"Bean-town" - part 4 (final)

(top) This was the most festive door we saw walking through Beacon Hill. (middle) Trying to figure out if the next trolly would take us to the Museum of Fine Arts, but trying to stay warm at the same time. (bottom) Entrance to the "Temple Walk", built in 1977. Can't believe those gas lamps stay on 24/7.

Well, that conludes my Boston, MA. trip during Thanksgiving. Until next time...when it's more than 30 degrees.

"Bean-town" - part 3

Only two sketches this time, been working on several other holiday projects for work. (top) This was in Quincy Market just before all the stores opened up. (bottom) By the Ferry building and "Nantucket" boat.

Illustration Friday - "blue"

Found a few older sketch books while cleaning up the apartment. Came across these doodles that were done in Lourdes, France. I met so many people from so many countries (Ireland, Spain, & Italy). The language barrier was such a problem. To compensate, a lot of hand gestures were used...from giving directions to just casual converstation. Majority of the time I just said, "Mi familia Americano" and "Merci". (top) This was done after lunch in the St. Michael's cafeteria. (left, bottom) These were done after dinner in the courtyard in front of the church.

This dog was sketched after breakfast. Rain started pouring like crazy, so no time to finish up the body.

Snoqualmie Falls in Washington.

Mos Def

Taking a brief break from the architecture and environments, I pretty much drew a mess of heads/faces all weekend. Here's one sketch I continued to persue late Saturday night.


My close friend Ari, has been working on celebrity caricatures on the side for the last month or so. Working with other Sacramento artist, the aim is to get these printed and sold with all the proceeds to be donated to the Red Cross Hurricane Relief. One celebrity name that caught my attention was Mos Def. He's better known for his music and as the host of the Def Jam Poetry on HBO, but you've probably seen him on the big screen, on titles like "The Italian Job", "Monster's Ball" and "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy". I sketched this based on Mos Def's previous albumn.

Illustration Friday - "small"

It's was a reach for this weeks IF deadline, but just sketched this last night while waiting for some "take-out". Such a small tank for such large goldfishes. "Poor fishy's"

I've told myself numerous times that I would love to sketch the St. Rafael church. It has such a great location with the hills decending into the background, just before you see Mt. Tamilpais.

Woke up Saturday morning and walked into downtown San Rafael, pulled out my travel stool, and warmed up with an ink sketch of just the tower. The pigeons really cooperated and didn't move so much....well, just until the church bell rang. They would fly away, circle the tower and go back to thier exact positions....wierd?

Finished off with a watercolor sketch just before lunch time.

Turkey Day in "Bean-town" - part 1

Here's a few sketches for now, just have to drop in color for my other set of sketches. Will post real soon. Thanks. (1st) Here's one during the direct flight from Cali to Boston. (2nd) Warm up sketch...literally...from inside a toasty Starbuck's joint. (3rd) After thawing for half an hour...Onward, down the alley (see the same clock in the back?) (4th) Somewhere passed a Dunk'in Donuts, or was it a Fanagel Bagel shop? (5th) We thought this was the Trolly we were supposed to get on, yup...we were wrong. It was so cold, any Trolly would have done. Brrrrrrrrrrr.

Here's a "throw-back" from my very first sketchcrawl experience (March 2005). I thought I'd put it up since I recently watched "Just like heaven". I can't believe they filmed in North Beach, San Francisco, right in front of the St. Francis of Assissi's Church.

"Bean-town" - part 2

This was our comedic tour guide for the Boston Duck Tours. So glad we decided to purchase tickets a week in advance becasue this was the last weekend just before they shut down for winter (the river freezes over).

Here we are again, for another exciting Sketchcrawl adventure. But this time it took place in the infamous Alcatraz Island in the middle of the San Francisco Bay. A site occupied by Native Americans during 1969-1972, a military fortification, a lighthouse, and a former federal prison which housed famous inmates from the "Birdman" to "Al Capone".

I was truly bummed that my friend Debra could not come along for the trip. She made it as far as the ticket booth and the tickets were completely sold out. I almost didn't make it myself, but Leila posted on the Sketchcrawl forum that she had an extra ticket for the 1145am ferry. I really wanted to get the full experience riding with Erico, Ronnie, and the camera crew from Pixar. And Leila totally pulled through, I can't thank her enough.

The ferry ride was shorter than I expected and the weather was amazingly bright and sunny. I warmed up and started with a sketch of the Dock Tower. The only living thing watching from up there was a seagull.

From there I headed towards the Power House which was on the opposite side of the island. Tried to sketch the numerous pipes hanging out of the wall, but the overall composition turned out flat and uninteresting. So I scrapped it, met up with Noah and walked on down to the meeting place for lunch. I really only brought some snacks so I decided to head up to the upper level to take on my next sketch. There I found a little shack with the Telegraph Hill in the background. Spent a good hour up there before I moved on.

I eventually caught up with Ronnie and the gang in front of the Lighthouse. It was a little crowded so I continued towards the Recreation Yard. I tried my hardest to get in there, I was a Salmon swimming upstream...the traffic of people was against me. So I decided to do a 180 and head back down for one last sketch. The original red roofs were smothered with moss.

It was 3:30pm by now, so I packed it up and headed back to the Boat Dock. On the ferry ride back to the city, we exchanged sketch journals on the upper deck. If I recall correctly, I got to see the sketches of John Hoffman, Jenny Wang, Enrico Casarosa, Ronnie del Carmen, and Amelia. Everyone's illustrations were quite impressive. Heres's a link to the other sketches from other participants during the Alcatraz crawl.

The funny thing is, when I check Enrico's blog that same night, I had no clue that Tadahiro Uesugi was in our presence during the whole trip. He's the same artist along with Enrico and Ronnie that will present the "3 Trees make a Forest" show in NYC next month. His work is absolutely amazing, just incredible lighting and composition...I almost fell out of my computer chair in disbelief. Argggg! Until next month fellow sketch-crawlers.

That darn dog!

"Just minding my own business, waiting for the bus..."

Came across this Flipbook website when visiting the Spline Doctors blog. A nifty way to throw-down a quick pencil test. I took a stab at the program late last night and enjoyed it a lot. Great for kids, but you'll see some pretty clever animation skills from others. Here's what I came up with. Enjoy.

Illustration Friday - "COLD"

My very first entry for Illustration Friday. Looking forward to participating more often.

Thumbing through my sketch book, this one looked so incomplete. So I went back in, tweaked the sculpture a bit and added a blue sky (this was from a previous sketchcrawl).

Just a fantastic weekend...our company gave us some extra tickets to see Tiger Woods play at the AMEX world championship in Harding Park, San Francisco on Saturday. The only catch was to make it to the park by 7am, not to bring any backpacks, cameras, or cell phones - Darn! I was really looking forward to taking some photos or doing a couple sketches.

On our way to the 17th hole, the unthinkable happened...spectators suddenly screamed, "Watch Out!". Before I knew it, the crowd split like the "Red Sea", a golf ball was in the air and it had my name written all over it...I literally had to jump in the air and did the splits like some kung-fu flick. I have no idea who's ball that was, but it ended up 2 inches from a light post. Oh well...

I didn't realize how much walking was involved in golf, even as a spectator? So we watched a couple more holes and headed to Filmore for some tea. We heard the F-18's rumbling in the sky and remembered that it was Fleet Week. So we headed up to the park on Stiener to watch the "Blue Angel's" perform. Without an SLR camera, there was no choice but to keep my digi-cam in the bag and just enjoy the show. Check out this great header from Enrico.

We grabbed a small dinner at Japan Town and ended the night at the Canvas Gallery for some sketching. Just the way I wanted to the end the day.

Here's a sketch I did after attending the E-ville/Pixar show at the Super 7 store last weekend. Finally threw some colors over it using Photoshop late last night. I wanted to show the progression, but towards the end, had difficulty coloring his jacket...it seems a bit bold and out of place compared to the rest of the color scheme.

Benicia, Ca. - Woke up Sunday morning to reserve a picnic area for the birthday of my girlfriend's 6 year old nephew. I think it was 7:30am when I taped up the "reservation" signs and the only other people in site were a couple of joggers. I did have my running shoes on...but it was either running laps for an hour or sketching.

By the looks of it, the good ol' sketchbook has once again triumphed over the jogging shoes. So why not warm up with a couple sketches of trees...there were plenty to choose from. Here's the warm up drawing experimenting with a new Pigma Brush Pen. Later dropped in a gray background in Photoshop.

Here's the second attempt, but this time with some acrylic paints. Not too happy how this one turned out, so I moved on to some watercolors.

Here's the final attemp of the day...I began detailing the 2 trees on the left, but that's pretty much where it stopped because the party supplies arrived and it was time to set up.

My doodle of Marv in Sin City. Again, messing with that correction tape.

From time to time I'll take a 10 minute break to sketch someone at work. Just a using a Sharpie today.

Hey, another table sketch. This time a chef at an Italian restaurant in Benicia.

I just love those restaurants with paper table cloths and crayons. A quick table sketch while having dinner with friends at Macaroni Grill in Sacramento.

My morning began by parking at the Canvas Gallery (our scheduled endpoint) at 9:30am and taking the bus up to the Dolores Cafe (our scheduled starting point). Just before our journey began I made sure to find Enrico and to purchase Dan Lee's art book, "In Your Face" I missed the gallery opening in his memory, so it was the least I could do to show some support for one of Pixar's great artist. This is such a great book of caricatures. If you haven't picked it up yet, it's also available online.

Our crawling began at 11:00am when a handful of us trickled into the Dolores Park. it took awhile to warm up, but I was able to find a comfy spot on the stairs to sketch buildings across the way.

Found a grassy area to sketch the park statue of "Miguel Hidalgo - Liberator of Mexico" (1810).

Next was Church and Market for some food. Since I skipped breakfast, I ended up ordering an omlett for lunch. They really piled the food on high! While wrapping it up, I was able to see Yoskay's portfolio featuring his traditional work (done on cardboard and plywood) and his digital paintings (done in Illustrator). His work is so amazing and should definitely get more exposure in some local galleries.

Next on our list was to catch the N-Juda up to Haight St. and later meet up at Haight Park. Did a couple sketches here, but really spent more time looking over Ronnie's shoulder as he threw down some colors onto his 3 quick sketches of random groups of people.

Onto the Japanese Tea Garden...where Saturdays from 5-6pm, admission is FREE...What a bonus! I roamed around and took quite a few photos, but finally found a nice quiet spot with a great view of a "Shinto Guardian Gate".

45 minutes later, I made my way to the Cavas Gallery where the cafe reserved a spot for the Sketchcrawl event...a table for 25. Although the tables were full by the time I arrived, I had a chance to see the wonderful works of Dan Lee and the works of other Pixar artist. I had a great conversation with Charles. We swapped so many stories, we talked about anything and everything related to art. He was kind enough to share the photos he took earlier that day. I must have taken the wrong streets because I didn't see any of those buildings...I will definitely link his photos once he post them.

Once again, Sketchcrawl 4 had a record breaking attendance of 60. What a great turn out. Met some great people...I had a chance to see returning sketchcrawlers Noah, Kevin, Charles and Jeff. While meeting new crawlers Yoskay, Eric & Alex. These guys were great to talk to and have tremendous talent. I look forward to seeing them for Sketchcrawl 5.

Technical Difficulties - Not too happy that the internet was down for two days. We spent a good hour trouble shooting over the phone with a technician and kept running into a brick wall. While on hold, I drew a 15 minute sketch of Olivia at work. Not to worry...she was definitely smiling once her Mac was up and running again.