The Sketchbook Project

I managed to finish (or at least fill...) my book for The Sketchbook Project 2011 in time to meet the deadline, but just barely. I signed up for the project rather late but still had a few months to work on it. Unfortunately, I procrastinated pretty badly with it for a while. Only managing a few half-hearted sketches until well into December. Finally, while doing some Christmas shopping I found this fascinating book on the sale rack outside of Borders.


I had my inspiration for the rest of the sketchbook. But even then I didn't carve out the time to work on it. Thankfully the deadline got extended to Jan. 18th. I went into full-on marathon drawing mode over the MLK weekend (I think I did all or most of 14 drawings and all of the lettering in that time!). I had to pull out four blank pages and I doubled the pages (the paper was so thin that I decided to tape every other page together) so I ended up with only 16 spreads versus the 40 that were originally in the book. I cut a couple other corners by including one of my Jon Stewart stickers on one page and a selection of the ‘Faces of Flickr’ series on another.

Needless to say it was a pretty stressful finish. I really wish I could have ended with a drawing of Martin Luther King's powerfully defiant mug shot (which would have been drawn on the holiday dedicated to him) but I had run out the clock by that point.

I am however proud of most of the work I did manage for the book. And I think I surprised myself with the sheer volume of drawings I was able to crank out in that last frenetic weekend.

Check out the whole set at the ArtHouse Co-Op Site and all of my other work at my flickrstream.

Three Drawings in Progress

Very often I can't seem to complete one thing without moving on to something else. Eventually I'll come back around and finish it, but it's rare that I work on one drawing straight through. To illustrate this I present 3 drawings in various stages. The one on the left was begun ages ago (probably late June, early July) and I'm trying a mix of pencils with the usual ink and brush. The other two were both started in the last few days (the one on the right first actually). Hopefully I'll have all three finished by the end of the week.


UPDATE: I finished the one on the left last night (8/18/10) but I'm going to hold off posting it until it reaches it's new home. In the meantime, you can see all my portraits in this flickr set.

6x6x2010

The 6x6x2010 show opens this weekend at the Rochester Contemporary Art Center. This year the show recieved 5,000 artworks by 2,000 artists from 22 countries and 43 US states! The online gallery is up now and online purchasing begins Monday, June 7th at 10 AM.


I contributed 5 pieces, the 4 portraits above (see them larger here) and an abstract comic which I talked about in a previous post. The portrait series I'm calling "Faces of Flickr" since all my reference photos were found on flickr.com, a great photo sharing site that I use to post all my artwork.

I liked this format and I've got a few blank squares left over, so I'll probably continue this series. Let me know if you have a portrait that you’d like to see rendered like these.