Breaking Up Is Hard To Do

I broke up with my sketchbook today. I just felt that we had reached a point where we weren’t moving forward anymore and that maybe I might want to meet new sketchbooks. In short, we were done. It fills me with sadness to know that we’ve reached the end and I won’t be seeing him quite so often anymore. We parted on good terms, however, and although I can always visit, it won’t be the same. Ah well. It was good while it lasted and we’ll always have Paris.

I can’t believe I finally finished that damned book. A year and one month later, to the day! It was the sketchbook I took to Paris. It was the sketchbook for my last year of college. It was the sketchbook I've spent the most time in out of all the other sketchbooks I've ever owned. I don’t know how most artists feel about their sketchbooks but I get really emotionally attached to mine and although it’ll be nice to start a new chapter, I kinda just wanna keep working in my old sketchbook. It’s been so good to me. The binding is just about shot and the edges are all worn and there are grease stains on the covers. Now I have to break in a new book. Here are the last two pages I did:



I sent out thank you cards for my graduation, finally. I did drawings in each one of them, all in different media and here's one of them. It’s my new iPod (Johnny Five) I used most my graduation money on:


Here are just a handfull of photos I took at San Francisco's Gay Pride Parade. Holy crap, I took so many pictures!

We went to Mel's Diner after the parade and I wound up drawing on my placemat since I wasn't hungry. I thought the drawings were sort of charming so here're those.

Jack Scrap Fever

I did some major spring cleaning last week and had to wade through piles of paperwork and scrap papers with doodles on them. Here are some totally random doodles (mostly Jack) found here and there that I kinda like. Some of these are quite recent, some are quite NOT, and some are damn-dude-hella-old, explaining the discrepancy in style. There's a rare, unbearably adorable drawing of young Jacqueline in the second collage. There are a few bald Jacks because sometimes I just like drawing facial expressions and didn't even bother to finish the drawing with hair or shoulders. And then we've got some quick gestures done from imagination, usually in the margins of notes or something... those doodles are just random girls, not necessarily Jack. I've got a bunch of Warren drawings too (though not quite so many as Jack) but I thought I'd limit this post to gals, for starters.

My New Apparatus

So I've been fishing for an idea for a short story for the past week or so. I found one in a porch lamp(?)/heater(?)/thing at a Mexican restaraunt yesterday over lunch. "My New Apparatus".

Sketchbook stuffs. I just realized I only have 2 pages left in this book and the parting will be bittersweet. This is the same sketchbook I took with me to Paris a year ago and it's been great having it with me everywhere all year, even if I did feel like, "Hey, shouldn't you have finished this thing like 7 months ago or whatever?" Every time I finish a new sketchbook I think, "You should probably try something totally different this time around," and then I go out and get the same brown sketchbook at Utrecht. It's almost involuntary, at this point. I love the way it accepts media and that it forces me to do finished-ish drawings. Also, I hate staring at glaring white paper when I'm drawing.

I couldn't have asked for a better sketchbook, Brownie. If my next is better, it's because of you.

Moleskine Gouaches

I bought a watercolor Moleskin sketchbook last year and, oddly enough, I've used just about every major media in it except watercolor. I just started using gouache. I've been using white gouache in my brown sketchbook for a long time now but hadn't expanded to color so I bought some cheapass basic set from Michael's a couple months ago. I'm still adjusting to how gouache behaves, how much darker it dries, how fast it dries, and how to deal with the lousy pigments in the cheap brand I bought. I know for sure I like gouache now, so I'll upgrade to real paints soon. Anyhow, I kinda like how a few of the paint sketches turned out:


Location: Graveyard next to Mission San Jose, Fremont, California. I like this one a lot, actually. I think I should've simplified the foliage, though. Wierd story, there's a church on the other side of the graveyard separated only by chain link fence. I was sitting in the graveyard when Sunday services let out and the people all tried to get their cars out of this tiny parking lot. No one wanted to wait for anyone else to pull out of their spaces first. Soon it was a huge mess and people were getting out of their cars all over the place to yell at each other. One purple-faced old man in particular baited a young father out of his van, argued for several minutes, and then blustered, "Why don't you be God-like, you idiot!" On Father's Day.

Location: Alcatraz, San Francisco, CA.

Location: Central Park/Lake Elizabeth, Fremont, CA.

Location: Chinatown, San Francisco, CA. Wierd little color sketch of an alley in Chinatown. It was high noon and I couldn't see a damn thing from all the sun where I was sitting, thus the awful values. I'm surprised how interesting the colors turned out and it's kind of a cool image, so blog it goes.

It took me so many years to realize that "gouache" is not pronounced like "gauche". Refined, yeah?

San Franciscan travels

In the abscence of new work to post, I'm offering some recent photos as compensation. Well, most are recent. The first batch was taken in San Francisco just before Christmas.

San Francisco June 4, 2008:

This is the only picture of the bunch I didn't take... we roped a tourist into taking it for us. I'm second from the right, bottom.

I'm sure Jaimie will be thrilled I'm posting this. We took turns doing fine art on her arm on the train ride home.

San Francisco June 7, 2008:

Santa Cruz June 11, 2008:

I've been busy with work, family visiting from out of town, studying and what-have-you but I have been painting so I'll toss a few paintings up here soon.

Who is Johnny?

The top half was done at Mission Coffee in Fremont, CA and the bottom half is San Francisco. That's my friend, Llaima, in the upper right.

I've been listening to a lot of Sloan lately. Thanks, Canada! I've had "Navy Blues" for a while and loved the daylights out of it but hadn't ever ventured into the rest of Sloan's discography until now. I finally heard "Action Pact", "Twice Removed" and "Never Hear The End Of It" and it's been nonstop Sloan for the last few weeks. Oh yeah, and the newest Supergrass album: "Diamond Hoo Ha". I just got a supersweet new iPod with quadruple the capacity of my last one so I've been loading new music like crazy because I couldn't before... my old iPod was at full capacity. New iPod's name: Johnny Five.