Adaptation.

from something i've been working on.
carmine, chromacolour, painter and photoshop
I've been a little tense lately.

so much so that about a week ago I couldn't fall asleep at all--which doesn't really happen to me. I finally drifted off at around 6am, but really we both know I should have just rode it out, stayed awake and come into work for 6--it would've got me here early, anyway.

as it was, around 4am I stayed awake and watched Adaptation, by Spike Jonze. It'd been a while and it was refreshing to rediscover how insightful and multilayered it is. The film's depiction of protagonists struggling with disappointment struck a real chord with me; the idea of whittling the world down by finding that one thing we care passionately about was helpful for keeping things in perspective.


in many ways, things have been pretty good lately, and it's worth it to remember that.disappointment, uncertainty, doubt and a little tension are all part of the game--I guess you just gotta keep your eyes on the prize.





i think that a healthy balance of attitude is helpful as far as art stuff is concerned--a mixture of confidence and humility. Too much of either and the work suffers; both, at their worst, paralysing our ability to see criticism and improvement as inevitable, necessary parts of a larger process. I suppose it's nothing any of us are too conscious of, but our feelings about our work and ourselves are in flux all the time, I think, as we're challenged and applauded. It's worth it to remember that it's all supposed to be complex; figure out what's important to you, then just whittle it down.

Final Fantasy

Hello. Here's my late, last minute housekeeping:

Indie music scene kids might know Owen Pallet as a member of Montreal's The Arcade Fire, but he's got quite the solo act as well as Final Fantasy, (yes, named after the video game) with an exciting and innovative violin act. He recently (not so recently anymore) released a run of 7" EP's which include a rendition of Joanna Newsom's Peach Plum Pear. It's entitled Young Canadian Mothers.


If you hadn't figured it out, the small illustration is mine. The awesome print job is by the very talented Nicholas Kennedy at Trip-Print Press. It's available via the blue house, and you can find it at Rotate This and Soundscapes in Toronto.

Clicking here will eventually lead you here at Escapegoat Records.

And for everyone in town, note that Owen's playing at the Music Gallery April 9th as part of The Man Show. Click here for details!

and thanks to Owen and Patrick and Jenny.
and that's all.

NEW YORK sketchbooks: a last few

Blogger's been giving me trouble lately in terms of posting stuff--hopefully that'll be straightened out soon, and I can move back to some portfolio stuff after some housekeeping on monday. A few more from the sketchcrawl: below, some of my gracious hosts.

NEW YORK sketchbooks: chromacolour

You know--it just occured to me that there really aren't so many posts with drawings on my blog; I'll have to remedy that. Anyway, this is more like it, right? Fairly self explanitory:

Sketchcrawl, day 1 in NY; cafe sketching that evening; doodles from much later, trying to recall things and people I had seen in the big apple; greek statuary and spanish portraiture from the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.

The American Museum of Natural History



Balthazar



The Boston MFA

NEW YORK sketchbooks: ------->

Hello--I hope everyone had a good weekend-
I apologize again for skipping out on portfolio posts--hopefully these scribbly notations can tide you over for a bit longer. I'm a bit insecure about how they look to the public eye, but like I said, they're more sort of journal entries than invested drawings; such are sketchbooks.

My moleskine journals bridged the gap between New York and Boston. It was a strange, sad moment leaving the NY, one which I wish I could have captured well in images or words. Anyway, another representative smattering of my sketchbooks. James warned me that the sketchbook moleskines didn't take watercolour paints very well--I learned the hard way; he was right.

The paintings were made in Soho on a somewhat warmish day for December.
The light was incredible, but it was a fight against the paper all the way.
A striking bust by Charles Despiau at the Fogg art gallery at Harvard.

On the bus leaving the Met.

NEW YORK sketchbooks: moleskine miscellany

I warned you all that I'd be skipping between subjects, so as I'm too busy with work to write anything portfolio related for now, a brief sojourn into sketchbook land--I'll return to the cute kids when I've got a second. For now:

I feel like I didn't accomplish much in NYC: drawing-wise, I mean--nothing too finished anyway, although not even much quicksketch. I really spent most of my time just seeing the sights--meaning everything in sight--but still, I guess I managed to fill two moleskines and start a big sketchbook of chromacolour paper. Most of the time I wrote; not very well mind you (I'm barely literate, which is why I like pictures), but, those things I couldn't describe in words, I described in sketches, doodles and highly ineffective paintings--and then that's when the camera came out, you see.

Anyway. What follows are pages somewhat representative of the type my moleskines are peppered with; footnotes, I guess, of a bigger, broader experience. A couple more posts will follow to show the whole spectrum; hope you enjoy.

On a crosstown bus with Jen, I kept miss-seeing things;
building ornamentation takes the form of slugs, ponies and ships

One sketch of many from a sculpture by Carpeaux--
the security guard reassured me that I'd do better next time.
Sketches from the American Folk Art Museum;
painted box and weather vane.
Excited Brooklyn ladies on the subway, on the town.
A colourless, formless sketch of dusk's descent on Central Park
from the gift shop of the Cooper Hewitt.
Bookmark it! http://www.tatsurokiuchi.com/
A helpful East Villager shopgirl.
On the bus downtown, Christmas Eve day, and below,
the work of a young Edward Hopper in Paris; the Whitney.

Bye!

II

Here then is our young protagonist, enjoying a day out on his tricycle. I'm sort of limited in the number of sketches I can post without blowing my cover, so maybe in the next entries I can introduce the story, its conception and move on to the process of developing the text and characters and entire package. For now, the last of the generic kids: