swannish

blue boy

Portrait commission for a friend. Oil on wood panel, 10x10"

My Summer Location Drawing Class at AAU, San Francisco (Part 2: Yerba Buena Gardens)

Class meets twice a week for six hours a session, and at a different location each day. For our second session, we practiced our meeting up skills in this beautiful downtown park with only minimal wrangling. Having warmed up with a couple of passenger portraits on the BART train, I settled atop a high concrete planter to draw my assistant, Jonathan, here seated by some papyrus rushes and drawing a local tai chi group. This time it was a park official who asked me to move, but, fortunately, I was about done with that part of the drawing and so moved on to add the side of the Metreon building. Many people come to relax on the grassy steps on the Mission Street side of the park, facing St. Patrick's Church and the Marriott Hotel. I've drawn these two buildings from a similar vantage before, but this time I combined both sides of the street into one composition. Pencil, ink, colored pencil, watercolor, and digital. Next up: the Ferry Building

my summer location drawing class at AAU (part 1: powell street)

This summer term I am excited to be teaching a class on Location Drawing for Academy of Art University. My students and I will be sketching and painting at points of interest all over town and even in the East Bay. Everyone starts with a brand new sketchbook and will fill at least 100 pages with observational drawings and sketch reporting by the time the class finishes in seven and a half weeks. I will be posting mine here. For our first day, we drew up and down Powell Street and in Union Square. The top drawing here is the view from in front of the Westin St. Francis Hotel where they fly a different international flag each day and where they apparently don't like people to sit on the sidewalk and sketch. I was asked twice to move, once by a police officer who was quite nice and understanding and told me that there is a law against sitting on the sidewalk, but said I would be ok as long as my bag was not in the way of traffic. The hotel guy who talked to me later was not as nice about it. More soon!

sketchcrawl 42

Haight and Ashbury, SF

A Handful of Dust at Gallery Nucleus

My painting in the show A Handful of Dust: 25 Years of the Sandman at Gallery Nucleus in LA. The show also includes work by Dave McKean, Yoshitaka Amano, J.H. Williams III, Jason Shawn Alexander, Barron Storey, Michael Zulli, David Mack, Greg Ruth, and a dazzling array of  others.

 

My piece, Under a Red Moon (Worlds' End), revisits a scene I illustrated in the Sandman comic many years ago. Acrylic on panel, 24 x 30". Here are some details and a couple of pictures from the opening:

Also, here is an interview with me about the piece and the show, at Comic Book Resources.
The show continues through December 8th.



Sandman show at the Cartoon Art Museum

Sandman pages of mine on display at the Cartoon Art Museum in San Francisco as part of their exhibition, Grains of Sand: 25 Years of the Sandman. The show also includes work by Dave McKean, Sam Kieth, Mike Dringenberg, Michael Zulli, Charles Vess, Barron Storey, Jeffrey Jones, and many more, with new work being added as it goes. Runs through March 16th, 2014. Come check it out!

sketchcrawl 40

Embarcadero - with the ferries

anagama

Flynn Creek Pottery

factory, winter light

Crystal Amber Industrial Sand, Berkeley

cowgirl

AAU session

quick costume studies

2 minutes, 5 minutes

red dirt country, pt 2

The ranch, Amador County

sketchcrawl 36: san francisco

 raygun gothic rocket - sketchers + bay bridge - bart - bird + st. pat's -  cartoon art museum - buskers

red dirt country

Cousins reunion at the ranch, Amador County. Arriving at ten, I help Steve and Harry fence the new chicken run with wire, fence pliers, and Tom's homemade fence stretcher. They've been at it since seven and are ready to quit soon as it is getting hot already, and, besides, brunch is on. Sara has made quiche. Rosa and the younger kids are riding Spirit bareback through the yard. Over brunch, Tom tells of watching satellites launched from Vandenberg with two Chinese who thought the world was ending, and of seeing the well-documented UFOs flying in formation in '48. He tells again of the time my Grandpa Dan and his buddies held a wake for a homeless panner and of the prank and the pact to never tell. My sisters never arrive, just me and the cousins. Tom starts up the WWII army jeep and heads into the back forty with Claire, as Glenn and Cecily and I set out on foot for the pond where Steve and Harry are now fishing with their kids. Cecily's the one who found the seven-foot rattler that time by the shed, the one that broke the shovel handle. We water up first at the solar powered well. California poppies are in bloom around the pond, yellow daisy in the scrub. The kids catch bluegill and small mouth bass, and Tom takes us in the jeep now to transfer the caught fish to the upper pond and then shows us some new land just acquired from the neighbor. I show him a USGS folio of the region from 1894 and he is most appreciative, pointing on the map where the ranch and Eldon's house should be, sure enough, on a vein marked serpentine. This is red dirt country, the gold belt. The rest of the cousins leave mid-afternoon, but I stay and talk with Barbara. I play with Buddy the dog and with Toot the black lamb who thinks he's a dog and who is best friends with Spirit, a Kiger mustang and retired rodeo roping horse. The two lie down together in the cool of the day. When apart, they wither and pine. I head down the trail below the barn to sketch. After a while, young Rosa comes down the path toward me and walks right by, says she's going to get some molasses. Comes back five minutes later with a tall brown glass and I know there is nothing but hills for miles behind me. Where'd you get that? I ask. From the jug, she says. We thought Eldon was bringing the cattle, but he didn't, so now there's just a jug of molasses.

sketchcrawl 35: north beach, sf

Washington Square, sketchcrawlers - statue of Franklin, burlesque

sketches

japanese/american cultural exchange, marin headlands - crafters, berkeley

the new yorker's eustace tilley contest 2012

For the fifth year now, The New Yorker has solicited readers’ takes on Eustace Tilley,the magazine’s mascot, and, for the fifth year running, I am among the winners. Tilley, a Regency dandy, is the creation of art editor Rea Irvin and has been on the cover of almost every anniversary issue — including this year’s — since his first appearance, on the début issue, in 1925.

Here is a slideshow of this year's winners, including mine, on the New Yorker's website.

Culture Desk: a cover story about this year's contest.

My winning images from 2011, 2010, 2009, and 2008.

Just as last year, one Grand Prize Winner will be selected from among the winning entries to be printed on a book bag from Strand Bookstore of New York. Stay tuned for updates, and wish me luck!

the art of urban sketching

My work is featured in a new book by Urban Sketchers founder Gabi Campanario.

From the press release:
The Art of Urban Sketching is both a comprehensive guide and a showcase of location drawings by artists around the world who draw the cities where they live and travel. This beautiful, 320-page volume explains urban sketching within the context of a long historical tradition and how it is being practiced today. It includes profiles of leading practitioners, a discussion of the benefits of working in this art form, and shows how one can participate and experience it through modern-day social networks and online activity.

The book is illustrated with over 600 beautiful, contemporary illustrations, and includes artists' profiles and extended captions where these urban sketchers share their stories, how they work, sketching tips, and the tools behind each drawing. With sketches and observations from more than 50 cities in more than 30 countries, the book offers a visually arresting, storytelling take on urban life from different cultures and artistic styles, as well as insight into various drawing techniques and mediums.

Video preview of the book here.

The Art of Urban Sketching on Amazon.

sketchcrawl 34: the ferry building, sf

The main hall - departing

urban sketchers 2011 holiday campaign: give a little, get a sketch

Still a little time to make a donation to UrbanSketchers.org and get a high-resolution file of my sketch, Balclutha (above), or any sketch from this holiday fundraiser flickr set of urban sketches, all suitable for printing and framing. All donations to Urban Sketchers are tax deductble. Offer ends Dec. 31. Full details here.

good shepherd

sketchcrawl 33: the haight, sf

Anti-pigeon lighting at Crepes on Cole - cafegoers - occupy Haight-Ashbury - the dogs of Haight

grey morning

acrylic on paper
9x9"

the gallery girls: steampunk

Sketches from the recent Gallery Girls steampunk-themed San Francisco event.