New York City Skyline

Today I got out of work early due to a barely functioning AC, which in turn made the office too hot to work in comfortably or sanely.  So instead of heading home to a cool place, I went to the Jersey City waterfront at Exchange Place and sketched downtown Manhattan.  I was aiming to have the drawing fit on one 11x14 sheet of bristol, but ended up using three.  Pictured above are the buildings south of the Goldman Sachs building.  The Freedom Tower is in there; a bit too short and incomplete.  I made a separate drawing of the Freedom Tower on the left which I'll finish and add into the final drawing.   I will probably redraw all this on one large sheet at some point in the near future.  It was a super relaxing, albeit HOT, drawing session.  There was a breeze that made the heat more bearable, but an annoying fly that has made multiple red, itchy marks on my legs.  

Backlog of A Drawing A Days #1

This one was inspired by a conversation I had with my good friend Sarah Jackson about how Superb Starlings look like they're wearing pantaloons. 

Life post and A Drawing A Day

This summer seems to have been a busy one considering I really don't have any posts since May! Shame on me.  To summarize the past few months, here's a list of things that happened:

1. I went to my first ICON!!!! ICON is The Illustration Conference that's held every two years for illustrators.  It is also attended by art directors, sequential artists, designers of various sorts, and other creatives.  The conference also had a craft/trade fair/bazaar type event at which I had a table and exhibited my portfolio and had some goodies for sale.  It was a great experience: I learned a ton and met some awesome and inspirational folks, including Matt Groening, John Hendrix, and Marcellus Hall.  Here are pictures of my booth and the opening party with creature costumes by Big Nazo and music by the What Cheer? Brigade, and a drawing of the Big Nazo dudes, and a drawing (with notes) of John Hendrix (president of ICON7) and Jennifer Daniel 1/2 of the MCs (she's also a designer/director at Bloomberg).

2. I moved from the Garden State of New Jersey to the Empire State of New York.

3. In July I got hired by Trader Joe's as a crew member and sign artist.

4. I went to two back to back weddings, with one more to go in Sept, bringing the total to 5 attending weddings.  I also came to the realization that I have hit that age where many people I know are getting engaged or married. Being an illustrator/creative person makes giving gifts easy ;)

5. Completed an editorial illustration for Drew Magazine that will be published this fall.

6. Today I started a second job at Paper Source!

Having said all that, I did have time to draw, just not that much time to actually post any work to ye olde blog. I am working on a new promo piece so stay tuned. I also started a new mini daily project called A Drawing A Day, which was inspired by illustrator Veronica Lawlor's book One Drawing A Day.  The purpose of the daily drawing is to keep me drawing while life happens and when larger projects are slow to finish and I want instant gratification for having completed a drawing, even if it is only 2.5 by 2.3 inches big.

Here are the first two drawings.   Pen and ink on illustration board, 2.5 x 3.5 inches

Iguana Iguana

Iguana iguana, a resident of the Greenburgh Nature Center in Scarsdale, New York.  

NYC

Yesterday I spent the entire day in NYC doing various fun things, one of which was drawing at Starbucks while I waited for Stacey Clarkson, art director of Harper's Magazine, to review my portfolio that I had dropped off for Harper's monthly portfolio day.

Copenhagen, Denmark

In the beginning of September 2011 I visited my good friend Nanna in Copenhagen, Denmark.  I spent four days hanging out with her and her friends, getting a more local perspective, while also observing as a tourist when I did things on my own. 

The Copenhagen illustration features fashion by Danish designer Peter Jensen, the old army barracks converted to housing on Borgergade street, the Christiansborg Palace (built in the 1600s), some jazz musicians, the Queen's swans, a restaurant interior, and Danish beer!

London!

London
20 x 15 inches

This is the first installment of city/country posters!  During the past few days I've been working on finishing drawings from my Europe trip.   With all the sights, monuments, and characters, the London illustration sums up my three weeks in the city. 

Stay tuned for Copenhagen, eastern Europe, Spain, and Tanzania!

Airplanes, people, and animals

It's been a while since my last real post.  I finally got time and my act together today to scan (and color) some sketches that I've done in the past month in Tanzania.

The first two were done on two different flights on Coastal Aviation to Zanzibar.  The first drawing a view from my seat in the back.  The second is from sitting behind the two captains seats.

The next two are of my friend, Dana, fly fishing in Zanzibar.  Unfortunately, he didn't catch anything, but I did get the opportunity to draw someone fishing for the first time!

The next set of drawings were made in Ruaha National Park, which is southwest of Dar es Salaam, about 625 kilometers away.

Drawn: Dar es Salaam, Ahmedabad, Udaipur, Mumbai, Dubai

Last week I returned to the US after being away for 5 weeks.  I visited Dar es Salaam and Zanzibar in Tanzania, Ahmedabad, Udaipur and Mumbair in India, and Dubai in the United Arab Emirates (during my 20 hour lay-over).  I left the US with a half used sketchbook, a brand new watercolor sketchbook (60 pages?), and two watercolor paper blocks.

The last time I went to Tanzania I had packed too many art supplies and hardly used them, so this time I packed fewer after careful calculation..."careful."  I didn't take into consideration that I enjoy drawing on location so much more than I did in early 2009 and therefore draw a lot more than I did in early 2009.  Barely the end of week 2 of the trip, I had breezed through the second half of the sketchbook and already filled in the first quarter of the new one.  By week 3 I had to really stop my self before drawing and ask whether or not the subject was worth using up the precious 8-10 pages left of the book.  Generally I don't really sketch on paper blocks because then I'd have a pile of loose sheets to keep in order, but at the rate I was churning out drawings, I had no choice.

Drawings from Zanzibar can be viewed here.   The following drawings I created using a Rotring pen and watercolors in my sketchbook or on watercolor paper blocks. 

Old man next to a road-side fruit stand.  I'm 99% sure that the stand did not belong to him for he left after a little while and there was also a younger man tending it the whole time we were there.  My dad stopped to buy mangoes for us to take to the beach.  We were parked next to the stand for maybe 10 minutes or so and I thought it was a enough time to make a quick drawing.

Every time I go home to Tanzania, I HAVE to go to Bongoyo Island at least twice.  Bongoyo is a marine reserve island right out side Msasani Bay in Dar es Salaam (north of city center "town").  To get to the island you have to buy a ticket for a charter boat at The Slipway, which is a shopping center type place, but much nicer than any shopping center in the US since it's located right on the water.  The boat ride to and from the island is about 45 minutes.  On the way back, I drew the folks who were sitting across from me.

This is a long shelf in my aunt's pantry.

India:
My dad and I went on a 24-hour trip to Udaipur, Rajasthan. We hired a taxi in Ahmedabad and started the 4-hour drive at 6:30am.  When we got there, the drive dropped us off in the old city area and we walked the narrow streets, shopped, window shopped, took some pictures and drew some scooters and a vegetable cart.

On the second day, my dad and I did a tour of the Palace Museum.  This drawing is of the palace post office.  The case at the bottom is the original, antique pigeon roost, and the hanging cages are the more recent cages.  The palace became a museum in the 70s, so I'm pretty sure this postal room is no longer in use.

The following weekend my whole family and I took a sleeper train from Ahmedabad to Mumbai.  We stayed at my great aunt's flat.  This is the view from her dining room window.

The day after we got back from Mumbai, my mom, sister, nephew and I were invited to accompany a very close family friend to her organic farm, a 45-minute drive outside Ahmedabad.  I drew the buffalo from the farm  next door.

I left India to return to the US on December 29th.  I had a 20 hour lay-over in Dubai so the airline booked me a hotel.  After resting up, I ventured into Dubai to Meena Bazaar, the textile market.  Dubai is split over Dubai Creek.  Meena Bazaar is on one side, and the Gold Souk is across from it.  This illustration shows the creek, the ferries, and the Gold Souk.

 This drawing is of Meena Bazaar itself.

I visited the Dubai Museum and drew the taxidermied birds that hung in the entrance to the galleries.

Savannah Illustrated

One of the projects I'm currently working on is an artists book.  The title will be something along the lines of "Savannah Illustrated" and will be a compilation of drawings I've done around Savannah in the past few weeks.

Here's are a few of the drawings.

Broughton St, view from Leopold's Ice Cream Parlor,  the beige building on the far left is the front corner of the SCAD library.

The visitor center at Forsyth Park.

The Daughters of the American Republic Cemetery (D.A.R.)

Inside D.A.R. - apparently if you were buried there, you were a big deal.

"Century Plant" in D.A.R.. It's actually not a century plant at all, its a 30 year plant.

The Pied Piper of Manhattan

The Pied Piper of Manhattan
soft pastel undercoat with colored pencil on canson pastel paper
18x24 inches

This is project 3 for my Illustration Techniques 1 class. We were all randomly assigned a fairy tale which we were supposed to depict in our own way. My fairy tale: The Pied Piper of Hamlin. I thought New York City would be a perfect setting for a modern take on the tale!

process:
soft pastel base color.


The final sketch.


On a semi-unrelated note, my last two projects for this class (this one and Marsh of Rot) both have tons of perspective. I was pretty mad after the prof told me his thoughts during the midterm review a few weeks ago. So, as "revenge" or as "I can draw in perspective so take that", I made my Marsh of Rot have perspective and did the same for this project. I think the perspective has changed the way my work looks, it's not as quirky and loose but it still retains bits of that style. It's different from my usual, but I quite like it. I still don't agree with my prof's comments but that's another story.

Wild thing, you make my heart sing...

...you make everything groovy.

Inspired by Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak, Corey Godbey's blog Terrible Yellow Eyes, and Jimi Hendrix.

I'm not sure how I feel about the pencil - didn't really know what I was doing with it, was more of an experiement in color pencils. I think my sense of color/coloring/lighting has died a little. Or maybe I'm just liking the "command/ctrl Z undo" a little too much and have come to rely on it and therefore can't deal with mistakes I can't undo on paper. I don't think there's enough light, seems too dark. It didn't look right without the saturation and now I think I overdid the colors.

I think I'll do another version on Photoshop and compare. However, I do like having something to look at that's not digital.

more sharks

Two large drawings of sharks I made in September 2007. I was looking for something and came across them. They're both the same size, which I believe is 24" x 36" or a tad larger.

pencil on paper
(the camera cord is hanging in the way on the left, its not really part of the drawing, just can't be bothered to retake the picture)


soft/chalk pastel and charcoal on paper

bitten from behind

This was actually the first piece of my Encounters with Ink Monsters series. I had made this for my aunt and uncle in Palo Alto, and from this piece came the whole idea of the series. I forgot to take pictures of it before I left California and my uncle just emailed me the photo, which is why it's posted after the Bashed on a Bike.

Materials: tissue paper (not the bathroom kind), pen, gesso, ink on stretched linen. I think its about 12 x 9 inches.

Doodles

both watercolor and pen on paper