Breakdancing in Quarantine Times

"We Gotta Breakdance to Save The World"

14.5 x 19.5"

This is the last of 3 new pieces I made for a spring show at Homegrown Skateshop in Ithaca, NY that, sadly, is not going to happen for the foreseeable future. Some of the scenarios happening in this drawing actually happened while we skated the park in our younger days, and even happened as recently as last year. I'll let you decide what is fact and fiction. Hopefully we can pull a show together for the fall so people can actually see these bad boys up close. 

I originally was going to have the gas station at night be the setting of this piece but decided to save this for another piece.

Down on the corner

Still keeping the dream alive with the bodega cat drawings. I'm trying to shake it up a little bit so things don't get too repetitive here. In college I was turned on to Ronald Searle's cat books and later on I noticed Ralph Steadman had done one as well and I'm pretty sure Edward Gorey placed quite a few cats in his illustrations. There are probably a bunch of other illustrators I'm not aware of that have some affinity for drawing them as well. I guess illustrators and cats just have some weird, magical bond, or maybe it's just that we appreciate a pet that lets us work as long as we please.

Paris: Part 2

I returned to this spot on our second to last day in Paris to see if I had improved at all since I had first drawn it back in early August. I wasn't totally pleased but I did notice an improvement in some areas. Besides having an eye-opening, great time traveling Europe for the first time in my life, it felt great to grow, or at least revive my abilities at life drawing.  Plus, whenever I feel a moment of nostalgia creeping in, I'm psyched to have this little sketchbook diary to reference instead of photos.

The raw beauty and wild cats of Greece

Greece, baby!!! The third to last stop on our odyssey and Athens had some gems in store for me. There are so many wild cats roaming the city and some of them aren't afraid to come up to you and be your new best friend. If our trip back was as easy as a few hours in a car, there was one cat in particular we probably would have brought home with us. This guy on the motorcycle was not the one but he definitely knows how to put on a show. He saw me at work and decided to make my drawing of a beat up bike into a great drawing of a beat up bike.

Like I said above, these Greek cats know how to make a picture really shine.

Denmark-Portugal-Spain-London

Here's another batch of sketches from my recent trip. I really should have drawn more in The Netherlands, Belgium and Denmark. I threw in some others from Portugal, Spain and London.

Paris: Part 1

Maybe you've noticed but, I've been absent from posting on the ol' blog these past few months and I'm here to explain why: Euro trip!  I made a solid attempt to do as much as life drawing as I could since I'd be away from my studio for 3 months. It was definitely rusty at first but things started to come around eventually. Here's my first few weeks in Paris.

Got to see Iggy Pop and it was definitely a high point of the trip. Watching him jump out to the front of the stage, with no shirt on, and start off with "I Wanna Be Your Dog" was such a perfect moment. I'm still insanely grateful to Jonathan Toubin for making this happen.

Passengers Cafe

An old coworker/a damn good friend moved From Brooklyn to Cleveland last year and in his absence there has been a void, both emotionally and creatively. We collaborated and brainstormed on many projects together when we both worked at Gimme Coffee and I've missed his creative energy. I know for the past year he has been busy working on opening a cafe in Cleveland and eventually he asked me to help him create an illustration for him to use on some store merch. Although the creative process wasn't us sitting in a musty basement and giggling for hours, it was fun to collaborate with him again. The dude has been hard at work and I'm stoked to help him out with some of my drawing skills so, without further ado, I give you PASSENGERS CAFE. The cafe just opened last week and is located in the lobby of the Cleveland Hostel. Be sure to pop in when you're in downtown Cleveland.

This project went through a lot of brainstorming and sketch phases but we eventually decided on some sort of passenger pigeon image. Lot of process pics below.