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From my watercolor sketchbook.

This is part of an ongoing series. This time we pass through The Great Exhibition and meet the different characters there to view art or just to socialise and hang out.

Layered watercolor floral inspired by the beginning of autumn.

Over the course of a few months, I got to work with Good Karma For All on what you might consider a "passion project". The job consisted of freehand painting murals on every single (large) wall and hand-lettering inspirational quotes all over the inside and outside of the building.

(fineliner pen on a 125mm x 75mm notecard) There was a time when manga and animé were cool, but now it's everywhere and a shadow of its former self, with the stigma of hentai attached to it.

My favorite way to eliminate the often paralyzing fear of "ruining" "good" paper is to just paint on any and all junk mail that comes into my house. Higher end catalogs are great for this, they don't use slick, thin paper (and even that gets used in collage or as a desk cover for other projects) and they're already bound for you. Just add marks! Carry it with you. Scan the pages you like. Cut it up later for making other art. It's "just" junk mail, so there is literally no pressure. I have HUNDREDS of these type of things and I run across them all the time, forgotten, in some old backpack or purse or drawer and it's a treasure to look through them again, and add new marks, paints and words.

Wear a mask. Stay inside!

If it wasn't enough that Ernest Shacletons ship Endurance was crushed by the ice in Antarctika’s, some kind of weird Space Weather phenomenon appeared into the sky(drawing tip:if your drawing looks flat and dull , try to transforming it something different ).

Somehow, the red sky seemed just right for the happy yellow flower.

Here is a sneak peaks of my submission to the Home Sweet Home Challenge. I loved this challenge because it forced me to do something I never would have, which gave me happy surprises as I worked through it.

Illustration for Howling Wolf song ”I Aint Superstitious”

Did you ever have a page in your sketchbook that was so bad and so embarrassing that you tore it out and chucked it? This was one of those pages that made me cringed every time I came to it. So today I said to myself, "ENOUGH!" and ripped it out of my moleskine. But something wouldn't let me throw it in the can. Now, I'm not one of those artists that can't bring himself to throw away any of his stuff because each and every piece, good or bad holds some kind of sentimentality or sense of importance. This particular page was a result of a crappy angst filled day and stuff poured out of me. For some reason, it felt like I was throwing away some piece of my soul. There were parts that were overworked and others that were painfully too personal. So I decided to cut it up and put it back together in no particular order, however it seemed best. As I was pasting the pieces down it occurred to me that this had a comic book feel so I scanned the final and added the black borders in photoshop which I really dug. I like that it is cryptic and jumbled up like my brain can so often be. This reminded me of the awesome @johnhendrix who said something in his book, Drawing Is Magic that stuck with me. He said, "Don't worry about doing anything wrong. If you're hoping your sketchbook turns into a glossy display of only your best drawings, you are not carrying a sketchbook, you are carrying a portfolio." In other words, explore, take chances, loosen up and have fun. Try your best to go at it like an uninhibited child. In so doing, you will stretch as an artist by avoiding repetition and predictability. We all know how to do what we already know. To sum up, I created a bad page, and whether or not I was able to fix it, it expanded me. So, follow your pencil, pen, or whatever and let them take you to places you never imagined when you started. Then, maybe you will end up staring happily at the final and with childlike wonder, say, "man, where did that come from?"

BEING GREEDY CHOKES ANANSI From Favorite Folktales around the world by Jane Yolen. One time, Anansi lived in a country that had a queen who was also a witch. And she decreed that whoever used the word five would fall down dead, because that was her secret name, and she didn’t want anyone using it. Now, Buh Anansi was a clever fellow, and a hungry one too. Things were especially bad because there was a famine, so Anansi made a little house for himself by the side of the river near where everyone came to get water. And when anybody came to get water, he would call out to them, “I beg you to tell me how many yam hills I have here. I can’t count very well.” So, one by one he thought they would come up and say, “One, two, three, four, five,” and they would fall down dead. Then Anansi would take them and corn them in his barrel and eat them, and that way he would have lots of food in hungry times and in times of plenty.

Another Wednesday, traditional style ;)

THE LITTLE OLD WOMAN WITH FIVE COWS From Favorite Folktales from Around the World by Jane Yolen. One morning a little old woman got up and went to the field containing her five cows. She took from the earth a herb with five sprouts and, without breaking either root or branch, carried it home and wrapped it in a blanket and placed it on her pillow. Then she went out again and sat down to milk her cows. Suddenly she heard tambourine bells jingle and scissors fall, on account of which noise she upset the milk. Having run home and looked, she found that the plant was uninjured. Again she issued forth to milk the cows, and again thought she heard the tambourine bells jingle and scissors fall, and once more she spilled her milk. https://www.instagram.com/p/CnnCvkZpxW0/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

pen and gouache on paper towel

02/16 Travel Memories : Fisherwoman Commissioned work: sketches about travel memories for an interior design website with graphite pencils only

Watercolor painting detail

More examples of drawing flowers with watercolor. These examples were learned from Sara Berrenson’s book “ Watercolor flowers the easy way”.

This is a picture of the lady at the cash register who bags produce at the produce store. She let me take her picture and I painted from it. I gave the picture to her but she wishes it had been done before she gained weight. : (

A burden of history. https://www.instagram.com/p/Cdi8xGUOcBZ/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

I printed my black and white zentangle drawing on marker paper and colored it with alcohol markers. At first it was a bit to garish with too much contrast, so I painted a warm grey over the whole piece. That gave me what I was looking for. Of course, THEN I completely undermined that with making a bunch of wild colored ones (two shown here) by playing with them in Photoshop. I shall be using this (along with my Zentangle koi posted la while back) for printing blank cards that we sell for charitable (mostly foodbanks) organizations.

The image is of an evening scene after a sweet rain. After the sun sets, the Sunset vibes pop up. Pink skies are much more beautiful when roads are wet.

It's crazy to think that 6 years have already flown by since I first moved onto the Xcel gymnastics team, let alone the fact that I've spent 15 years of my life as a gymnast. Tomorrow, August 6th, 2021, marks my last day as a gymnast on the team since I'm officially a college student. I've genuinely been dreading this day, but it's not the ending I expected...in an oddly good way. I know no one expected to spend the past year in a pandemic, and I definitely didn't think gym would shift so much in the following months, but here we are. Gymnastics has taught me more than I ever imagined it could, and my coaches (especially one of them) have become two of the people I'm closest with, words can't describe how grateful I am for everything. This 'ending' doesn't feel like an end, more so a closing to this chapter. Honestly, my love for the sport has only grown, and it feels like I'm finally figuring it all out. So, although my final practice as a team member is tomorrow, my journey is not over yet. "Goodbyes are the hardest part, and this ending has been something I’ve been dreading, although I know it’s time to let go. I’d like to say this isn’t a permanent goodbye to you or the sport, it’s more of a natural conclusion. Thank you from the bottom of my heart for everything you’ve done for me and managed to teach me in this short amount of time, I couldn’t have asked for anyone, or anything, better. Thank you most of all for helping me achieve my dreams and for helping me get to a point in which I can say I’m proud of my journey. All that’s left to say is I care about you, I love you, and take care."