This knife was given to me by my father-in-law Tim, a truly amazing person. He taught me how to sharpen it to a razor sharp point. I use this knife for many things, but most often I use it to sharpen my pencils to a good point. Something about using this knife gives me a warm feeling every time I go to pick it up. Something between nostalgia and a Hemingway / Jack London feel
This guy was loosely inspired by an alien I saw on my wife’s favorite show, Stargate.
My wife has had this dried rose sitting on our dining table for some time. There’s something cool looking about dried flowers. The first of the two drawings I used a black marker to draw the stem. The actual rose has a black stem as well, but I’m afraid the black of the marker overpowered the drawing.
I like this mug. It helps me drink stuff. Anyone or anything that helps me drink or eat stuff is a good friend of mine.
On the other hand… chopsticks and I still aren’t on speaking terms. Curse you, you traitorous chopsticks!
I tried my hand at drawing a giraffe from a photograph. I never realized how little I knew about giraffes. I’d go to draw a section and I’d look at the picture and think to myself “That’s not right! Giraffe’s don’t have that weird bump there!” I’d turn the page to look at a picture of another giraffe, just to make sure I wasn’t drawing some “mutant giraffe”, sure enough the other giraffe had the same weird bump. I must have done that a half a dozen times during this little sketch!
These strange looking lines that you see above are the result of my latest exercise in Drawing From the Right Side of Your Brain. The exercise is a simple one, I set a timer for 5 minutes, stare at the wrinkles in my palm and draw what I see without looking at my sketch pad until the timer goes off.
Sounds crazy right?
The idea is that this is a task that your left brain will think is crazy and will give up on and your right brain will pick up the slack. It doesn’t exactly produce masterpieces of great art, but it does get you used to drawing while in the right side of your brain and is a good warm up.
At first when I started I would stare at my palm without really looking, I had to be stern and force myself to really pay attention. Later I kept getting more and more detailed. I would stare so hard my eyes began to ache and yet I enjoyed the task at hand, you become absorbed in it. When the timer went off it didn’t feel like it had been 5 minutes and I felt rested, just like she said I would.
Maybe it is crazy, but I like it. Afterwards I set the timer again and tried it with a crumpled up piece of paper and then a rose (the exercise works with any highly detailed object).
This cool looking cap is thanks to Kazu Kibuishi. I found it in one of the Flight anthologies and just stopped and stared and stared at this cap. This has got to be one of the coolest hats ever! I had to draw it. I like the worn and rough look to it, like it’s been used lovingly for many ages. I had a hard time getting the arm holding the light just right. No matter what I tried I couldn’t quite get it to look 3 dimensional, but overall I like how the drawing turned out.
In other news, just yesterday my copy of Copper by Kazu arrived in the mail. It has all of the Copper comics I love from Kazu’s web site and several new ones. The quality of this book is top-notch. I’m excited to have my favorite web comic in print. Ahh the color filled pages, the feel of the paper between my fingers and that new book smell! Already I’m halfway through the book. If you don’t have it already, get it, and if you’ve never heard of Copper before you’re in for a real treat, check it out.
*wanders away to read more of Copper*
One of the best gifts I ever received as a child was given to me by my aunt Traci. A large blue hardback book filled with nothing but blank sheets of paper. The possibilities were endless! As a child I carried it around with me everywhere, scribbling in it nonstop. It has been lost for a long time, but several months ago my brother found it hidden away. I cleaned off the mold that had grown on the cover, wiped off the dust and have made sure that it never leaves my sight again. It’s a great time capsule of my younger years and flipping through the pages I see that back then I had the same offbeat sense of humor that I have today. I’m posting a few of my drawings from my old blue book so you can see a little of where I’ve come from and maybe give you a sense of where I’m going.
Okay that last little bit was pure nonsense, but it sure does sound good. 🙂
All of the following drawings are from around 1993, I was 11 years old
Dinosaurs were a favorite of mine growing up. I dreamt of being an archeologist and knew more about Dinosaurs than just about any adult. I drew countless dinosaurs, stomping their way across the pages of my old blue book.
In case you’re wondering, that’s a volcano erupting in the background.
With T-Rex taking the charge in my boyhood sketchbook you know that aliens won’t be far behind. I am an unabashed SciFi nerd and thanks to my Trekkie mom, my nerdom started early in life. I was surprised to see as I flipped through my old book that a constant theme of my drawings were saving the environment and stopping pollution. I didn’t know I was so concerned about the environment at that age.
I was also surprised to find many portraits in my old book, none of which I remember doing. This is a portrait of an old friend of mine, I haven’t seen her in many years. When I did this portrait, despite what the forehead wrinkles lead you to believe, she must have been in her early twenties. I can’t imagine what she was thinking when she saw all those wrinkles I drew… maybe that’s why I haven’t seen her in so long. 🙂
Dinosaurs, aliens and cowboys, what else did you expect from a young boy’s sketchbook! Actually this is the only cowboy I found in the entire book, but it is a good example of my sense of humor both then and now. I guess it’s a good sign that while I was going through the book, several times I would stop and laugh my head off. I’m my own best audience.
A portrait of my brother Kyle. Looking at this drawing you might think that we’re Asian, which would be wrong. It’s not a bad portrait and my brother is enamored with the Asian culture, so I’m sure he loved it. Maybe that’s partly why I drew it as I did.
It’s great looking through this old book. Every young boy and girl should have a sketchbook of their own. And if you do have a sketchbook of your own, make sure you keep it somewhere very safe, years from now it’s going to be a precious treasure that you’ll look through with great delight.
Thank you again aunt Traci! And thank you Kyle for finding my old blue book!
I had so much fun with my doodle of Delano Laramie’s panda that I tried my hand at it again. This time I used Delano’s picture as a reference and tried the upside down drawing technique that I had used with the Picasso drawing. I really got into drawing the shapes just so. My panda turned out a little chubbier than the original panda, but I think I have the technique down. I had a blast with this one!
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