IF: Blanket.....of Snow!

My sister is a budding star snowboarder, so I painted this for her for Christmas. I have never snowboarded, and I think it has been about 14 years since the last time I snow skied (I much prefer warm weather and water skiing), but I'm pretty sure that I do remember that its the most fun when there is a nice thick blanket of powdery snow covering the slopes. I know its a stretch, but that's how I'm tying this one into Illlustration Friday this week. Enjoy!

Weekend Project: Fabriano Sketchbook Makeover

On January 19th, Dave, Bill, and I joined the SF Bay Area Sketchcrawlers for a day of sketching in Chinatown. At the end of the day everyone who was still around swapped sketchbooks for inspiration, and one thing became very obvious: Fabriano sketchbooks are very popular. So many of them looked so much alike (on the outside) that it was hard to tell them all apart from one another.

Last weekend, Dave suggested that I "customize" my Fabriano so that it would never get lost in a sea of look-a-likes again. Thus, I spent my Sunday afternoon having a grand 'ol time with my sketchbook, some decoupage glue, and a bunch of trader joe's paper bags that I have collected for whenever we happen to forget our canvas ones. Here is the end result!


The "Just Because I Can" part of me even found it necessary to add a little business card holder in the back. This part is probably completely unnecessary, but it is cute and it made me happy to do it nonetheless. The whole project was a lot of fun so I recommend it to anyone with a Fabriano (or any sketchbook or journal for that matter), some paper bags that need recyclin', and some time. Rainy sunday afternoons are probably the best time, but any extra time would probably suffice:)

I leave you with a watercolor figure drawing from last weekend's class. Have a nice weekend everyone!

IF: Tales and Legends

Rapunzel was one of my favorite fairy tales when I was little. I guess I thought she and I had a lot in common with the super long fair hair and all. Luckily I have never had anyone try to climb on mine. I imagine that would be quite painful.

I have some more wordy posts in the works, but it is late here and I am off to bed. Until next time, have a great Thursday everybody! Enjoy.

SketchCrawl and More Figure Drawings

Here is my one page of sketches from Saturday's Sketchcrawl through Chinatown. Slow start for me, but a good time none the less. Chinatown is so ornate and beautiful - it is so easy to get lost in all of the little details.


And here are a few more figure drawings! Hopefully I will have some more exciting things to post soon!

Happy 2008!

Happy New Year everybody! Sorry for the lack of posts lately - I tend to get caught up in Holiday madness and don't settle down until the middle of January. The good news is that even though I haven't been posting, I have been working on a bunch of things over the last month so I will have plenty of posts to start off the new year. Not something that I can say very often.

Recently I started attending a weekly figure drawing class in Berkeley and I must say it feels good to get back into the swing of drawing classes. This particular class is great because everyone comes in with all different types of materials and all sorts of neat things happen. So far I have just been using my good 'ol bic ballpoint pens in my shiny new Fabriano sketchbook, but I might get creative in the coming weeks. Anyway, I thought I would share some sketches from this week's class before getting to bed tonight. Anybody else excited for Sketchcrawl next weekend? I know I am.

Have a great Monday!

CTN Holiday Group Show!

As I mentioned earlier, a couple of my pieces will be featured in this year's Creative Talent Network Holiday group show at Van Eaton Galleries in Sherman Oaks, CA. If you are in the area, stop by on Thursday, Dec 6th between 6 and 10pm for an evening of holiday cheer, food, and some awesome comic and animation art!
There will also be a selection of original mini canvas ornaments for sale, with 100% of the proceeds from those purchases going to the Starlight Starbright Children's foundation, whose mission is helping seriously ill children and their families cope with their pain, fear, and isolation through entertainment, education, and family activities. But that's not all - there will also be a 10% discount on any item in stock in the West Gallery during the show. Admission is free, so come support a good cause and get some holiday shopping done at the same time!

You can find more information on the show here.

Excess

This was originally going to be my submission for last week's Illustration Friday topic - "Zoo" - but it unfortunately took longer than I had hoped. Luckily, I think it still works well (maybe even better!) for this week's topic - "Excess".

There is a bit of a back-story for this illustration. Apparently, I look like a lion. Really. I was informed of this in the sweetest way possible by a co-worker's wife one day while standing in the kitchen at work. I was also told that if anyone says otherwise, they are lying. So don't even try, because it won't work. Basically, I have A LOT (i.e. "Excessive"amount) of hair. It looks like a mane. So much so, in fact, that at first glance it might be startling. You might think that a lion is walking around the corner. But really, its just me. So don't worry too much.

Here I am with a lion. We do have quite a few similarities, but I hope this illustration will help you to tell us apart. Thanks for stopping by everybody! Have a great weekend!

Small Scale

I was asked to paint a 4x4 inch canvas that will serve as a tree ornament at an upcoming gallery show in LA (More information on that to come shortly- I promise!). It has been a looong time since I worked on something at such a small scale, so I thought this might fit nicely with Illustration Friday's topic this week. I tried to make something that might work well with my other two pieces that are in the show which are both - you guessed it - mermaids. I'm kind of ridiculous. Anyhow, enjoy!

Finished.

not much different than before, but a little more interesting I hope.

Hats!

Here is my IF for this week. I've been telling myself to work on my Christmas card design for a while, and this topic gave me the perfect excuse. I'm not quite satisfied with the design for the card just yet, but I figured I would go ahead and post it since I'm running out of time before Friday. I'll post the final design whenever its ready. Yay for elephants :)

Have a great day!