A friend of mine recently graduated college, and, as he is a fan of Doctor Thompson, I drew this up for him. I'm not quite sure I really got the likeness, but it's still pretty impossible to mistake.

I've been reading Oliver Twist lately, and Dickens really gives the reader a great description of the characters he writes about. I wanted to post this before I ruin it attempting to paint it with watercolor.

From a painting by Whistler, some lady in a hat.

I went to visit my high school yesterday for the first time since I graduated eight years ago. My senior year I painted Sargent's "Lady With A Rose" on the wall of one of the hallways. Unfortunately, some renovations were done and the thing was painted over at some point. As a bit of nostalgia I did this study.

Trying to keep those drawing chops in check, doing some more traditional stuff like this blue lady.

I was looking through a book of old Thomas Eakins photographs and found a series of portraits of Walt Whitman. I was so impressed by his beard, I had to draw it myself.

Lightnin' Hopkins

Something I'm working on... My own take on those old 19th century absinthe posters. Still trying to work on a color strategy that looks a little more natural.

Just some odds and ends I had laying around. Nothing special.

Inspired by the Tom Waits song "The Black Rider". I'm really not sure what the song is about, but this is what came to mind...

A toast! Obviously not finished yet. Trying to get that moment before things get awkward. Digital ink, color hopefully coming soon.

Not sure who this guy is... A Wyatt Earp/Indiana Jones macho man type I guess. Rainy day today. Everything is digital. Looking at it again I guess the color could be punched up a bit...

Trying to get into updating this thing again regularly. I've been doing a lot of work recently, but I've had a bit of trouble finishing one particular thing. So, to get things started again, I thought I'd put up this steam-punk helicopter/motorcycle thing.

Sketchbook

I've been keeping a sketchbook at school that I'll sometimes find spare time to draw in.

Ajumma

"Ajumma," (auntie) is an endearing term used for older Korean women known for their adventurous style sense, permed hair, and typically fierce demeanor.

This is a quick sketch I did in Photoshop (my 2nd attempt trying to actually do artwork with the program....) Still trying to figure out how to approach shading... Right now I'm pretty much just blending the colors together, but I think it turns out a bit too smooth and vague sometimes...

Fresh Work From Korea

Here's my first attempt at working completely digitally. I haven't gotten a scanner here yet, so I haven't been able to post any of the things I've been doing "the old fashioned way," but I did bring along my wacom tablet. I decided to sit down and try to actually figure out how to work with the thing, and this is what I drew. Everything from the preliminary sketch to the line work to the color was done in photoshop. It's a strange thing to get used to, drawing on something other than what you're looking at, but I'm slowly getting used to it. Also, I'm learning how to use photoshop to color a little more in depth. There are areas here that are kinda lazy or sloppy looking and sketched in, but overall, I'm pretty happy with this as a first attempt.

Off to Korea

For those of you who somehow don't know or haven't heard, I've decided to go to Korea for a year to teach English. I left last Wednesday (25th) and got in at about 11:30 on Thursday, local time. This included a 22hr. flight, and a 3hr bus ride... oh yeah and an hour and a half car ride at 4:30 in the morning to the airport to start the whole thing off. Marathon.

On the whole, I really thought traveling on the day before Thanksgiving would be a bit more hectic, but I kept waiting for something to get screwed up and it didn't happen. I was in for a bit of a surprise though during the flight... It seemed to me that flying out of San Francisco for Korea, we'd just fly straight across the Pacific.... shortest distance between two points, right? Well, a few hours into the flight, I opened my window (had a window seat with no one next to me!!) to see... this first photo on the left. The helpful little map feature on the lcd screen in front of my seat told me that apparently that is the western coast of Alaska. I managed to suppress the second of panic where I imagined a scenario in which I got on the wrong flight to the north pole. A few hours later, after crossing the Bering Strait, I got a view of what Sarah Palin supposedly sees from her window... Russia! Actually a barren landscape in Siberia.

Anyway, when I got into Gumi on a bus I took from Seoul, it was so foggy it was impossible to see more than a block in the distance. And the bus station was closed. And I didn't have any change small enough for the pay phone. I didn't actually have an address I knew I was supposed to go to, just a phone number. I bummed some change from some Korean girl using my best sign language and called the number. Soon enough two westerners (Canadian and English) swung by in a taxi to take me to my temporary apartment. The big ugly box I packed all of my clothes in would not even come close to fitting in the trunk, but we took off anyway. At this point I couldn't have cared less if the thing flew out the back and exploded, scattering my whole wardrobe all over the road.

So, that's the whole story of the trip. I made it and nothing terrible happened (except completely teleporting through Thanksgiving). I've already met plenty of westerners, and they seem like a pretty friendly bunch. Today I get to actually go to the school I'll be teaching at and see what it's all about. I'm pretty excited about it. When I get around to it, I'll post some pictures of Gumi and my apartment.

Sociable Flies

Here's an illustration I did for my mother the other day. Every year she and a group of women go to the Bahamas for a week. One of their members isn't a native English speaker and instead of "Social Butterflies," she made the mistake of calling them "Sociable Flies" and i guess the name stuck.