happy krampus

...'cause it's his time of year!

beer

daffodils & alcohol

saru sushi

i've never eaten there...

commuter

...and the future of MUNI ticketing...maybe....not...

george lucas hair

on the train...

Schwagersocken

...but also his legs..

last pages

I usually have 4 or 5 sketchbooks going at once (each one has a different feel to it somehow, so depending how the vibe is...) this particular Moleskine was finally finished a couple months back after starting it a few years (!) back.  Lots of love and hate and ambivalence in this one, which probably explains why it's taken me so long to finish.  I thought it was funny to note Bastille Day by drawing a mail box and trash can.  Not that that means anything..

who's a good boy?

also to be seen at cafe international, 508 haight @ fillmore this month:

it's an old idea i had that i never felt i adequately executed...until now?  maybe...maybe not.

UPDATE: 11/3/13 - this will be on display until the end of the week! stop by and have a look! for sale!

shark vs. octopus revisited

working much larger - 16"x20" watercolor and gouache

it's in a group show at cafe international, 508 haight (@ fillmore) - opening reception is tuesday oct. 15 from 6-9:30 and will be up for about a month.  please come by if you are in the 'hood!  the show consists of work from artists who frequent the mission cultural center life drawing workshop - mostly but not limited to figurative works.  a diverse bunch!

UPDATE: 11/3/13 - this will be on display until the end of the week! stop by and have a look! did i mention it's for sale?! sale!

summer

is generally foggy like this...

i am fairly satisfied with my handling of this one.  the previous two are a bit overworked.  probably because this one deals with more organic shapes where the others with more precise lines, etc.

messing around

union street

coffee

didn't mask it off well...doh!

recent travels - lisbon and germany

this latest trip was more challenging than most.  a week before we left i stupidly sprained my ankle...uh...fighting off hordes of ninja...yeah, that's it!  this made exploring a hilly, cobblestone-y city like lisbon much more difficult.  thank goodness public transit there is easy, cheap and extensive!

trying to warm up in a small cafe after the rain in Sintra.

(top) inside tram 12E in Lisbon; (middle)
view into the Alfama neighborhood;
(bottom) quick impression of arched
vaults in a cathedral.

originally the thought was that this would give me more sketching time - just set me down somewhere and leave me for a couple hours! - but of course that's never how it works out.  the weather was (of course) colder and wetter than we had hoped; and there are always too many interesting things to see...as i've said previously, the choice when visiting somewhere new is always: either sit there and record narrowly what's in front of you; or cover more ground and actively experience more broadly the new surroundings. as much as i crave the former, i find the latter is more important.  at any rate, as a result, the sketches are mostly little snippets from our experience around town.

(top) cool clock in an apparently famous
bar in Lisbon...not the best drawing, but
in my defense, it was dark and i was
tired...and probably a little bzzzd; (bottom)
quick shivering impression of Sintra in
the pouring rain..

(top) a tiny sewing machine that my
wife was coveting.  i actually remembered
it wrong - it was red, and the box was
blue; (bottom) vintage radio (we saw
many) and the'discoverer' of Brasil!

Palacio Nacional da Pena in Sintra..it rained hard when
 we were visiting Sintra, but there was a brief interlude while here..the black clouds were certainly very forbidding!

our week in lisbon was followed by our obligatory visit with family in germany.  i was still hobbled by my ankle, but as we were in familiar territory, there was less need to 'explore', which meant a little more time to sit and sketch...but only a little, because after a week, one of my new nephews (very likely) gave me a nasty bug that wiped me out for the remainder of our trip.  no christmas presents for him!!

(left) seemed like all of Augsburg was under construction; (right) for
some reason, the side of the Gärtnerplatz (München) i chose to sit on
was where all the homeless people hung out. go figure...

(left top) also in München...don't know why i always draw
parked cars...i guess it's a challenge to make them look
like actual models..maybe also the reflections i find
interesting..(bottom left to right) the idea was to do a
panorama of sorts from Fuggerplatz (Augsburg)...kinda
worked..sort of...

recent travels - vancouver

this was from a couple months back...vancouver is a fun city, if you can avoid the epic traffic jams (lesson learned!)...we walked and walked in the cold, as is our habit when exploring new cities.  per usual, i didn't have a whole lot of sketching time.  the native american sculptures were sketched 5 minutes before the beginning of a most excellent and interesting docent tour at the UBC museum of anthropolgy.  a must see!

as the weather was quite cold (another seemingly typical quality of our trips), much time was spent dodging from one eating/drinking establishment to the next..

watercolor studies

more from my effort to burn through as much of my accumulated art supplies as i can:

cloudy rome from an earlier trip

munich hauptbahnhof

kind of made up coastal rocks

an informative but kind of crappy study of one of
sargent's amazing watercolors.

much learned, much to learn

watercolors - trying to work larger, more transparent...

st. peter's in rome, viewed and interpreted
through very squinty eyes...

Middle falls near Shasta..also
through squinty eyes...

made up city

been puzzling over city scenes for a while now.  hard to develop a 'shorthand' for buildings, but i feel like i'm getting there.

holland in my 'ead

some tentative dutch master copies..the portrait (from the incomparable frans hals) was more careful obviously; the two harbor scenes were more explorations of the colors and compositions from van ruisdael.  need to remember to do more of these...and maybe work larger when studying frans hals.