Universal Movie Monsters

My brother Bob is ambidextrous. He can wield a hammer with his right hand, and write cursive with his left hand. Which meant that when he picked up a tennis racquet for the first time in his mid-twenties, he had a decided advantage over anyone else who was just learning to play. He quickly adopted a two-handed backhand, and within a short time he was able to hit winners from that side with pin-point accuracy. His serve also benefitted from his ambidexterity. By tossing the ball up with repetitive exactness using his coordinated left hand, his racquet holding right hand could easily find and strike the ball squarely as it rose up in space. There was no fishing around for the ball in the air with Bob. His service motion was consistent and his placement precise. As Bob's game developed it became almost unerring, and after a couple of years of practice he was able to compete with the best public court players in Denver. Over a ten year period my brother defeated almost every top athlete who ever showed up to play at Washington Park. Had he started tennis at an earlier age, who knows how far he could have gone. With financial support beginning at the junior level, I believe Bob would have carved out a successful career as a professional tennis player. He was that good.

Bob was also a gifted artist, and like myself and our two other brothers, he spent countless hours hunched over a drawing table when he was a kid. Fifty years ago the winters in Colorado seemed colder, and we spent a large part of our youth indoors, reading books and watching television-- and drawing lots and lots of pictures. Between the four of us we literally drew hundreds of illustrations during those long winter months. Sadly, most of those drawings have gone missing, either thrown out by us on purpose, or tossed out inadvertently. None of us thought to save every scrap of paper that we scribbled on, and some of it wasn't worth saving, but we did produce some respectable art back in the bygone days of our youth. Unfortunately, posterity can't always be rewarded.

When I was ten years old I commissioned Bob to draw me a picture. What I wanted was an entire cast of cartoon bumblebees on one oversized sheet of paper, starting with the King and Queen of the hive and their immediate family members. Bob's finished product was really cool, and it quickly became my favorite illustration. He created about a dozen different bumblebee characters, and each character had his own distinctive personality and name. I found myself staring at his illustration for long periods of time, dreaming up adventures in my head about the bees. I even wrote down a couple of stories-- but once again those writings and Bob's unique illustration have disappeared from our stores without a trace. Lost forever. Another casualty of misplaced youth.

However, we did hang on to some of our old drawings. Bob liked working with pastels, and when he was about fourteen he drew a series of portraits on famous authors, U.S. Presidents, and some of the Universal Studio monsters. I've posted a few of his best monster pictures below.

Bob has started drawing and painting again, which is great news for me. Just recently he completed a large portrait, using oil paints for the medium. The painting looks almost photo-realistic from a distance, but it's actually painted in a traditional manner with excellent brushwork and fine detail. It's quite nice.

Which tempts me to try and commission another illustration out of him. You can guess what I want-- yep, that's right-- a pencil drawing of some bumblebee cartoon characters. Maybe, just maybe, it will come out looking very similar to that original drawing, or perhaps even identical. That would be an amazing feat of course, probably too much to ask for, but who can really say what our minds and memories are capable of. But if it doesn't look quite the same, I'd still be happy with the end result. Anything from Bob would suffice-- and who knows-- maybe he can improve upon that original illustration. After all, I firmly believe we're better at applying our talents now as seniors than when we were young, even though back then we had considerable more time and energy on our hands.