hip hop figure studies

A few quick studies from Damion Scott's art book. His work has a great flow and energy to it and he's one of the few artist I've found that really seems to be able to draw male figures that have a lot of personality and life.

another Queen's Blade study

This time I started by making a limited color pallet... and it worked mush better. The last study ended up getting too muddy because there were no relationships between the colors used and I was trying too hard to make the skin tones saturated.

This is a character from another Queen's blade book. Unfortunately F.S. has only illustrated two of the books so far.

space family carlvinson sketches

Sketches from a comic I picked up in Japan...

Shizuoka thumbnails

I've always wanted to see the other side of Japan. We tend to spend most of my time visiting the big cities so this year we decided to go to a hot springs deep in the mountains. We've been to Hakone before but we wanted to try something more quite and rural.


Once again we didn't get a chance to sketch so I did this color key study later from memory.

It turned out to be quite an adventure. We took an old steam locomotive up through the mountains and it was an amazing experience. I've rode steam locomotives before but I've never experienced anything like this. This is the only steam train still running in Japan so people get really excited when they see it. Everywhere you looked there were photographers and townsfolk waving and cheering when the train passed. We even passed a spa and all the nude bathers got out of the hot spring and waved at us... its not every day that you get tons of nude people waving at you when you pass.

Here's a quick study of Mika and her mother sitting at the dinner table... They were both wearing the same cloths and did their hair up in the same style.

Shizuoka New Years

Here's a sketch I did around Midnight at the local Shinto temple in shizuoka-shi. I come here to sketch every new years I love the moody lighting with everything lit from below...



This is a quick sketch from the same temple on new years morning... every one in the city turns up and they all cram into this temple complex that's been transformed in to a market...

blue Kyoto day

We spent a few days Exploring our favorite spots in Kyoto and discovering a few new one. Unfortunately we were so busy that we never stopped to sketch until the end as we were sitting and waiting for our train.



This is Kyoto station. Unfortunately this is the dull section of Kyoto station the main entrance area of the station is amazing... its a cross between blade runner and star trek.

Some of the new highlights for the trip were visiting a temple that my girlfriends ancestor founded, discovering umeshu flavored shochu at our new favorite restaurant on the ponto-cho, and getting caught up in the perfect Kyoto snowstorm.

Nihon go, went, gone

Just returned from my trip to Japan. Here's a sketch from my hotel room in Shibuya.



Here's a sketch from last year... its the same hotel just a different angle.


Out of one of my other windows I could see a soccer team training on a soccer field on the roof of a building... how cool is that.