bear eating cake

I think the title is fairly self explanatory, as is the picture.

Last Double Spread: going back to classics

(Close up)

In my final spread I decided to put away the ink pen and my little muji biro (mostly because the biro ran out of ink) and return to some drawing with my traditional linework. It's a slightly more usual layout with lines in the horizon meeting and perspective working its magic on size. But I wanted a slightly more literal image of my favourite Starbucks in Singapore to finish my mostly 2009 moleskin with.

Another way I got to finish off the year nicely was to get into a NOISE curation. Noise is an online international creative community. It's a great way to show off your work if you don't have a full website portfolio, and even if you do it's nice to have anyway. It's similar to deviant art or flikr, except you can add news/events/information on a general forum page. As well as spotting interesting jobs/opportunities/& art prizes that go up by the Noise crew. I got three pieces into the New on Noise: December 2009 curation, which makes me feel all warm and fuzzy on the inside.

Here's my spot in Noise, come take a look.

More floating heads

More displaced heads for the 2009 journal. Not too many of them because I managed to move twice and still find myself under the intense flow of the 24hr Starbucks aircon. After a frappacino (a bad one! ...have no idea how they can do that they measure it all out in a cup) well, ice, air con, nighttime, I ended up being too cold to draw. A strange feeling to have in Singapore.

Still managed to get a few down this time combining my ink pen and biro to have nice strong lines and subtle shading. My favourite is the girl at the top, where I think the double combo of pens comes out the best. In a couple of the others however its like a bad DC and Marvel crossover. But some crazy people enjoy the Universe crash so I hope there's a floating head here for everyone.

More ink pen!

Here are a couple of displaced heads snuck into the remaining spaces of my moleskin. There are bizarrely spaced empty pages between to do lists, diary notes and sketches. Perhaps I left room to write down a memorable event or maybe I thought I needed at least one or two full page spreads to adequately caption the previous image I had just spent several hours drawing in an attempt to have the picture say the 1000 words I didn't feel like articulating.

In spite of all the leftover space, or perhaps because of it, I jumped the gun and bought a new sketchbook. I promised myself that I wouldn't open the plastic until I had saturated every last available space in my old book. But the promise is growing thin, and as the allure of breaking the seal and smelling the fresh virgin pages calls I am starting to hurry through the awkward process of filling up cracks in my 2009 diary.

Hence the floating heads. They are a fun challenge whenever I am a little too tired to do a full scene, or when one will simply not fit onto where ever I seem to be drawing. But hopefully they will retire with the old year model soon and before the new month waxes over I will start on new and exciting full bodied and unrestricted images.

Going nuts on photoshop

Surrounded by so much black and white will have me go nuts every now and again. Such example above. Why are there explosions of colour shooting across this calm idyllic cafe scene? Who knows. It might have something to do with residual anger towards the central newspaper reading man for his acrobatic leaps in position. Or it might have something to do with me being recently addicted to MGMT's 'electric feel' and Cut copy's 'Lights & Music'.

Explanations aside for my light-show mood I hope you enjoy this brief stint outside of Kansas.

Haircuts of Asia

Hairstyles in Singapore are intensely fun to draw. Even in a seemingly normal and boring cut, like a shaved head, there are random growths and curls emphasized by gel or other styling products. My current favourite cut looks like someone has attached a giant fluffy toupee to a normal short male haircut. Unfortunately they haven't clamped it down properly and half of it has fallen off and is alive in the wind, while the other more reasonable side is muffining over the edges of the young man's head.

Amazing.

I didn't quite catch that particular look here at one of my favourite food courts, but I did manage to gather quite a few examples of the asian style with my brush pen.

New Pen, old subject

I've bought a new pen! It's a brush tip pen from copic and I'm having some fun with mark making that isn't as easy or as rewarding with my fine tipped biro. I originally didn't like brush tip pens, convinced that they couldn't give a range of line widths or have nice delicate little lines without the horrible hand shake visible.

I liked the idea of them, and I enjoyed seeing what others were doing with them (Matt Huynh!) but when it came down to using them results were never encouraging.

Until I realized my mistake!

I have been using large brush tip pens. Large brush tips do have a fine point but they need a very careful and experienced hand to find them, which I don't have. Smaller brush tips have a more delicate line, making those quick thin marks accessible while still have some weight and fluidity to the longer and thicker lines.

So I had a little play with both, messing around in this image with another way of describing hair, and the chairs I know and love down at coffee bean.