Now In Technicolor

Let's hear it for summer. Alright. I can't think of a better way to spend a summer morning in San Francisco than to get acquainted with a fresh sketchbook over a latte and a bagel at some neighborhood cafe.

A former teacher of mine always encouraged us to incorporate words in our sketchbooks whether in journalistic, poetic, or graphic form. I thought I'd try my hand at it. Dunno if I'll keep it up.

I was forced to abandon the drawing below when I started losing the light but I sort of like it better unfinished because it says something about my process here.

Below: Yes, his neck was really that thick. Yes, it was freaky.

Below is a leftover from Ye Olde Recycled Paper Sketchbook.

The new sketchbook is forcing me to think differently about how I compose images on a page and use various media. My old standby tools just don't work in this book and washes are out of the question so I'm mostly working with gouache and these really great Staedtler triplus fineliner pens I just discovered. The painting was all done with my dying water brushpen instead of an actual paintbrush... I can't tell you how difficult a time I had with the color sketches because of that.

I actually had too many sketchbook pages for one post... got a little overstocked due to a broken scanner. Regular updates from now on. Promise. I have backstock.

May Days

No, I still haven't switched sketchbooks. No, I would not like to talk about it. I seem to be having some issues letting go... we'll call it separation anxiety. Soon, for reals, I will really switch to white and do some color stuff. Gouache, crayons... the whole deal. Here are some May drawings:

Above: Done at Arlequin Cafe in San Francisco. It got a little overworked and you can still see some old drawings I began underneath areas. I confess to committing petty Photoshoppery on the windows... a very light overlay to make the windows pop a bit and balance the overall value scale. Don't shoot.

Above: Done on a ridiculously windy day at the park.
Below: BART drawings.


Above: Another Alamo Square drawing, San Francisco. My Tombows were dying and I had to go back on 3 different days for this because I kept losing the light to evening bay fog after about 15 minutes of drawing each time.

Below: Done at an Oakland A's game on Memorial Day. I normally can't stand sports but my dad called me up and was all, "Hey, free tickets and food!" Free food? I will be there. And I couldn't pass up the opportunity for some new sketchbook subjects.


Above: Randomness... drawings done at some friends' graduation ceremony in San Jose, at a restaraunt afterward, and then trash cans and cars outside some cafe on Hayes Street in San Francisco.

Hey, has anyone seen this cool little film called "UP" that was released (or rather, unleashed) recently? I want to express a big congratulations and and even bigger thank you to Pixar. I don't know what those folks had to do to match (and possibly surpass) "Ratatouille" but they did it. Way to up the ante. Will you marry me, Pixar?

Commuter Mementos V

Long month, no post. I have to admit, I have not been drawing. Outside of work, anyway. The reason being: I’ve been busy with work and I moved. The move is done… I live in San Francisco now. The weather’s superb, the hills are plentiful, the flags are colorful, and they’ve got one hell of a bridge. As for work, that will continue to increase until mid-summer. I can’t wait until I can start sharing some of the work I’ve done but I won’t be able to do that for a few more months.

So here’s more of the same: commuter sketches that are several weeks old. Boo. On a positive note, I like them a lot better now than when I actually drew them. Yay.

P.S. I don’t have to commute anymore (!!!)

I'm pretty bored with the media I've been working with the past few months and it's time for a drastic change. I'm switching to my white sketchbook for a while and I'm gonna do some color work. I'm sick of everything I do looking the same. And without the daily train ride as my mandatory sketchbook time, I'm going to have to be a lot more diligent about making time every day. At any rate, I promise the next art post here will be less than a month from now.

Commuter Mementos IV

Yeah, hold up. We'll get to the sketches in a second. Indulge me.

I’ve been cleaning out my room over the past few weeks, preparing to move soon, and all sorts of random fossils from my past have been turning up. I offer to you, the scientific community, a sublime specimen. It is, apparently, my first Sony.

Why, yes... that is an honest-to-god WHAM! cassette. Of course. I was that awesome.

Though my former awesomeness has widely been accepted as fact for quite some time now, firm proof has at last been found in all its tacky, 80s, kindergarten glory eliminating any lingering doubts. Believers rejoice.

My dog got a hold of my iPod, somehow, a couple months ago and mauled the crap out of the case. Miraculously, the iPod is alive and well… which means the dog still is too. The case is history, though. I’d love to track down another My First Sony on eBay and gut it to make a new case. It's the perfect size. I really don’t want to defile my original walkman because it’s almost like a holy relic to me and I still want to bust out my old cassettes and rock that thing like it’s 1989. Anyhow…

I think we normally post drawings here and these aren't too embarrassing so here we are. I actually quite like a few of them. But only a few.





I'm planning on switching media soon to get out of my funk. I've just been too lazy to reload my arsenal. I'm thinking of switching over to my white sketchbook for a bit and also working with color. It is spring, after all, and color seems to be unavoidable. Might as well exploit it.

Also, I started a new blog to share scans of my vintage books and images of other random, wierd-ass thrift store crap I come across (but mostly book scans). If that's anyone's bag. Here's a sample image, scanned from "Old Mother Hubbard and Her Dog" by Evaline Ness:

Commuter Mementos III

I wish I could draw better. Yeah, tell you something you don't already know, right? My drawing skills have been complete rubbish the past couple weeks. I've been expecting that for some time, though, seeing as I recently experienced a large artistic growth spurt. I was overdue for a downturn. Anyway, the following are the acceptable "just keep working" drawings. Don't ask me to show you what unacceptable looks like, yeesh.



Above: Done several weekends ago when attending IndieMart in San Francisco, right before my personal art recession began. Afterward, I grabbed a really great mocha and lunch at a cafe in Hayes Valley... can't remember the name. Apparently it's across the street from "Stacks". I really want to do more environment drawings soon. Like I used to.

Below: BART peoples. I love the drawing of the sleeping man in the upper left. It's easy to make sleeping people look soulful. The man in the lower right noticed me drawing him but tried to play it off like he didn't. I saw him the next week on BART and as soon as he noticed me, he did an about-face and sat at the end of the car in a seat with his back to me. C'mon, guy.

Above: These ones I like. These were exempt from the art lapse, it appears.

Below: Still more BART people. My parents' dog, Macie, in the bottom corner. I don't draw animals. It shows.

Above: I hate this page a bit (hope you guys don't know anything about human proportions...). But I like the guy reading the magazine in the upper right and love the drawing of the guy in the black coat in the middle(ish), so I'll post it. Black coat guy was actually very attractive although my drawing doesn't quite tell that story. I liked black coat guy.

That's it for the sketchbook for now. I'm starting to snap out of the art lapse this week so I'll be sure to post more sketchbook work soon.

January Surprise

Whup, forgot to post this one. This was the character test I did for WishB in January before they hired me. Obviously, I'm not allowed to show any of the work I'm doing there until the game launches but I got the go-ahead for this since it's not a part of the project. The only criteria I had to go on was the word "glob" and it had to be appealing to both adults and children. It's always wierd when you go back and look at your recently old work... it's not stylistically outdated just yet but you see all your annoying mistakes and wonder how you could have let those slip. Also, I sent the final image to them with the wrong year on it. D'oh!

She's a mud sprite, by the way.

Commuter Mementos II

More BART drawings. I'm not really feeling these pages but there are some drawings I like scattered here and there. I really love the drawing of the sleeping woman at the top of the first page. The thing about drawing people on the train is that 4 times out of 5, you can only see people's heads...