Back to the life drawing board

30 sec gesture

10 min

1 min gesture

Just a couple sketches from today. I like doing quick gestures the most, like the top one, the energy is fun. Though, I think I lose it in the longer poses because my weaknesses really shine through. I need to understand how the body fits together better to really be able to make nice drawings.

I say it every semester, this being the last, i think i should make the effort to go to life drawing more often.

Beginning of an ending

(click on image for full view)

I'm sure this is incoherent to anyone who is not me, or does not know me very well. So, apologies! anyways...

I've started officially working on a mini comic. This is the first completed page, though, i have a couple more started and thumbnails of a few more. The mini will be a bunch of very short autobiographical stories probably no longer than one or two pages that will hopefully make some sort of cohesive sense when put together. The point is to capture life as it happens. to capture the inane day to day moments and musings that make up our lives. that's what really interests me.

Bookbinding

In preparation for the cooking zine that my girlfriend Lisa and I are in the process of making we have decided to take up bookbinding. We’re starting off pretty simple, doing passport sized blank notebooks (or sketchbooks for us artist types). We’ve been using printer paper for the insides and card stock for the cover.

Once you have the right tools and a little practice it’s insanely addictive and fun. The night we started I was so stoked about learning how to do it that I took some Jim Flora Album cover prints and made a small pile of mini sketchbooks (as seen above) which I intend to give out to a couple of friends.

Already I’ve started thinking about binding larger books. I want to take some old vintage books that are on their last legs and recycle them in to one of a kind sketchbooks that I will hopefully actually use.

Yeah. Fun fun.

Liz Prince comics

you too(yes you!) can read the lovely Liz Prince's comics here, they're fantastic!

somewhere between anxiety and elation

I’ve been feeling like a complete fuck up this semester because I’ve been doing poorly. I don’t have a good work ethic and my assignments all suck. I’m constantly sneaking off to draw or seeking out things that get me excited about art because 3D just doesn’t cut it for me. It’s not aesthetic, it’s tedious and I personally find it unrewarding.

But all of that stuff's not important. The important thing is that I learn that not everything is for me and that I just have to learn it and move on. What I’ve learned from this semester is what I don’t want to do which is just as valuable as finding something you do because now I feel motivated to work on the things that are rewarding to me and make me excited to sit down and get to work

.

Everyday is a roller coaster of emotions. I either feel extremely excited for what I really want to do with my future or I feel extremely anxious about putting off the work I don’t even care to do. It’s a weird mix but I’m enjoying the ride somehow.

It’s amazing how knowing what you want to do with your life can make you feel.

Love <3

girl on the subway

Girl i saw on the subway today. She had really distracting cracked out eyes. I should have pushed it more.

shady mc shiester

Clearing out a stack of drawings from my clip board, this one has something to it that i like. Too bad i never finished the other arm.

ethics

This was part of a conversation i had at a 100 dollars show i went to see with Lisa. It was a good show, though, we were too tired and lazy to stand and watch so we just drank beer from our table and listened.

missing out

with love, and apologies to ed and ollie, who's faces i butchered here.

i used to be a dirty raver

A couple of months ago I downloaded a bunch of old happy hardcore songs that I used to listen to back in my hardcore candy kid phase. I used to love this shit and really, I still do. This is still the kind of music that makes me want to dance my ass off.

This was an extremely liberating time of my life. It was the first time I really had control over my own life. College was something that wasn't even in my head as an option. I had no ambition or any idea of what I wanted to do with my life... and really there was nothing I wanted to do. I was working a dead end job in a call center with no apparent way out.

So, instead of being productive, I partied. It was awesome, me and my friend Dave would work full time at shitty jobs through the week and drive up to Toronto on the weekend to do drugs and dance all night long. After destroying ourselves on the dance floor we would drag ourselves back to our shitty small town sketched out, sleep deprived and not at all in proper condition to go to work. This is what our lives seemed to become about.

As much as reminiscing about these times tends to glorify them it is also important to remember how confusing it was. I have to remember I was generally depressed and hopelessly lonely. The partying wasn’t that amazing most of the time, I would dance by myself most of the time. I made some new friends and lost a few old ones. I learned to love and about loss.

Eventually I got on with my life and started to work towards my dreams. I don't think I would be who I am today without having done this. It surprisingly opened me up a lot and made me a lot less shy than I used to be. It gave me some hope that life could be good and worth living.

peace. love. unity. respect. <3