New York

This past November I finally took my first trip to New York. What a great city.

alaska

In early September I took a backpacking trip to Alaska. Here are a few of my favorite pics.

Andy

Another sketch from the Drawing Club. Andy as the "Great White Hunter".

Steve the Merciless

Just f-ing around.

forrest card

lately I have not been able to arrive at "The Drawing Club" on time to secure a good seat. I ussually ended up sitting in the back of the room on the couch just shooting the breeze with Bob Kato (and raiding his fridge of ice cold beer.) Needless to say, I often attend these workshop but do very little drawing...at least not of the actual models. Forrest Card is one of Bob's assistant and would constantly be standing around in the back as well. These are my studies of Forrest as he wanders the studio floor.

Forrest is a talented artist that used to intern with us. He now works for an apparel company as a character artist. You can view his blog from the links column.

Preschool, hookers and beer

Below is an excerpt from my friend's blog who is currently working abroad in China as an architect. His name is Vic. I always love his stories.



I’ve been taking Chinese language class for about 5 months now and we recently finished up the first series of beginning Chinese class. The first few months, my learning curve shot up and my ability to speak “survival Chinese” was a pleasant surprise. I was so proud of myself that I could get into a cab and get to where I wanted to go or order food and end up with something relatively close to what I ordered.

Well, since class just ended we also had our Final Exam. The Final was broken into three parts. Part one was an easy enough and was a “complete the sentence by filling in the blank” section. The second part was comprised of two essays that I pretty much hacked through but was seemingly acceptable to our teacher. Then there was part three, the dialogue with the teacher. First, I must give props to Neko, our language teacher. Not only has she been patient and very tolerant with me and the other goof balls in class (all we do is ask her how to say cuss words and make fun of all the situations we’ve experienced in China), she has made our class quite enjoyable.

After Neko and I go through part three of the Final Exam and after five months of blood sweat and a half ass effort on my part, Neko’s response to me was (as she rolled her eyes and shook her head in disgust)…”Victor you speak like a preschooler that can order hookers and beer…”

That said, on to Beginning Chinese: Part II. Hopefully I can do as well as I did in Part I.

'Drifting'

Here's another piece from the show.

"One to Grow On" show

Hey all. I'm in a group show tomorrow night, May 20th, @ Galery 1988. Please come by if you get the chance. I will have new pieces about the innocence of childhood. Hope to see you there.

Carlos

This week's victim, I mean volunteer, was Carlos. He had an intense stare in his eyes because he was playing 'Grand Theft Auto' the whole time. I found myself very distracted and wanted to play as well.

Undead Kelly

Kelly was kind enough to sit for a painting session...so I took the opportunity to turn her into "Crying Undead Kelly." Hope she's not too upset @ me.

Joshua Tree

I had no idea what to expect but a couple of nights camping at Joshua Tree National Monument and my perception of the dessert landscape has changed forever. Why didn't anybody tell me about this place years ago!!! We had some fantastic hikes with awesome payoffs, experienced an explosion of color in the spring dessert, tromped through some completely surreal landscapes, listened to the coyotes howl at the moon, and stayed up late just to stargaze. I can't go back there soon enough.

Here are some of the sketches from the trip. I couldn't paint at the "magic" hour so all the lighting was fairly flat. I decided to approach it with a different perspective and paint more of how i feel about what I'm seeing.

Spring colors and Joshua Trees.



Hidden Valley...a view of the actual valley after scrambling to the top of some of the rocks.



rockclimber.




on the trail.




dust.

Mr. Robert

Robert is a real nice guy. I hope he stays that way after he sees this.