Inspirational Quote of the Week: Originality

"Don't worry about your originality. You could not get rid of it even if you wanted to. It will stick to you and show you up for better or worse in spite of all you or anyone else can do."

-Robert Henri The Art Spirit

Old Geezers!

These were exploratory sketches I was doing for film ideas a couple years back at school. I knew I wanted to do a short with an old man in it and for awhile I was torn between two films : a "Grumpy old men" type film and another which I ended up making called "The Heist" which had a burglar who is caught by a wily old security guard which you can see on the middle bottom picture.

My First Winter

Having been born in the Philippines where the weather was nice and tropical, I never experienced snow until I moved to the United States in 1988 when I was 10. This painting was done as an assignment a few years ago at CalArts in Don Hall's story class where the objective was to pick a moment from my life and do a beat board illustration of it.

Well, one of my best memories as a kid was experiencing snow for the first time. I remember it started to snow at about 1 p.m. during English class and I was looking outside the window for another 2 hours watching the snow, barely able to contain my excitement. As you can see, when the bell rang, I was first out the door! To this day, when I am lucky enough to be home in New Jersey and it snows, this is the memory that enters my mind.

P.s. special thanks to my friend and artist extraordinairre Devin Crane for help with this scan. Also to Willy Harber , Brianne Drouhard, and Yoshi Tamura for their links!

Cafe Sketches

One of the things I find most relaxing when I am not working is going to a coffee shop or a bookstore cafe and sketching different sorts of people. I usually bring a black pen, a water brush, and my trusty Ipod. Especially at Starbucks, there is usually a steady stream of all kinds of people walking through. Some are leisurely, some in a hurry, some are either studying or deep in conversation. I also tend to bring a book and read for awhile if there's nothing to draw. This is a great way to exercise the drawing muscles, especially in these hectic computer days!

Watercolor sketch and portrait

These are drawings that were done over the weekend. The one on the top is of my girlfriend, Joy. It's done with pencil and watercolors.

Then she decided she would draw me and asked me to pose for her....She's pretty good!

Inspiring Quote of the Week: Sketching

During my freshman year at CalArts, our animation teacher Dan Boulos used to come in every week and write a quote on the board to inpire us . He usually got his quotes from "The Art Spirit" by Robert Henri. Here's one on sketching:

People say ,"It is only a sketch." It takes the genius of a real artist to make a good sketch-to express the most important things in life-the fairness of a face-to represent air and light and to do it all with such simple shorthand means. One must have wit to make a sketch. Pictures that have had months of labor expended on them may be more incomplete than a sketch.

Skater

Done on Jan 17, 2006. Pen and gouache.

The Blog Bandwagon....

Yes,

I have jumped on...Yes, I will have lots of pics for your enjoyment. This first one was done here at work with our paint program called GIMP.