Newstart Art

01/20/2024

Since so many of you prayed for my safety and even contacted me to find out if I had fallen off the end of the world, I promised that I would share the story of my disappearance... one that many of you are familiar with in some way. So grab your popcorn and sit back... it's a story of sadness, lessons and redemption. ( no it's not a hallmark movie!!)

Once upon a time many months ago.... I received what looked like a Facebook message asking if I had contacted my FB account from a foreign country halfway around the world. I was so tired of trying to determine if these messages were spam or real so I chose to ignore it. Boy, I wish I hadn't.

The next morning I popped out of bed and as some of you do, first thing, I checked my page. To my surprise I was blocked except for my PROFILE PHOTO which had been discarded and replaced with a very disturbing picture.... one that I came to find out was the image of a flag belonging to the terrorist group, Isis. This , according to Facebook's community standards, was off limits and fell under the axe of their technology which automatically banned me from anything Facebook, Instagram, Messenger and Marketplace and no one could see anything with my name associated with it either.

The powers that be left me with 1 page that just said that on July 24th, 2023 I violated the company's community standards and I had 180 days to make an appeal....and that it would only take a day or two for them to get back to me. If they determined that I had a violation then I would not be able to return to my page (which I began in 2009) and no one would be able to see it ever again.
So, I began checking Google for how to restore my account and profile page and, if you have ever been in this fix, you found out that there are hundreds of links to how to make this happen.... some of them from real people and others, very tricky scams, that you best not mess with. I began my period of confusion when nothing I tried produced the results that they promised. I began to think I was the only one that had been singled out to be a result of Big Daddy's hammer.

I tried everything ( within my limited brain bandwidth) and even the links Facebook.com/help or facebook.com/hacked would not help because I was not allowed to arrive anyplace that had the word Facebook on it. It felt like a hopeless situation. How does a guy make an appeal when he can't even contact the judge?
So I thought maybe if I could solicit the help of someone who grew up with social media and knew it like their shoe size, perhaps I could get some headway into this puzzle. So I talked to a friend whose daughter, Kelsey, who lived in another state, was a real pro at this stuff and she agreed to spend a few hours helping me via texting and emails. She was terrific in giving me suggestions and we even got to the place where I needed to prove who I am so I sent in my ID at the appropriate time. Sadly it was turned down .
( I guess I am not really who I am!!)

I want to thank Kelsey today for all the time she donated that evening to help me... frankly I was more sad that we hadn't broken the loop because she worked so hard and long to help a guy she barely knew. The next opportunity that came up was when I remembered my computer genius friend, Wink. This man shared my screen from another state and ran through all of the prompts with me to regain my page. After a few hours of his tireless suggestions I knew I was doomed when I heard the words " Dee... I'm sorry but I don't think I can help you any further"!!!! When your genius can't help you where do you go? Even my own brother spent a number of hours navigating me through the maze but to no avail.

I began to realize that God may not want me back on Facebook. I had to confess that my time spent on this media was often exceeding the amount of time that I breathed, and I wasn't willing to admit it ( some of you know exactly what I mean, right?). Also knowing that the Lord always has the best plan for my life, I gradually moved from begging him to restore me to my most prized position to agreeing that if He didn't want me on there then I would gratefully adhere to His plan for this season in my life, knowing that if He can be Sovereign over all the universe then He would easily know what is better for me than my own understanding. Honestly, when I came to this surrendering attitude, I acquired a large amount of peace knowing that He would use the gifts He gave me even if it wasn't using the Meta group of social media sites.

I was soon informed that my 180 days to appeal was down to 3 days and I had nowhere to go but to trust the only One who could change things at the 11th hour and 59th minute if it was His perfect will. I wasn't really even worrying about it at this point. AND THEN.... a good friend leaves me a text that he had shared my plight with a college student who had been an intern with guess where.... yup!!! Facebook!! ( you can't make these things up). This student talked to someone internally at the company ( which was as possible as me flying to Jupiter on a winged baboon) and within one day I was notified that a ticket was made for my situation and the rest was up to the good folks at Facebook to see what they would do.

The next morning I woke up and ran right to my phone to find that the " You Have Violated Our Community Standards" page was GONE!!!~ and in it's place was my email address asking if this was me.... I hit the YES button so fast I almost lost consciousness!!!
Before I knew it I was looking at my long lost Dee DeLoy page and right before I sent a victory message to a few friends, I shed a few tears and praised an Almighty God who is as personal as the hand attached to my wrist. Then I remembered something that a seminar teacher once uttered... that when the Lord wants to get our attention sometimes He will put an obstacle in front of our lives and if we listen and turn those issues over to Him or embrace the character that He so lovingly wants to instill in us ( for our own good) He may take those obstacles away.

This is one of those times that He did just that! And in it, I have seen His guidance to be where I need to be during this season of my life. Nothing feels better than to know that you are where God wants you to be..... Confidence comes in a big way and that without guilt or any manipulation.

So I will end this long but eye opening story by thanking everyone who cared, helped and prayed for me during these last 5 months and 28 days..... this includes the fast thinking folks at Facebook also.
Quite a time to realize that there is always more than meets the eye when what looks like a negative situation can really be a way for God to bring trust, faith and confidence to us through His specific direction of our lives..... the kind that produces more fruit and wonder than we could ever bring about on our own.

How interesting that this verse became more alive to me after the amazing results of this situation.

"He will lead you and guide you in the way you should go, He will council you with His eye upon you."

I'm so glad to be BACK!!! To all my friends here.... LET'S get back to the party!!

10/23/2022

This is the cover I finished for the 3rd children's book that I have had the blessing of illustrating. It is called The Birdfish and the Secret of Crystal Island. The author is Katsura Suzuki and was published by Berry Powell Press in Glendora, CA.
My dear friend Valeri Mills Barnes who works for Carmen Berry gave my name to her and it was off to the races developing the characters and painting the cover. Seems Katsura liked it so much that she made it possible for me to do the illustrations inside the book also.
This book is so timely in that it is about a creature who is part bird and part fish and was disliked by both parties. Speaking of bullying!!
The liner notes says. " But when she leaves her home in search of a place to belong, she encounters a guide on a mysterious island who teaches her about a power that she never knew she had. "
It is an encouraging book and folks can find it on Amazon as well as Barnes and Noble (https://www.barnesandnoble.com/.../the.../1140720794...).
This is a great book that will encourage any child especially ones who might face a situation where they don't feel like they "fit in". It has a great ending showing that there is a strength within that can overcome those crummy feelings of inadequacy that all of us have had at some time in our lives.

05/16/2022

Who would have thought I'd be spending my day drawing at a BABY SHOWER?
But indeed I did and it was more fun than fun.
I was imagining seeing lots of baby booties, gift cards for hard-to-find formula, enormous boxes of pampers, and a bunch of little pink jumpers with My Little Pony embroidered on the tailgate. But, boy was I ever surprised!! I walked into the backyard of a tropical resort that was fit for the rich and famous. I was greeted with beautiful giant pots of flowers, a very modern pool and a deck that had more levels than a carpenter. There was a student band put together for just this occasion with electronic drums, guitars and a gal who somehow got Celine Dion’s voice to exit out of her mouth! The catered food was scrumptious looking and never left the back of my brain until later when the host asked me if I wanted something to eat, at which time I left one of those cartoon speed clouds by my easel and wound up at the food table at 0 to 60 in a nano second.
You never know what will happen in the next 60 minutes and because of that I always live in anticipation of what God’s got up His heavenly sleeve. In this case I was hired to draw caricatures for 2 hours but as I approached the time to leave my line was still long and so they added a 3rd hour and at the end again more anxious, happy people still lined up so hour number 4 was added. I honestly thought that I was going to just set up a tent and continue into the night.
The one thing I noticed was that there were people of different nations all over that yard and each one of them had a story for me when they sat down to be my next victim…. Umm…. I mean subject. Have you ever noticed how” REAL” faceless people become when they get a real face? ….When you find out that they hug their kids at night, go to school plays, shop for groceries at midnight at WalMart and are always in front of the TV every night for Jeopardy? There’s nothing like hearing real stories about real people.
So I started drawing the soon-to-be mom, and I generally ask the subject to exercise their smile muscles at a certain time when I get to that very important part of the drawing. But I think this gal didn’t ever learn how to do a smile like many people….you know the ol’ toothy grin kind? Instead she just opened her mouth and laughed, laughed and laughed some more!! No smile… just a hearty and very contagious laugh! I honestly couldn’t help myself when I was trying to connect my pen to the paper and I was laughing so hard that I just knew everything down to her mouth would look smooth and flowing and from the mouth on down every line would be squiggly like someone had spiked my Coca Cola.
So I thought to myself…. Wouldn’t it be cool if we broke into joyful laughter more often than worrying? My mom was like that. She would say something that was so funny ( but didn’t realize it) that the rest of us would lose it and almost fall off our chairs while she looked at us like someone had removed the good sense part of our brain. When we regained our composure and told her what she had really said then she would ‘get it’ and start to giggle…. You know that kind where their eyes get all scrunchy and they have to hold their nose because they might snort? And then when she got like that all pandemonium broke out and it took the whole house hours to regain any sense of composure. My mom’s realization turned into contagious laughter !!!!
I really need to send a card to the mom-to-be and let her know NEVER to quit laughing…. She made the afternoon a blast for me and everyone else.
So I have my good friend and faithful compatriot , Rafael Diez of Cartoon You Caricatures, to thank for the referral for this terrifically awesome job. Thanks Bro…. you are the best of the best!! May God always get the glory as we work together to ignite that pilot light in people’s lives again.
So this story wouldn’t be a story if it didn’t have a moral……
How about if we all turned off the news more and spent a little more time getting to know someone on your block, or give a call to that relative that you haven’t caught up with in years, or maybe plan on talking with the new person sitting by themselves in your cafeteria or favorite place to eat?
Maybe you’ll find a joy that supersedes all of the negative and depressing news that we spend most of our day hearing about…. And maybe… just maybe… your joy will be passed on to others who need it as badly as we did. And then we will start seeing people as real, caring, loving creations of the Master Artist who never made people to be caricatures but real life likenesses in His image!

02/16/2022

In 1961 a tall, bearded, Greenwich Village, stand up comedian, a shorter, also bearded musician and a blonde woman with bangs got together...or in the words of the liner notes on their first album "The trio has elsewhere been described, visually, as two bearded prophets of the folk idiom in league with a bright, young blonde-and-a-half, and vocally, as an Angel and two cellos playing guitars".
This group was Peter, Paul and Mary, one of the greatest folk groups of the 1960's and responsible for giving us such exciting songs like If I Had a Hammer ( that they sang at the podium during Martin Luther King Jr's "I Have a Dream" speech), Where Have All the Flowers Gone, I Dig Rock and Roll Music, Lemon Tree, Puff the Magic Dragon ( no, it was NOT about you- know- what), and Leaving on a Jet Plane amongst so many others that we sang while listening to them on the radio for decades. ( I still play their albums and sing every word of their songs... loud. Neighbors beware!).
Little did I know that in late 1978 my life would change when a good friend invited me to a concert at the Great Southern Music Hall in downtown Orlando where I would hear and meet the tall, bearded comedian and musician, known as Noel "Paul" Stookey. He was on a solo tour, singing many of the songs from his first solo album entitled "Paul And" since the group had dissolved some years before. By God's providence, when the concert was over and my friend, Gloria, was to interview Noel in a little attic upstairs, I asked if I could come as her personal caricature artist. To my total surprise she came back down and told me that he invited me to join them.... Man was I stoked!!!!. And nervous... since I was really just joking, not thinking I would get a go ahead from someone so legendary.
That night started a friendship that has lasted 44 years. If you have ever had the opportunity to be a groupie, friend or just an acquaintance with someone who is of notable fame, you will probably remember when you were just a star struck young person who collected all of the media, pictures, magazines, record albums, posters, and signatures that had anything to do with these people.
They were the STAR and you were the devoted FAN. If that devotion continued it could possibly move into a time when the STAR actually knew your name and would acknowledge your fan letter, or even call you by name when you saw you in person again. WOW! Remember when you had to hold yourself back from those wonderful times when namedropping would command a bit of attention from your friends?
Noel told me one time in the Green Room after a concert in a nearby city ( when I was still star struck and wanted to feel and appear to be a valuable part of his life) that a friendship would be much more evident after many tried and true years of continuing to be in touch. I'm sure that celebrities get this all the time and after an explosion of attention from a fan, then never hear from them again until years later when another event brings them together and the fan treats it as if they had been talking everyday on the phone.......Yikes! it becomes an awkward moment for sure!!
I am thankful that as many years have gone by since that first meeting in the attic my "star struckdom" has become a deep friendship with a man who, yes has had fame beyond what most of us will ever know, but, in my opinion, has gone way beyond that to be a lover of the Lord, devoted family man, encourager to so many and a faithful friend to me. I think that sticktuitiveness that Noel talked about in my early fan days has been proven without a doubt over the last 44 years as we have had numerous experiences working together and those very special moments that keep the friendship coals bright and warm.
Before I stop, I just have to mention one of those experiences not too long ago that was a "bring a tear to the eye" moment.
Noel was going to be in concert that was sponsored by a political group at a nearby town and because it was a fund raiser there were no comp tickets to be given out this time. So I bought my tickets and had a great time at the concert when the night arrived. Usually after the concert I would stand around until an usher would take a few of us back to the Green Room to visit with Noel. Apparently this time V.I.P. tickets were sold for those who wanted to spend some time with Noel in the lobby of the concert hall. So I went out to wait to see him, knowing that he and I had talked weeks before and he knew that I would be there.
Unbeknownst to me the two ladies who were checking tickets said that because I didn't spend more money on a ticket that I would have to leave. Obviously they had forgotten that I was the one who had told them about Noel Stookey some years before and let them know how to contact him if they ever would like him to come and sing. So no matter what I told them how he was expecting to see me, they still led us to the door and though i asked if i could just stand outside and then come back in to visit with him after it was all over, they just gave me one of those congenial smiles and said " have a nice drive home".
I had over heard about a guy who was also running the show who picked up Noel from the airport and would be driving him back. It just so happened as we stood outside in the cold that this fellow walked by going inside. I always recognize these kind of serendipities from the Lord as little gifts not to miss. So I held out my hand and introduced myself and his reply shocked me... " You're Dee DeLoy" he said. " Noel talked about you all the way in from the airport...what are you doing standing out here in the cold?" So I told him the story of the lovely ladies with the bad memories and he held the door as he ushered us back inside again.
I walked over and leaned against the wall across the room from Noel as I noted the unforgiving, burning eyes of the " floor police" ladies staring at me again and ...oops... here she came again telling me that I couldn't be there. This time I gave her my business card and asked her to lay it down beside him as he was sitting at a desk signing autographs.
She came back telling me that he said he didn't know who that was on the card ( obviously he either didn't recognize the card or something more sneaky was going on there) so I would have to go. I felt the stubborn Texan welling up in me so i stood my ground, backing up against the wall shaking a leg, subtly waving a hand, nodding my head and twisting the rest of my body to try and get Noel's attention.
Suddenly, as I was probably looking like a convulsing nut against the wall, Noel looks up and sees me.... ZOUNDS!!!! These are times that you wish you had a video camera strapped to your head because the second he saw me twisting and shouting he jumped out of his seat, burst through the crowd who were standing there waiting to talk to him and ran all the way across the room and put me in a big bear hug. You could have heard a pin drop!!! Finally.... I get to see my friend and what a gallant way it happened.
I guess the next best thing to that fabulous reunion was seeing the expressions on the faces of the floor police ladies. Oh my! I think you could have fried an egg on their faces. And this was a great opportunity for me to practice what the Bible has been telling me as long as I have been reading it..... " turn the other cheek, go the extra mile, be at peace with all people as much as it is within your power.... forgive as I have forgiven you" ..... so when they slowly approached and apologized to me with their head hanging down, I was excited to tell them that it could happen to anyone and there was no harm done. That was a huge lesson for me because in earlier days in my life I would have milked that situation for all I could get out of it.... but it is hard to do that now when a guy realizes that he has received grace and mercy from above more than he ever had the opportunity to give out.
As I finish this book-length story, I want to thank my long time friend Noel Stookey for the many years of friendship and for the opportunity to have participated by creating the characters and illustrations for the music video of the song FUN POLICE which is a part of his newest, soon to be released CD, FAZZ:NOW AND THEN. With the newest technology we were able to Zoom together to work out the ideas and as I illustrated the characters he was able to drop them into the already existing words that were animated too. The thing I like so much about this song and video is that it is a very creative way of presenting redemption . See if you get what I mean when you watch it.
And if you are interested in owning his amazing, very uplifting music, the way to do that will be shown at the end of the video..
There's so much angst and sadness in our world today... Please let me encourage you to use that smile God gave you and bust down the frowns around you.... it doesn't take much, if you see someone without a smile to give them one of yours.

In an era when joy has become suspect, Gifts of kindness and compassion are viewed as weaknessAnd innocent delight and embrace of humor Is too often dismisse...

10/02/2021

It was 1974 and I was told, as i washed boats at Orlando's Boat Tree, that they were hiring caricature artists at Rubio Artists at Walt Disney World. Although I had prayed many times, just out of high school, how I would ever break into the art field professionally, I was not interested in driving the long way ( as it seemed then) out to Disney and then to cut off my long hair and side burns seemed not to be the right answer to my prayer. But " never say never" and that month I wound up sitting everyday in a break room in the Disney tunnels under the park with two other guys practicing drawing hands, hands and more hands, wondering when we would ever get to the good stuff.
Finally after a month of training I was placed on the 4th floor of the Contemporary resort and constantly marveled at watching a monorail zoom through the building all day long.... but even more amazing than that was that I was actually drawing caricatures of guests who really thought they were worth paying for. I was scared to death being in front of an audience drawing even though I was an extrovert. But it got easier over the next 6 years.

Eventually I was placed down on the first floor in the Fiesta Fun Center where we drew on an overhead projector with a big screen behind us where everyone could see the good ones and all the mistakes too. All of this was happening while we listened to the lilting refrain of air hockey tables, pinball machines, computer games and the constant bass beat of Elton John, Paul McCartney, Olivia Newton John and KC and the Sunshine Band every minute of every day. One of the things I loved about that job was actually meeting and drawing a number of Hollywood stars. One of them happened when Pat Boone's daughter gave me a number of photos asking me to do pastel caricatures of their whole family for a gift to their mom on Mother's Day just a few hours away. It was a thrill when Pat himself came over to pick them up that night and from what I hear the pictures are still hanging in his game room in Beverly Hills to this day.

After my time at the Contemporary, I found myself in a large warehouse near Central Foods behind Space Mountain, where I was privileged to work with some of the best artists and craftsmen around, getting sets ready for the opening of EPCOT and the new Disney park in Tokyo. I had the opportunity to put fur on monkeys, construct the whole set for the Symphony of the Seed in the Land pavilion, paint Inca royalty figures for Mexico in the World Showcase, and my favorite, painting the Tyrannosaurus Rex for the Energy Pavilion. It's not everyday that someone gets to put their hand into the mouth of T-Rex and talk about it later!!!.

After EPCOT opened Disney dissolved WED Show and I, with all of this inspiration, started my own business, Newstart Art. In those days my desire was to move away from graphic design ( which was my degree in college) into illustration and with a lot of work and prayer , I made that transition. In the late 80's I tried a new technique I had seen a famous artist do in a Artist Showcase book... it was called paper sculpture. It was done with cutting paper then curling, twisting, pressing, folding, burnishing, stomping on, whatever it took to get a 3 dimensional look when gluing the paper to a background board. I was enamored by this technique and the look of the art when finished so I began showing different pieces I had done to prospective art directors. After doing many pages for textbooks with what was HBJ in those days, I was asked by Sea World to construct their national Christmas card.... I almost fainted!!! It turned out to be a real hit and that led to many more commissions to use paper sculpture until one day my work was seen by some great people at Disney World, primarily those who produce the cast newspaper, Eyes and Ears. My now dear friend Clay Rivers , once the guy inside the Donald Duck costume, and Dee Hansford, his boss, took a liking to the samples of paper sculpture I had in my portfolio and the light bulb came on above Clay's head ( you should have seen it... it was really bright!!) and he thought it would be a great thing to do a Walt Disney World 20th anniversary lithograph using paper sculpture primarily for the cast. So, BOOM!, I was hired !!

The next 700 hours were full of resourcing, imagining, sketching, and cutting and gluing. It was the most momentous job that I had ever attempted to that date but what a piece of artwork it was when I glued on the last piece of formed paper.

But then it had to be photographed. To this day I have such a respect and appreciation for my good friend Carroll Morgan, who patiently let me tweak and pull, reform and reinstall pieces as shadows from the studio lighting would play havoc with certain parts of the art ( which was 34" x 26" x 7 " deep). We spent two full days in the photo studio trying to get just the right feel and dimension to bring out every piece of paper that was fashioned for the artwork. Kudos again to you Carroll, if you are reading this. You are the best of the best.

Once the film was developed ( remember this was 1992... no digital cameras at that time) color separations had to be made and everything was sent up to Hilltop Press in Indiana. There were many problems and delays in the printing process but finally I received 5000 packaged Lithographs in bunches of 400 which I set up in my living room to sign and number each one. I can tell you by the time you get past the first 100 the brain turns to mush and numbers don't make any sense .... 99/5000, 100/5000, 101/duhhhhhhhhh!!! Seeing that the first 50 were going to Disney president Michael Eisner, I at least got that many done right!!

Because of the delays getting the print out by the end of October, it was finally put up for sale on November 3rd which just happened to be the Election Day for Bill Clinton ( not that there was any correlation of the two, mind you.) One of the most memorable and deeply touching times of this whole huge project came after many people had bought a print. I walked into my friend, David Nocquin's frame shop for something totally unrelated and as I came through the door I was so overwhelmed that i had to stop and wipe my eyes. It appeared that many of the purchasers had brought their prints in for David to frame and there his entire store was, every wall completely covered in framed 20th Anniversary Disney World prints!!!!! I don't remember ever being so humbled by anything like that in my whole life!

So here we are, 30 years later... Walt Disney World is having it's 50th Anniversary now......where did that time go? But for this artist, I can tell you that I am truly grateful for the opportunity to have been a small part of the Disney history that has brought joy to so many people over the years. As a kid I would have never imagined that through a blessing from above I would have gone from an apprehensive newbie to the world of caricaturing to painting dinosaurs and one day actually doing paper sculpture for one of the largest family entertainment organizations in the world. All I can say is thank you for Dee, Clay, Cast Activities, all the great supporters who were cheering me on, and especially for the grace from my Heavenly Father who gave the talent and allowed me to use it for a very uplifting and encouraging purpose. These are memories that I will not soon forget.