for the glass doors leading to her home office and realized the original design didn’t exactly “pop”. Although I don’t expect “Vandervort Realty” swag to be a big seller, you can order your very own hat, shirt, coffee mug on my TeePublic store.
Next up – yet another comic based on my experiences in Corporate America. “Firehosing” is a term used in tech circles that is used to describe feeding someone information at such a rate that it’s impossible to digest. This particular comic has been sitting in my sketchbook for a while and it was overdue for some ink and color.
The Rubber Band and Penny, the birthday girl.“I Wanna Be Sedated” by The Ramones“I Won’t Back Down” by Tom Petty“What’s the Frequency, Kenneth?” by R.E.M.“Santa Monica” by Everclear
Next up – some tracks of The Rubber Band playing at my good friend, Penny Bauder’s, 50th Birthday Party at the Westwood Club. We played about twenty songs – three of which I sang lead vocals on – all of which I opted to post here. I’ve been working hard on improving my voice ( and accompanying myself on guitar), so please indulge me. On a side note, if you want to indulge me further please go buy some band swag on my TeePublic store.
Next up – some concept artwork I created for my friend, Mike Jock, for his new car dealership, Classic Motors ( Facebook Page ) . Mike had been bouncing the idea around for a while and finally pulled the trigger earlier this year. If you’re looking for a used car, give him a call.
Next up from 2023 – some tattoo sketches that I created over a year ago for my band’s lead guitarist, Shawn Burgwald. He wanted something to honor his late dad, Eric, who was a huge Beatles fan. The guitar pictured is of “Rocky”, George Harrison’s eccentrically-painted Fender Stratocaster.
Next up from 2022 – a comic I drew after spending the better part of a month recovering from pneumonia. On the left is Asclepius, the Greek and Roman god of medicine and healing. On the right is Zeus, the king of gods. A hidden joke for those unfamiliar with Greek Mythology is that Zeus did in fact kill Asclepius after Asclepius attempted to heal mortals of wounds that would have normally been fatal. Zeus’ fear? That Asclepius would close the gap between mortals and gods.
Next up from 2021 – some concept drawings I did for a an illustrated book on engineering security practices that my college buddy, Adham Shabaan, and I were tossing around. The artwork was designed to make the material more approachable. Unfortunately, the idea failed to gain critical mass.
Next up from 2021 – a logo I created for the custom Stratocaster my brother, Todd Vandervort, built for me. Yes, it’s a play on words and probably wouldn’t fly past Fender’s legal department without being riddled with holes. My brother decided to use the more conventional “Fender Stratocaster” applique on the headstock, instead. As far as the guitar? It sounds great. I’m so lucky to have my own personal luthier in the family.
Phew! That’s it. I’ll try and stay on top of things moving forward.
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