my green blog

bus stop stuff.

2007-11-26T11:41:00.001-08:00

i spend a lot of time at bus stops here in hamilton. i did this while waiting to be picked up at about 1am. this kid walked by and i didn't even really see his face, i just found his hair to be inspiring.

i was drunk.

i call this one "lotus kids" because that song by the chili peppers was playing on my ipod at the time i saw this character... could be a title for the future. i had a lucid moment at the stop that day; i came up with a great idea for a story by watching this person as he appeared to aimlessly meander around the street corner. in hindsight, i think it would make a better graphic novel as some of the theoretical aspects are less inclined to a novel or short story, and the characters lend themselves more to an image-based medium.

i did the sketch the next night from memory while tami and i watched some tv. my character is a man; however, the person who i had been watching for almost twenty minutes eventually came up to ask me for the time and i realized that it was actually a woman (with a crazy--swedish?--accent). just another nutty night in the rain at the bus stop.

it's been a long time running...

2007-11-26T11:36:00.000-08:00

been quite some time since i posted anything here. we've been busy as hell since the last posting, that's for sure. i did this sketch while waiting at the nanaimo ferry terminal on our way back from tofino this summer; i like it a lot.

we started loading onto the ferry as i was finishing up... you can see that the lamppost and park area on the left aren't quite finished.

there's just something about the island...

from a notion into reality

2007-05-01T10:57:00.000-07:00

it's fair to say that i love to build things and one of the ways that i work out the details prior to commencing a project is to sketch it out. for our deck plan i must have come up with a billion or so doodles--often the same thing over and over--so i figured it'd be fun to post some of them up along with some photos of how the whole thing turned out.

original concept sketch:

working out the ideas:

still planning:

some final numbers:

the end result:

* i had a tonne of help from friends and family over the course of this whole thing (from the designing, to building, to beer drinking) and i plan on putting up some pics from the various stages of this very long project now that it's actually done. thanx to everyone who was part of this.

living room plant

2007-04-09T23:06:00.000-07:00

i've always enjoyed drawing plants--they don't move around the way people do.

8.5 x 11, unlined
pencil

my first koi

2007-03-27T21:42:00.000-07:00

i really like how this turned out--especially considering that i've never drawn one of these before. the head could be a little wider on the bottom left, to make the fish look bigger as a whole, but i'm certainly satisfied with the result. i opted for the koi because there are a whole lot more images of these available on the net than there are dragons and i figure that the style/technique is similar. this was fun--hope to do more soon.
the picture quality sucks... damn, i need a scanner.

3.5 x 3, unlined
pencil

dragon(ish)

2007-03-21T08:20:00.000-07:00

it's been a while, i know, but you get what you get when you read this blog. uninteresting as it may be, i've been thinking about learning to draw dragons a lot lately--the classic, japanese styles were what i'd been leaning to. however, there's a method to them and i'm not familiar with that technique. maybe a book would help. anyhow, i was doodling at my sister's table the other day and figured i'd try on my own to see what i could come up with. this is it... hopefully they get better.

6 x 4, lined
ballpoint

inspiration

2007-02-19T09:36:00.000-08:00

one thing about nephews is that they are never short of fresh ideas. the slump has returned and it's been affecting all aspects of my life lately including the doodles. thankfully, the boys came up with this idea for me yesterday and this is what i envisioned. i'm off to white rock for a couple of days--needed to get out of the k-town gloom--and won't have much to do during the day so i plan on bringing my book and investing in a new black fine point... perhaps i'll manage to unclog the creative pipes.

8.5 x 11 (lined)
felt-tipped pen/wax crayon

sketchbook

2006-12-29T14:37:00.000-08:00

years ago, i had a number of journals and sketchbooks that i would write in and have on hand religiously. i recently bought another in the hopes of jumpstarting that method once again. unfortunately, i only did the one entry (see above). maybe with my resurgence of interest in faces--and my relatively open schedule--i can actually get something in there...

ballpoint, september '06

kombi

2006-12-29T14:04:00.000-08:00

a few years ago, mom and dad bought a vw kombi when they were in peru. this is another sketch that i did up for my coffee mug, plus i'll attach the original photo that i was working from. note the straight line under the driver's window: that was the first line i drew and, ironically, the only part of the sketch that i regret.

ink, february '06.

godzilla mug

2006-12-22T10:42:00.000-08:00

i have a mug that allows you to put in photos or advertisements or whatever in the side so i usually sketch out stuff and fill it that way. here's a pic of godzilla rampaging the city. june '05.

snoop?

2006-12-22T10:28:00.000-08:00

a bad picture of snoop doggy dizzo that i did in class one night a year or so back. i went through a celebrity faces phase then; something i'd like to try to do again this year, i think. if anyone has ideas of unique faces they'd like to see mt try, let me know.

rajko

2006-12-20T10:23:00.000-08:00

for those of you who read the other site--which, i assume, is probably all of you--these are some sketches that i did last august of rajko, my tool partner for the past five months. i drew the dated one first (ink) but wasn't very happy with the result (note the white-out under ear on right). about an hour later i tried another method, limiting my time to 5 minutes and using another medium (pencil). i am much happier with the second result.

* also, i wanted to clarify an error that i made in my original rajko post. rajko doesn't identify himself as either serbian (as i had claimed) or croatian, he sees himself as being from the former yugoslavia. apparently, there are too many politics associated with the newer titles. i also discovered that he served in the war, and was discharged when he took shrapnel in his leg from incoming mortar fire. the shrapnel is still in there.

tami's fave

2006-12-20T10:16:00.000-08:00

this is a picture of myself that i drew way back in 1999. for some reason, tami loves this one and has it on her makeup stand. i'm not such a fan... the hand bothers me. this is also in my flickr sets which can be accessed through a sidebar link on the other site.

scorpio

2006-12-20T10:03:00.000-08:00

i recently found this in my copy of stephen hawking's a brief history of time. i started reading it while returning home on the bus from high level, alberta and i got distracted and started doodling--which is often the case with my life. from what i remember i was trying to give it a metallic look, something i never really figured out how to do. there's no date on this, which is odd; however, i was also using the greyhound receipt as a bookmark so we can pretty accurately place this as being from december 19, 2000.

updater

2006-12-20T10:01:00.000-08:00

i'm in desperate need of a scanner; it's something that's have been on my purchase list for a long time now. so, for the time being, all of the stuff that goes up here will be photos of sketches that i've done and i'll probably have to mess about with the contrast so that the lines become more evident. i've been busy as hell lately, what with quitting work, the return home, christmas to-do lists and now tami's honey-do list so what you'll be seeing will likely be stuff from the recent past rather than new doodles, but likely things that haven't been seen by anyone before. i guess that means that i need to start posting. okay, here they come.

a new methodology...

2006-12-10T21:34:00.000-08:00