sketchbook 02/07/09

Every time I go to the museum I have the intention of doing quick sketches to loosen up. But as it happens so many times, I'm afflicted with "detailitis". I start off with the quick outline and then I realize that this or that needs a bit of shading or a bit more definition. And before I know it I've spent an hour on something that should have taken 5 minutes. This, I'm afraid is something that's been with me since university.

As I continue to draw in my sketch book, a reoccurring thought that I've read from some where comes into my mind: Get the 1000 junk sketches out of my system so I could get to the good one. I'm not saying that my sketches have been junk, because for the most part, I've been happy with what I've produced but I'm still struggling with that elusive "style". So here are a few more pages out of the way and hopefully when I reach the 1000th image I'll have arrived at a place I'm happy with.

IF: Flawed… judgement

Some might say bungee jumping shows a flaw in judgment or one fry short of a happy meal, but others might think it quite reasonable. Despite my image for this week's Illustration Friday theme, bungee jumping is on my bucket list.

sketchbook 02/03/09

In aikido, suwari waza, is a term used to describe techniques executed while on your knees. By doing it in this stance, mistakes in execution are amplified, so doing a technique has to be done cleanly to make it effective. I sort of viewed this spread as my suwari waza. All the objects were drawn with line. No shading. No colour to hide behind. Just line. Imperfect circles in perspective revealed. Sometimes a pretty good one was achieved.

sketchbook 02/01/09

I was told by an old art teacher that if you could draw the human hand, you could draw pretty much everything... or was it the human figure? (It's been a few years since high school, ok?!)

sketchbook 01/31/09

I think I found another spot in the city where I could sketch people in various poses unobserved: a food court in the heart of China Town.

sketchbook 01/28/09

IF: Climbing

This is my official submission for this week's theme of, "Climbing". My original intention was to submit the plane climbing in altitude, but mid way through, I realized the Adam West's Batman climbing a wall would be a lot more appropriate.

sketchbook 01/27/09

The spread above started with "And so it begins…" on the left hand of the spread. I was going to leave it but thought that the spread should be filled in a bit more. So I did with nonsensical phrases and word combinations.

IF: Pale

In the midst of this Canadian winter, all I could think about is the first day that's warm enough to allow me to wear shorts and to expose my pale legs for the world to see.

sketchbook 01/22/09

The above spread was meant to be a quick series of sketches to loosen up, just as the title implies, "Quickies". However, it didn't turn out that way and as I progressed through the sketches, from left to right, I added more detail and hence more time to these guys. The looseness that I so desire from my sketches has evaded me again!

sketchbook 01/20/09

Another sketch from a cafe. This one at the Kahawa Cafe on College street. Quite small and therefore, no hiding the fact that I was sketching people at the adjacent tables. The gentleman in front of me on his laptop was quite accommodating and basically sat still for me. On the other hand, the lady on the left hand side of the spread knew I was sketching her kept on moving around, so I couldn't get a good head shot. So, I basically drew in a fictional head when I got home.

Question: When you're out sketching, how do you remain "unseen" so your subjects don't get the jitters from being your subject?

sketchbook 01/19/09

As I continue to use my sketchbook, I realize I'm not much for composing a page. Clearly this is the case in this spread where I drew the ubiquitous Museum dinosaur and overlayed that on two kids I drew earlier in the day.
However, with that said, I've taken great inspiration from the sketchbooks shown in Danny Gregory's, An Illustrated Life and will attempt to be a bit more composed in future spreads... I hope.

sketchbook 01/18/09

Go big or go home #2

This refers to an attitude I'm trying to embrace when drawing with new mediums and or combining familiar mediums in one drawing which might lead to a disastrous and or successful result. So here it is and I think it turned out ok.

sketchbook 1/12/09

A before and after spread of the totem pole at the Royal Ontario Museum.

IF: Contained

Well, I thought I'd give it an extra bit of effort for this week's Illustration Friday theme of "contained" and get it done on the weekend... and I did. Woohoo!

I've always been interested in working with graphite so I thought I'd use it to render the pepper mill. As mentioned previously, I've been looking at Paul Calles pencil work and I love his pencil strokes. When viewed closely, they are abstract patterns but when viewed within the context of the entire drawing they form a cohesive figurative rendering. I had that in mind and some parts I've achieved that and in other parts, not so successful... But as my college teacher said, "go big or go home".

Each drawing I do definitely is a learning process.

Amendments

An extension to the last Illustration Friday's theme of "Resolve". I've read that there are some lawns contained in Zen gardens in Japan that are maintained by people who cut the grass with a pair of scissors. Now that's RESOLVE!





This is the original watercolour I did for an earlier post with an ink outline. I like the variation in line weight and the solidness it gives to the drawing.

IF: resolve/ Sketchbook 1/8/09

This week's theme was slightly difficult for me to wrap my head around it.
My official submission for this week's IF theme is on the right, but I also included the entire spread from my sketchbook, a habit that I've been doing for the last few entries of my blog.

So enjoy and tell me what you think.

sketchbook 1/7/09

The truck on the right drove off before I could finish painting it.

sketchbook 1/6/09 - blog worthy?

I actually did this sketch yesterday at the local Starbucks. Since it's winter, I find that sketching in coffee houses are the ideal location to capture people in all sorts of poses. Unfortunately, at times, I forget that this is not a figure drawing class and my "subjects" move because, well... they aren't models and some of them have to scratch their noses when it itches.

The other thing about this particular sketch was it's "blog worthiness". I originally didn't want to post it because it didn't meet some standard that I had imposed on myself, but then I read Lynn Chapman's post and it reminded me that this is a sketchbook and not some final piece and being not so precise is an OK thing to be. So alas, here it is.

sketchbook 1/4/09

I'm still trying to get my "pencil legs" and figure out how to render certain things with graphite. In this case, sketching at Starbucks during the evening proved to be a challenge when it came to rendering the darkness outside. I've been looking at Paul Calle's, "The Pencil" and it's been really inspiring.

sketchbook 1/2/09

sketchbook 1/2/09

IF: Clandestine

I'm currently reading Robert Ludlum's "The Bourne Sanction" and that's where my head was when was thinking about this week's theme.

I really like the look of water colour but unfortunately the end result of my watercolour painting typically is a bit too stiff for the medium. However, I'll continue with this frustrating medium and see where it leads me.

sketchbook 12/30/08

While drawing the chess pieces, I had Helvetica, the documentary playing and it inspired me to render the names of the chess pieces in this timeless typeface.

sketchbook- 12/29/08

sketchbook 12/27/08

Had a Boxing Day dinner at my dad's place with family. Too much good food had the usual effects on everyone and as a result, I caught my brother in-law snoozing and my sister lazing after dinner.

IF: voices

This week's submission for Illustration Friday.

I had three objectives for this drawing. The first being to fulfill the Illustration Friday theme. Second to do a self portrait, because I'm really not good at drawing portraits. (You could see some sketches of self portraits I did in my sketchbook here). Third, to integrate my my pencil drawing with Photoshop rendering techniques. (Not too sure it went smoothly).

sketchbook- 12/23/08

I'm not very good at drawing portraits so I thought I'd practice with my own face. I've been doing one drawing of my face for the last 4 days and not one of them looks like me. It's nice though to see the the different ways I've drawn myself over a four day span.

sketchbook- 12/19/08

IF: rambuctious

sketchbook- 12/14/08

A spread from my sketchbook. I really wanted to pack images into this spread.. and perhaps I'll do it for a few more spreads.

1/8 of my bedroom.

Drawn from my bed.
I find whenever I draw with this micron 03 pen, it lends itself to a looser way of drawing. I like the effect that it has on this drawing and also the definitiveness it gives to it.

IF: similar

After years of wearing the same pair of running shoes, each shoe has acquired similar wear characteristics.

My first PSD illustration.

IF: balloon(s)

It's been a while since I used watercolour and so I thought it'd be nice to jump back into this medium with this week's IF theme.

sketchbook

The pressure of drawing on the first page (or in this case the second) of a new sketchbook! Should it be in pen, pencil, watercolour, charcoal? oh the choices. It turned out cramming the spread with images was more important than the medium to get over "first page" jitters.

Wajima Kiriko t-shirt

A friend asked me to illustrate a new image for his taiko group. This is the result.

my kitchen…

Things I made in my kitchen: soba salad, soba, PB&J sandwich, tofu croutons, pizza, chicken adobo (need more vinegar next time), vegetable stock, baked chicken wings,
scrambled eggs, over easy eggs, vegetable chow mein, split pea soup,chicken noodle soup,toast, spinach salad, salad, raspberry vinaigrette, white wine vinaigrette, pasta, tomato sauce, risotto,baked potatoes, roast chicken, feta eggplant melt, cheese omelette,steam salmon fillet, tuna sandwich, fried rice, regular brown rice,guacamole, steamed tofu, spam sandwich, spam tempura, spam omelet.

Slow day at work…

Dirty Bird

A willful reaction to all the rationalized "design" I do during my 9-5 job.