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