Napkin Doodle

Over the weekend I went to Seattle for a stranger's wedding and to visit some not-so-strangers. Here's a not-so-great doodle I did while out to breakfast.

Bear With Me

For some reason I've been really into bears lately. I've been noticing them a lot around town and every time I do I can't help but feel a sense of awe from these massive creatures. That and I've been watching a lot of Northern Exposure lately. Here's a quick sketch of bear figurine from my friend's terrarium. I wouldn't be surprised if you saw some more bear sketches on here in the near future.

It's been a while

I know, I know. The title of the blog is "a sketch a day" and it's nearly been a month since my last post. Well times have been tough and I've been relatively busy. I finally got my food stamps which has allowed me the luxury of eating, and I had a brief stint working in the mail room of Nordstrom's, where I would spend 8 hours a day folding and boxing expensive clothing for shipping at the local shopping mall. To break the monotony I would often spend my breaks and lunches in a little lounge area just outside the store which faced one of those horrible "gifts from the far east" stores. Here is a sketch of an Asian dress that was prominent in their window display. I enjoyed the shadows created by the creases.

A Whole New Era

Well, it's been quite an interesting day. Today we'll continue the saga of my stolen computer with the exciting tail of "The Grand Jury Testimony!" It actually wasn't that exciting, but still somewhat interesting. I received a subpoena last week to come to the county courthouse and give my testimony of what happened. It wasn't a big deal, just a room of nine citizens and someone asking me questions. I was imagining much worse things where I'd have to finger the guy who stole my computer in the courtroom as he meticulously memorized every detail of my face in case he runs into me on the street. Hey, he already knows where I live, right?

I guess the fella who had my computer is being charged with theft in the second degree, i.e. knowingly being in possession of stolen property and not reporting it. I waited around for a while at 9 AM before they called me in, but it's okay because I got to catch up on my Entertainment Weekly reading. Did you know there's a movie coming out with Jack Black and Michael Cerra as cavemen? I had no idea. Oh yeah, I also get five bucks for my time! WOO!

No, really, I can use that five bucks. Which brings us to my next exciting task for the day - applying for food stamps. It had never occurred to me before, but I've met a lot of people in Portland who do it and boy do I qualify. So if the government wants to give me 175 bucks a month for food, who am I to argue? Right?

The best part of these government offices is the waiting room. I secretly love waiting rooms, or anything of the like. Train stations, bus depots, airports, laundromats. They're all great. It's a good time to catch up on reading and great for people watching. You get to see people at their most basic state, because they're not constantly trying to busy themselves or work towards anything. They're just waiting. It's also a good time to do some sketching. Today's drawing isn't that exciting, but I'm thinking of going back tomorrow to draw more. Hey, it's not like I have a job I need to be at.



Also, my waiting number was B-52. I wonder if they ever applied for food stamps?

The first rule of Flier Making is you don't talk about Flier Making

So apparently I forgot the first rule of Flier making which is don't forget to include the headliner for the show on the flier. This was a large oversight on my part and one that I wasn't able to rectify immediately since I was in San Francisco for a week, hundreds of miles away from my trusty scanner. The other frustrating thing about shows is that often times the information might change without any warning. For example the band "Lanterns" is no longer playing the January 17th show with Fever Sleeves. However I didn't know this until I had already photoshopped in the headlining band Hialeah. Here you can see both versions of the new and improved flier as well as a bonus one where I played with stretching the font. Which one is better? You be the judge!

Version 2.0



Version 3.0


Version 3.5


It's a tough call in my opinion, but let's just say I'll be very happy to move on to something else. I've got two actual paying projects lined up which is quite exciting. One is a t-shirt design for the San Francisco based band "The Buttercream Gang" and the other is a wedding invitation. These are indeed exciting times.

Dino-Splode!

Hey everyone! I finished a new flier for my dear friends Fever Sleeves. I'm pretty excited about the work I've been putting out recently and look forward to doing more. On new years I made a contact with a mysterious bourbon carrying man named Tiger. I'm pretty sure this wasn't a hallucination, so hopefully it will lead to something.

Regarding the poster: You may notice another one of those Dinosaur stencils making an appearance, as well as the information from the previous sketch. I'm not sure exactly where this idea came from, but I can say that it developed organically. One thing that really annoys me is that when I export to a jpg from photoshop all the colors in the image become muted. I can do some image correction with preview, but it's never quite the same as I intended. If anyone has any tips for me please let me know.

Furniture Synaptosome

Here's a fun game. Pick two words from the dictionary at random and try combine them into one drawing. Ten points to the first person who knows the definition of Synaptosome.

Stego-Scuffz

Here is the first drawing from my new sketch book. I bought a book of dinosaur stencils which is really exciting so look out for more dino inspired work. I've also started using colored Micron pens instead of regular black which has been a huge progression for my sketching possibilities. I can't believe I've been sticking with black for so long. In this drawing we see the Stegosaur and Scuffz becoming one.

New show flier finished.

So apparently I've really dropped the ball on posting drawings every day, but hey, I've been busy. I'm still sorting out computer stuff, holiday stuff, and dealing with some of the craziest weather I've ever witnessed here in Portland. Maybe I'll just resign myself to posting whenever I have something post worthy which brings me to my post.

For the past few weeks I've been working on the above show poster for the band "Alan Singley & Pants Machine" here in Portland. The main font is taken from a vintage children's book, as is the image of the hippo. All elements in the poster are hand drawn, then scanned into photoshop for composition and image tweaking. It took quite a while to finish, but I'm really happy with the end result. It is possibly the best poster I've done yet. Hopefully this will lead to more work in the Portland area as well as some paying gigs.

I spoke too soon / Celebratory Pizza for all!

The unbelievable has happened. The police actually came through on this one and recovered my computer. Now when I tell you how you probably won't believe me, but I swear I couldn't make this up if I tried. A few days after my computer was stolen I checked my email and found a message in it that I didn't write. It seems that the person who had my computer accessed my email account and used it to answer a personals ad on craigslist. The title of the personals ad?

"Older4younger - 52 (SW)"

In the response he included a brief description of himself, "Good looking, blk, 30yrs," as well as his phone number. A real bright one, this guy was. I immediately called the detective department at the Police station and forwarded them the email. The Sargent told me they would look into it but told me not to get my hopes up, which infuriated me since they were in possession of the contact information of the person who had my computer! I called them the next day to check up on it to find out they had put in a request to the phone company to find out this guy's information from his phone number, which could take from one to two weeks. By that time my computer could be on the other side of the world or in a dumpster behind Rocco's pizza.

Okay, here's where it gets good. On thursday the police called me up and said they were planning on initiating contact (a sting operation) and would let me know later that day what happened. Basically they called up this guy pretending to be the older guy he was trying to meet up with and caught him with my computer. He didn't admit to stealing it, which is quite possible, but the fact that I got it back is pretty incredible.

The sad part is that he deleted a shitload of stuff off my desktop, most of which was music, but some other important things like photos, art files, writings, and pictures for art reference. I'm trying to recover those deleted files, but I'm not getting my hopes up. To be honest I'm just glad I don't have to spend a grand on a new computer. Before picking up my computer I stopped at Mississippi pizza to have a celebratory slice. The truth is I was planning on having pizza anyways, but when I found out the news it became a celebratory event.