This year I’m keeping a sketchblog.
I sketch all the time but usually just keep it to myself unless I feel it’s good enough to share with the rest of the interent but doing that doesn’t show all the doodles and fun, quick art I do. So I decided for 2026 to share it all with you in this ongoing blog post.
Another fun thing I plan to do is sketch the movies and TV shows I watch as well and put them here.
One slight caveat, I started this sketch blog after Christmas, a week before January 1, 2026. A lot of time due the the holidays and the time off from work I sort of unofficially start my new year during this time.
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Once again Tubi has come through!
This time I stumbled upon a movie from the 80’s called Race for the Yankee Zephyr. And boy is it a fun one! Basically a plane carrying gold during WW2 crashes and no one ever found it. That is until Donald Pleasence, a perpetual drunk, stumbles upon it during a botched hunting trip. So then his friend, played by Ken Wahl (a helicopter pilot), and his daughter played by Lesley Warren race to get back to the downed plane while evading a group of bad dudes hot on their trail. The leader of the bad guys is none other than Hannibal from the A-Team! (George Peppard)
It’s shot in Australia and New Zealand and shows a lot of the great scenery years before Lord of the Rings. But the real draw is all the helicopter footage! I might be exaggeraing a bit but it felt like 25% of the entire film was footage of helicopters in flight!
They shoot some wild shots and several seem really dangerous! A guy even jumps out of a helicopter and tackles a deer! For real!
This is a fun adventure and I am surprised I have never even heard of it! The bad guys are pretty dumb and incompetent, but the helicopter work is great, there’s a long speed boat chase down a river and the chemistry between Ken and Donald is pretty great.
Do yourself a favor and head over to Tubi and check this out!
If this keeps up Tubi should be paying me…
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Rylan and I watched a movie called Coherence and I highly recommend it! It’s about a group of friends that while a comet goes over them they get drawn into a series of crazy alternate-dimensional possibilities. It’s really well done, and the way it’s filmed made me feel tense throughout the entire thing. Coherence is a wonderful example of a great movie done on a tiny budget. And afterwards Rylan and I had some fun discussing the movie which is always a good thing.
If you watch it (and you should) the picture I sketched will make perfect sense.
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Had a moment inside this weekend so I used some of my toys again for a quick sketch session.
The first one is the Hoth Rebel Commander Action Figure from the Star Wars toy line. I used to play with him a lot although I don’t think I ever knew what his name was, just that he was a Star Wars figure from the planet Hoth.
The second toy is Nitro from American Gladiators. I found him at an antique show for $1 and had to pick it up. I used to watch this TV show ( I believe on Saturday nights) and really liked it. I thought, and still do, that it would be so fun to try those obstacles and challenges. I’m really surprised no one has ever set up a giant obstacle course and then charge people to go through it…
And the third figure is Peely from the game Fortnite. I have never played Fortnite but for a while they were putting out some really cool action figures. At some point I got this 2” Peely figure. I just like anthropomorphic food characters.
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Time for another Tubi special movie: Extra Terrestrial Visitors
Where do I begin with this one…
It’s cheap, but despite that it has some low key creepy vibes. It’s about some aliens that crash on Earth and start killing people but one of the aliens is good and makes friends with a little boy.
The movie promotes itself like it’s a goofy kids flick, ala E.T. knock off. But it’s not. The movie cuts back and forth between a group of adult singers out in the woods being attacked by the alien for some reason and the family of the little boy and how he befriends one of the aliens. The alien is super goofy but kinda cute. There’s also a pair of poachers that steal birds eggs.
Oh yeah, when the alien attacks it just touches you and you die.
It’s weird and kinda hard to watch. I like some of the alien parts with the boy and I think they should have just made the movie about them. Or stuck with the horror plot and ditched the goofy kiddie part.
Anyways, give it a chance if you want to say “Huh?” a lot.
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This is Andre Layton, played by Daveed Diggs, the main character in the Snowpiercer TV series.
Rylan and I just finished watching all four seasons. I enjoyed it for the most part. The production was good and it had some nice twists and turns and the subject matter and concepts were interesting but the show never really pushed it far enough in any one direction. Plus the train is 1000 cars long but they kept showing the same ten cars or so. I realize you can’t show them all but a few more would have been nice.
But besides that here’s the thing that stood out to me: Daveed Diggs looks a lot like one of my coworkers, albeit a different ethnicity. Which reminded me of the time I went to the Dominican Republic on a mission trip and some of the people I met there looked like people I knew back home.
Which just emphasizes the fact that we are all one big family with a shared lineage.
And…this ties back to Snowpiercer because the battle cry in the train for equality among all people is “one train.”
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So Rylan and I watched the new Anaconda movie.
He liked it. I didn’t.
I did like the concept of the cast remaking the Anaconda movie and why they decided to do that but I didn’t find the movie very funny. The acting seemed stiff and the characters weren’t all that likeable or engaging. It seemed like they didn’t know if they wanted a comedy or a drama and failed at both, in my opinion.
However, the 30 second scene with Jack Black and the pig was funny. That part I liked.
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Another crazy movie I found on Tubi: The Rare Blue Apes of Cannibal Isle.
This movie is pretty wild. It’s a children’s film about a boy (named Nonnie) that has a pet duck but apparently it causes so much trouble they have to give it away. But instead of doing that the boy takes the duck and runs away from home and by run away I mean rows a boat to an unknown island that is the home of some talking blue apes and some talking crocodiles that want to eat everything.
But the apes and crocs are played by people wearing giant masks.
The boys family is sad he’s gone but never bother to look for him and meanwhile he is off helping one of the blue apes (named Hotcha) escape the crocs.
There is a lost mine, a catapult, and you meet the rest of the ape family including an ape dressed like a knight. Oh yeah, it’s a musical too. One of the songs is pretty catchy. The boy and Hotcha sing about the apes grandpa named Oompah pa pa… or something.
Trust me, it’s way more trippy than I’m making it sound.
I really can’t give do this justice, you just have to watch it.
Trust me.
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I finally saw the movie Watchers. I’ve known about the movie but for some reason never got around to watching it. I thought it was ok but there were a lot of plot holes and characters doing stupid things.
I mean if they knew the creature was tracking the dog and the boy had the dog and the boy had been at home, then obviously the creature will go to the boy’s house and you can catch the creature there. End of movie and less people had to die. Ugh…
Anyways, besides dumb stuff like that I thought the movie was fun enough and I did enjoy watching it.
Also…is there a movie where Michael Ironside isn’t the bad guy?!
I read online that the book is way better so I’m going to try and give that a read and see for myself.
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Another toy sketch, this time the Squawk van from Stranger Things that I bought myself for Christmas. I’ve always wanted a van that I could turn into an RV and travel the world sketching from the road. Plus vans are cool and the ones with paintings on the side are just next level!
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For me, the streaming platform Tubi is like a digital version of a video store. They have an enormous assortment of random content. A large portion is “mainstream” or stuff I’ve seen or heard of… and then there is a multitude of random shows and movies I didn’t even know existed.
Like this.
Commander Toad in Space. I saw it on the Tubi platform and just had to check it out. It’s only about 30 minutes so it wasn’t a huge time drain. Some of the humor has a bit of wit to it but over all it’s pretty clunky, cheap and I only found it to be a tiny bit fun.
After some research it turns out this show was part of the ABC Weekend Special series and aired in 1993. So the youngsters in 1993 might have found it more enjoyable than I did and that was the target audience after all.
I do like that the entire cast is made of puppets, except for one human boy. I am a big fan of puppets so that was neat.
The TV show is actually based on a series of Commander Toad books that I have never heard of either. I may try and read one or two and see how they are.
So by taking a chance and watching this offbeat, random show I saw some creative puppets and discovered some books I hope to read. Not bad Tubi, whatcha’ got next?
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Sometimes you just want to do some sketching but just can’t go anywhere for whatever reason so instead you grab some toys you have laying around and sketch them.
First up is Podcast, from the Ghostbusters Afterlife toy line.
I thought this movie was OK, pretty fun but I felt it needed more people populating the world, it just felt really small.
Second is an 80’s favorite: one of the California Raisins from Hardees.
Back in the 80’s, Hardees had some fantastic toys you could either buy or get in the kids meals.
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We decorated some cookies for Christmas and the colors that came with the kit were red, white and green. I opted to just use green and white and I like how these two turned out. The green one reminds me of a tennis court.
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I am a big fan of Stranger Things and could go on and on about the show but instead I will share with you a sketch I did of the Sidestep cassetter player Henry gives Holly in season 5. I’ve never seen one of these before and it looks pretty neat. I had something similiar when I was kid but it was red and had the handle on top.
Back then I spent a lot of time just listening to music. Just sitting or laying on the bed listening to tapes and the radio. Nowadays I only listen to music when I’m in the car or at the gym. I’m going to try and spend some time just listening to music and not doing anything else while I listen. Just listen.
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My son, Rylan and I watched Red Scorpion together over the holidays. I believe I watched it as a youngster but don’t remember anything about it. This time I enjoyed it quite a bit. The twist at the beginning with Dolph’s character got me good, I didn’t see that coming at all. The middle part kinda drags a bit but the action is fun and they blow up a lot of stuff.
I like watching older movies even more now since I know all the effects are practical. I really appreciate that a lot more these days. CGI is fine and all but sometimes it’s hard to beat the old school effects, there’s something more visceral about a real object blowing up or an actual physial set or location.
Dolph Dundgren is in peak form here and looks super young. It’s interesting he’s playing another soviet soldier after his turn as Drago in Rocky IV.
Overall a fun action movie with a perhaps slightly different story than ususual. On a side note, Rylan really knows his soviet era vehicles and spotted the fake Hind gunship right away. A creative effort from the filmmakers to dress up a different chopper to try and look like a Hind.
