My constant companion and new old sketches

I have a lovely counter table in the spare room that serves as my desk. It really is wonderful and I love it. (Seeing that, I should probably spend more time at it, drawing and looking for a job.) The best part about the desk is that there is space underneath for my guardian gargoyle, Gunter (pictured below).

He's a fierce little tiger-striped piglet-pug. Best dog ever.

So here are some sketches from one of my China sketch books.















These last three are from a larger format sketch book and are more recent than those above.

Past Lives

I haven't been able to get to my squid drawing yet, though I know exactly what I want to draw. That is sometimes the problem...when things are already finished in my head I lose my motivation to actually put them on paper. But I will probably get to it in the next week or so. I've become somewhat enamored with beetles and checked out a fabulous book on them. It's lovely and filled with beautiful pictures of actual beetles (most of them dead already, so it's a little creepy) and fantastic illustrations. If you have a fascination with beetles, this is the book for you.



Since I have nothing new to post, I thought it would be fun to dredge up some old sketches from the last few years. I recently found an old drawing book from when I lived in Eugene. It covers a messy and painful breakup, which I'm sure is perfectly obvious.











The next two sketches were inspired by this quote:

"Yin and Yang are highly inscrutable and man is only a temporary sojourner in them. With all the glorious prosperity of a short lived mushroom, he tumbles to ruin within a day. With all the momentary glory of a spring flower, he succumbs to frost within a week. Not even the winds blowing through high heaven or the sudden flash of lightening can move any faster. A century is to be likened to the smoke ridden by a meteor; whitening hair comes with the speed of an arrow passing by with a crack. Man appears like a perishing bamboo shoot before he has even sprouted; he meets his autumn and tumbles to pieces."

-From the autobiography of Ge Hong.

40,000 Leagues

For those who like to be well informed, a league is a distance of about 3 miles.


When I was in Hainan last year, I was eating in a open air restaurant that had its own aquariums. If you wanted to, you could choose your dinner fresh from the tank. There were these strange shellfish swimming around in one. I thought they were adorable until I realized that I was looking at them the wrong way. And then they weren't cute at all, just another run of the mill arthropod...one without huge, charming eyes.

Anyway, one of these days those imaginary protostomes will make an appearance in my art. Until that day, however, I will have to content myself with drawing giant squid. The next panel (or two) is going to have two giant squid basking in a shallow lake, one with his tentacles wrapped around the hill that the shipwreck survivors are climbing up, and the other will be making sweet, sweet love to a large layer cake with lots of icing.

I'm telling you, eyes are hard to identify on sea creatures. For example, what if the eyes on this vampire squid are those two dark spots near the top of the head (right under the angel wings)? The animal then looks cute and harmless for the most part. But, what if the eye is that menacing pearly blue thing in the middle of that bulge (which it probably is, judging from the top picture)? All of a sudden it's a killer with crazy eyes. Never trust a vampire squid.

From Shipwreck to Salvation

Newest Folding Art Book project

Last year I worked on a large folding art book (meant to be a calligraphy book, but I like to draw connected pictures in it) and it seemed to progress very smoothly. This year I have been working on the same size of book for months longer and don't seem to be getting anywhere. I think the stress of this year wasn't very productive. The stress last year was for some reason, but this year it wasn't a creative stress...it was just the bad kind of stress. But I've done a few pictures and the last two frames satisfy me.

Illustration

I spent the last couple of years speaking Chinese and taking political science and international law courses. All I really wanted to be doing was drawing pictures.

Since I'm no longer in China, and life in Suburbville, California isn't nearly as exciting to write about, I've decided to start blogging about my art. I found this neato website (see above) and joined up. My illustration teacher in college always said I should try to get my stuff published (is that even the correct term?). So perhaps I'll try. It seems to me that the two years I spent in China really gave me a lot to draw about, so I will probably be using that influence for a while. I hope everyone doesn't get bored.

Otter Pop in a Cup

This my friends is a Chinese icy. It tastes exactly like the grape flavor of squeeze pops (aka Otter Pops). I have since discovered other (and better) versions of this, but nothing can beat the very first one. Actually second one, since I dropped the first one and it burst open all over the street. That's what I get for trying to ride my bike with brain freeze. (Okay, to be honest, I dropped the first one while I was trying to take a picture of it...)


I love these things. I will probably have drank my weight in corn syrup by the time I leave (that, and artificial colors and flavors...there is nothing natural about these things.) They put those delicious chewy tapioca pearls in them, along with strips of this strange gelatin like substance. Sometimes it has flavor, sometimes not. I love it how things change with the seasons here, you know it's summer when the little shops start selling icies instead of hot milk tea, when there are big trucks piled high with water melons parked on the street corners (while winter is marked by trucks piled with sweet potatoes), and when the street vendors start selling this dish called cool noodles (actually, it's called cool skin, because the noodle isn't made from wheat flour its made out of rice and comes in these big sheets that they slice into strips in front of you).

And then of course, it is wrapped up in a bag, and put in a styrofoam container, and then finally put into another bag. That's the only thing, everything is put in plastic. Nothing like eating a piping hot, deep fried turnip pancake out of a thin plastic bag. Oh the carcinogens! But they have started making people charge for plastic bags at stores, which is cool. I've seen people going around with the cloth bags now.