pub people

In an effort to loosen up, I tried drawing while having a pint.

First she was alone... She was so nervous, I thought she was waiting for a date.

Then her friends showed up. And more beer showed up.

Some people, however, seem slightly tense. Is it the sports on TV? Or the topic of discussion?

But overall, everyone else seemed to be having a reasonably good time. As was I, although I had to witness Barca slaughtering some random Russian team. Boo.

chinese diner

Drawn very quickly at a Chinese restaurant on the back of the placemat. I like the placemat paper for drawing though, it was very smooth :)

summer, good night!

 

I've been in denial about it for a while, but summer is over.

It's the best summer I've had for a long, long time, because for once, I did not have to go through summer completely broke :)

Also I wore that sundress a few times, which made me happy.

Hopefully this will be the first of some what-I-wore posts. And the beginning of more regular posting.

Happy Friday everyone.

all day errday

This is actually something I did for work. I posted it because I like the weird design and line quality and because... this is my life now. My laptop is like an extension of myself. I wish I could spend an entire day just drawing in sharpie or something. It's creepy how much we're attached to our computers, iPads, smartphones, and other devices, even tiny little kids. Everywhere you go you just see a bunch of self-absorbed beings sitting with headphones blocking out the world. It's an entire lifestyle which encourages people to live inside their heads -- or I don't know where -- detached from reality, and not in their actual world. It is a filter through which we view our lives. 

I'm not sure I like it, but there's nothing I can do about it. I would like to take a vacation from it, however. Just go somewhere with a lot of paper and write and draw on actual paper. Or not.

you can call me flower,

... I don't mind.

The artichoke is a flower, in case you didn't know. 

This is the color test... which I also kind of like.

ringa ringa

Kind of old sketches, from last year. Drew them next to each other. Needed to bust out some drawings after a very uninspiring day. I don't usually draw this girly... or maybe I'm just in denial.

sketching: zoo

Langur from the zoo. Very exciting fauxhawk to draw, and execrable habits. Licking his own toes, eewww.

How does this tree look like a ballet dancer, I don't know. It's not from the zoo though.

bored. nothing to do

A patch of a color test I did for an illustration. I'll post the whole thing after I'm done with it. This cute little boy was watching me when I was painting this. I silently sent good thoughts his way: "You will grow up to be an artist! You will go to art school. Your Asian parents will ask you why!"

I did most of these in Starbucks today when I had to download something via ftp client. It took 2.5 hrs to download, which is nearly untenable enough. There were at least 3 more people in the group above but they got up so fast! Oh well. 

The next two were done while watching Escape to River Cottage, which is a British TV show about organic farming and cooking. The English farmers on the show could be shoved willy-nilly into a movie adaptation of some Dickens novel and they'll still fit right in. The host, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall (the guy holding the dead bunny) has been known to eat roadkill for lunch and participates in such shenanigans as racing a wheelbarrow while dressed in a lobster costume. He's awesome. Now I wanna be a lobster for Halloween.

Well that ate a quarter of my day. The end.

milk & early may sketch dump

Milk is a cafe in Los Angeles and it's got MACARON ice cream sandwiches, in addition to a bunch of other crazy products like chocolate hazelnut madeleines and Nutella ice cream bars. The cool high-ceilinged interior smells like chilly desserts; judging from the Art Deco details on the building it was probably built in the 1920s. I saw a dude eating a Caesar salad when I was leaving and felt a slight pang of envy, it looked so delicious.

This very serious boy was reading a huge book in front of a dim sum restaurant. He burst out to his grandparents mid-read: "OMG grandma and grandpa this is the best book ever!" etc etc. I thought it was a Harry Potter novel but he lifted it up and I saw that it was The Pacific by Hugh Ambrose. The kid can't be more than 12. I would actually clock him as a 10 year old. 

Once upon a time, I was that kid. I tried to read Jane Eyre at age 11. I read Eiji Yoshikawa's Musashi and started on the novels of Agatha Christie at around the same time. Um. Asian nerds unite?

the root connection

she is the root connection and

she is connecting with me

-Patti Smith, Dancing Barefoot

waiting to be colored. these lines freehanded with sharpie marker

oha! panda loves japan

"I cannot imagine what kind of sentiment a card made by apparatus might convey."

-Elizabeth Gaskell, Cranford

teleplay written for the screen by Heidi Thomas

Well I made these cards by hand and they'll be sent through CalArts to tsunami survivor kids in Japan.

I hope it makes someone happy.

ETA: I chose to put in the photos of the watercolor because the scans of watercolors are always uniformly lame. The translucence and fine layering of color that are unique to watercolor are lost in the scan. Gah.

curtsy

I used to really not like drawing with Sharpie.
But it's okay now.

accidentally sophia loren

These were from life drawing last week, the model was awesome. I love this pose and expression of hers, I felt like she was channeling Sophia Loren or something. I could totally see her being this Southern Italian housewife (fishwife?) who then gave birth to generations of Sopranos, LOL.

More to come from this same class. It was a good day.

life drawing: the myth of perseus, part 2

He wasn't playing Perseus the entire time... sometimes he was Perseus' grandfather, sometimes he was Perseus, sometimes, some other guy. And no gesture lasted more than 10 seconds. So it was interesting.

sketching: trees

be BOLD.
be resolute.
be cheerful.
be happy.
be confident.
smile!

I think he has no idea, how grateful I was to hear his words.

jenny bravo

Life drawings: trying something different with sharpie.
Wait, I forgot to put that under 18 nudity disclaimer.

life drawings: the myth of perseus

reorganization, needed it is.

I'm currently not liking the way this blog has been so disorganized. It's like I just use it to dump artwork because people need to view it online. I haven't put a lot of thought into it and this irks me. I don't like doing things without a lot of thought.

So I might shut down for a few days just to gather stuff and rethink, what is the purpose of this blog? It's also currently not very well designed. I know I'm not going to spend a lot of time into designing the page but something which serves as an online presence deserves better treatment from me than what it's been getting.

Probably I will have a separate 'official portfolio' blog and this one would just be for other stuff. Feh.

mrs. peacock

I'd forgotten about these designs. They are based on David Sedaris' description of his bizarre nanny, Mrs. Peacock. I did an animal version, of Mrs. Peacock as a demented lady peacock carrying her signature dish of sloppy joes (I myself have horror memories of sloppy joes from the school cafeteria, ugh). I did a human version too but I like the weird molting bird woman better :)

non-suckling pig

Part one in the Strange History of Bacon, the Racing Pig.
(to be continued)