Somewhere in the Pacific Northwest #2

Somewhere in the Pacific Northwest...

Just before New Years I went digging around on YouTube for a few songs I loved listening to some 20 years ago and ended up reflecting so hard on my early adolescence that I was inspired to scribble out a retrospective mini series honoring what it was like to live in the Pacific Northwest in the 90s. I had a chance to make it out to that dark corner of the world for the holiday season and-- in addition to having had the time of my life meeting up with my best friends from half a lifetime ago-- I fell into a deluge of memories that I'd all but forgotten. Here's the first one.

I'm kind of new at this narrative sequential artthing, but I think it'sgoing okay so far! 

Seen Recenty at a Party in NE Portland

Drawathon, January 2014

Last week I made it out to Drawathon and remembered what good things NYC has to offer me right now: Quaint and beautifully DJ'd drawing parties in the back of divey bars where punks pose naked as you capture their figure with a cramped room fulla other sketchbook-a-teers, all the way from 8 until midnight on a Monday. When I opened my book to see what I got from last week, I realized that I'd barely drawn anything worth posting from the models. I did, however, have a fun time capturing the "performers". The guy on the bottom, who played bass for a trashy neo-NY punk band growled a hell of a lot while I was scribbling his outline. Here you go!

En Route from Darkness

I've said it before on this blog and will say it again, I'm sure... I'm still understanding how to use this light thing. Apparently it's always there, I just have to really see it and feel it. I think once that happens I will really be able to get where I want to go with this drawing stuff.

Ill thoughts...

Being in recovery from having a compromised immune system has helped me realize how detrimentally connected our emotional and mental states are to our physical health. In the case of a fungus that leaches onto everything internal including brain tissue, I can only be thankful that I ever stumbled my way out of perpetual sleep and into a healing regimen. As I take the steps necessary to rebalance body chemistry, I give great thanks for feelings of gratitude, forgiveness and confidence that have arisen in place of  resentment and inadequacy.
Here's to having the internal wisdom and boldness that will rightly guide my choices in using my vitality, preventing me from ever so compromising my health in vain again.
Now let me get to bed, cuz it's a full hour n a half past my bedtime!

Have a SUPER father's day! ... a week late...

While my drawings have always shown a deep reverence for the presence of humanity in the city, my tendencies to let my imagination cut loose have been on lock down for years. A habit of conformity picked up while going through college i think, but not necessarily a bad thing. Seeing the beauty in things just as they are is a pretty awesome way to go out living your life. I spent a good portion of my days (yes, a portion, a full out U.S.-size double serving, with a full shelf of sketchbooks to prove it) simply drawing New Yorkers in the (sometimes) very still essence they take on while riding public transportation. People sitting, standing, busking, gawking into their iPhones... If you lived in New York between 2004 and 2010 I'm sure I got you in at least once, plain and simple. 

However, I've lately been inspired to embrace the dreamy symbolic comic fantasy within. The other day I was sitting next to this little girl and her youngish seeming pops who obviously loved her to death. Something really special and victorious about that I think. I couldn't help but having them blast through my mind in a completely superior state. 

What can I say? Random every day families on the train are super and fatherhood really moves me. As does parent hood in general, but when I see the men in my life-- particularly those ones who didn't have a particularly striking father figure to look up to when they were young-- taking great care with their kiddos, gushing love and affection through every thick bristle of manhair they got, I mean... shoot. 

Of Course, it might have something to do with a general train of thought I've had recently. I knocked these out earlier this spring and sent them one at a time to the fab Lindseys of Beaverton, Oregon for mothers day and father's day this year-- That's my sister Hannah and her husband Mark, who have recently completed their first year of parenthood.
(On a side note, the original sketches for these are coincidentally in the upper left corner of the commencing drawing from my sketchbook... check it out!)

Totally appropriate, too. This couple had superman and wonder woman figurines on their wedding cake. A super family, they are my favorite thing about the suburbs of Oregon. I had to redraw my sister like 5 times to get her likeness. Can't say I don't have love.

They had to wait unknowingly for a month and a half to get the full deal which looked something like this when you put the pieces together:

(...and here they are for reals:)