Ok, after seeing this little gem from Oakland’s Trueburger, I’m on the hunt for an old-school letter board to make my own lyric art. And I need to check out Trueburger. It’s getting good press and supposedly took inspiration from NY’s famed Shake Shack.
Super clever! Now off to scour ebay and etsy…. and get that damn song out of my head.
(Found on SFoodie.)
I’m going through all my sketch books and scanning them, and came across this one. I think I drew this after watching Where the Wild Things Are (remember the scene of one of the wild things’ model town?)
Heya! Thanks for all the kind comment on the Blogging It Forward post. Such an interesting project.
It’s been a slow week, as I’ve been fighting off a cold. Today I woke up at 12:30, after taking a junior strength benadryll to ensure some rest. these things must seriously knock out children.
Anywho…. there are tons of fun things going on this weekend. As for now, I’m going to try to stay dry from this freakish weather here in SF (which included a HAIL storm!).
Tonight is the first event promoting the sure to be amazing book from Marcia, The Tablehopper’s Guide to Eating and Drinking in SF, complete with gobs from Gobba Gobba Hey and the Chai cart. She consistently has the best and newest insight on bay area dining.
And this weekend is the opening of Giant Robot’s video game show, featuring art from some of my favs, Marc Johns, Lawrence Yang, and Ferris Plock.
There’s another art show I’m looking forward to checking out at Park Life, Bro Palace.
Aaaand, it is, sadly, the final evening of service at an underground sushi restaurant. (no link, because it’s, uh, secret). I’ll be there on Sunday.
Have a happy weekend!
hello new people!
I’m psyched, like everyone else, to be participating in this Blog It Forward Mashup. (Um, Victoria, this is awesome.) Victoria, AKA sfgirlbybay brainstormed this idea with a couple of other creative types over Twitter, and asked for participants. Thanks for including me and spending the ridiculous amount of time coding everyone’s info. Thanks also to Kathryn at Dream a Little Dream for her great post yesterday, and be sure to check out Dwell Deep who will be posting on Monday.
It’s been pretty interesting to think about what inspires me in life and in my art. There are like a million things, but here are the top(ish) ones.
1. When I travel to a foreign country, I head straight for the grocery store.
Fresh beer bar in Hanoi, Vietnam
If I had unlimited money there is no doubt that I would travel all. the. time.
Guard hut at Tham Hin refugee camp in Thailand
I’m not so much into typical sightseeing when traveling, but am more interested in experiencing how people in other places live. Typical travels will always include rambling in residential neighborhoods, grocery shopping (in supermarkets and fresh markets both) and plopping down in local restaurants where no one speaks English.
The Fancy Lifter game at an arcade in Tokyo. Yeah, I can’t explain it more than that.
Traveling is inspiring to me not only because of the visual excitement, but also because it forces you to live in the moment and pay attention to the details in the world around you.
sidewalks in Hanoi, Vietnam
street art in Hanoi and jamon iberico in Barcelona
Sidewalk in Mae Hong Son, Thailand and detail of a shrine in Hanoi
puppy and Singha. together at last
Art at Buddhist temple coffee house in Mae Hong Son, Thailand. Close up of tiles at Buddhist temple in Bangkok.
2. Eating food makes me want to draw, and drawing food makes me want to eat.
L to R, T to B: Roadside gai yang in Thailand, Dungeness crab and cardoon salad at Commis in Oakland, cheese plate in Rome, mango and sticky rice in Thailand, Mangosteens and a Mangosteen valentine.
As my daily drawing project MEAT SECTIONS probably indicates, food is clearly an inspiration.
some daily drawings from my blog MEAT SECTIONS
And drinks too. (They can also, can help with the creative process)
Illustrations of a beer from The Bruery and a cocktail from The Alembic
I also love food packaging. One of our kitchen walls displays a bunch of food packaging (mostly from the aforementioned foreign grocery stores)
They are an excellent source for color palettes too.
3. People saying “f*** it all” and doing what they love
Screenshot from Michel Gondry’s “Science of Sleep”, via We Heart It
There is nothing more inspiring than someone basically saying “fuck it all” and doing what they love, even if it is a huge risk. In fact, the bigger risk, the better.
Stories of people learning what they love and then actually doing it, like the people interviewed in Po Bronson’s “What Should I Do with My Life?” are so exciting. I’m not a big life-lesson-touchy-feely-person but this life is all we know we have in the world and well, I’d like to make the most of it. There is so much planning and caution in most people’s lives that it is invigorating and often necessary to take a leap and do something outside of that plan. I feel like I did this when I quit my government attorney job last year. My husband is naturally one of these “necessary risk taker” types and has inspired me to be more so. (We even included this concept in our wedding vows…)
cover art for Neutral Milk Hotel
Creative people who have chosen a life they want to lead, and are flourishing in their chosen paths are just endlessly inspiring. And the weirder and more wildly creative they are, the better. (See filmmakers like Wes Anderson and Michel Gondry, musicians like Neutral Milk Hotel, Sunset Rubdown, and Owen Pallet, and chefs like Grant Achatz, Anthony Mangieri, and Peter Chang).*
5. SAN FRANCISCO
view of San Francisco from Sausalito ferry And finally, the natural beauty and incredible creativity present in this city is a constant inspiration to do more, and do it well.
Pizzeria Delfina, one of my favorite places in the city.
As much as I love traveling, this is now my home.
My feet, my street.
Thanks so much for stopping on by, and be sure to check out Dwell Deep on Monday!
*I also have a soft spot for former lawyers who went on a different path, like the Zagats (of the Zagat guide), Matisse, and Kandinsky.
All photos are from me, unless otherwise indicated
…but there has been a lot of butchery going on.
I’ve been somewhat quiet over here, mostly because of some great things happening with my daily drawing blog, MEAT SECTIONS.
I received a commission to do several more painting for an awesome company (to be revealed as the painting come out. I’m excited!), a request to get one of my drawings as a tattoo(!!) and some requests for prints. So it has been actually pretty busy, which is odd, but good.
I have some cool things to post over here in the next few weeks though, including a step-by-step tutorial on making a Mega Daruma and my post on what inspires me as part of SFgirlbybay‘s clever Blog It Forward mashup.
In the meantime, I invite you to take a gander at my 55 days* of MEAT SECTIONS here or at my flickr site.
*technically there are only 53. I skipped drawing on a beautiful sunny weekend. I’m ok with that.
Little blocky and the smoke cloud of doom is now available as a print in my shop.
I’m super pleased with the colors on this print. It took A LOT of time to match my original color choices in the original. It really matches the transparency and depth of the original watercolor, which I posted a few months ago.
In other news, The Bruery, a southern California beer brewery caught wind of one of my illustrations of their Melange No. Seches beer and featured it on their blog! I’m super excited (as you can see here) since they make some amazing creative beer. Be on the lookout for some more Bruery beer inspired art, over at my daily drawing project MEAT SECTIONS.
OK. Now I’m off to the beach to enjoy a rare warm sunny February day here in SF!
Whew! I just posted my first print for sale in my etsy shop! Very exciting, as I’ve been wanting to do this for way longer than I care to admit.
Last year I bought an Epson R2400 pigment printer off a nice gal from craigslist. Since then, I’ve been waiting to get some material together to sell. This week, I tackled printing and fell down the rabbit-hole of color management. After a lot of frustration and many beers, I think I figured out all the settings.
I’m really surprised how awesome the quality of the print is. It looks almost identical to the original (which is hanging in my living room). I’m excited about being able to sell prints finally, because I have a hard time letting my little guys go.
See original post on “His Mustache Wanted More out of Life”, with alternate titles here.
I was feeling kind of in a rut lately and decided to just sit down and do something different.
I’m in an e-course taught by Marisa of Creative Thursday, and the last class touched on issues of procrastination and inspiration. I’m always interested in hearing about other folk’s creative processes, because most of the time, I feel like I have no idea what I’m doing. Marisa mentioned that she often just sets aside time to paint, even if she doesn’t have a pre-conceived idea of what she will be painting. I really haven’t ever worked like that, choosing instead just to draw or paint when inspiration “strikes.” This was my attempt at trying a different way for doing things.
This is what I came up with. Much more abstract than usual, but I like it.
