Uniformity

Well now. I have always enjoyed using both brown paper & bleach as media. A rough sketch, copied from a fashion shoot I found on the Web. As much a reminder to myself as anything, to say that yes, you might fall off the horse, but you can get back on it; you can dress like a slob for a while, but everyone looks good in a suit & sunglasses. If I keep practising then I will get back into the habit of drawing & creating. & maybe become a bit more dapper in the process.

Stationa/ery

I have to accept it; the frequency of my artistic output may go down as well as up. I'm pretty busy. But at the end of a day's studying, it was kind of fun to sit in a café in the world's busiest station and draw some of the people who walked by.

Shanghai

A month and a half ago I went to see some good friends in Shanghai. I took no work, and ended up doing very little other than eating and talking, with occasional breaks for walking around (mainly from café to restaurant to café...) It was bliss. One thing that interested me about Shanghai was the ex-pat community there - it seems much more pronounced than here in Tokyo (although, what do I know, maybe I'm just not cool enough to be in it in Tokyo), with a number of coffee shops and restaurants capitalising on all the foreign custom. Over an almond croissant and a nice cup of coffee in one of these, (and then afterwards on the subway) I drew some of the following:

Tim

Chris

The famous Avocado Lady of Shanghai

"The happy couple in their natural environment"

The denizens of the Shanghai Metro

Sketchbook page

Handsome hipsters

New Year

After not doing much over New Year's (I got sick and so spent a lot of time on the sofa under a duvet) I went out today to Ueno and had lunch with some friends. Daniel asked me what I liked to do in my spare time, and when I mentioned drawing, he asked me to draw him. He provided a pencil, and another friend, Taka-san provided his disposable paper book cover. And thus, a five minute sketch:

Here's hoping that you're all having a good New Year. I'm going to try and work on my drawings and update this blog with more regularity, hopefully working on a larger, longer-term project or projects. & I think this is a good point from which to start.

And a close up of the sketch, courtesy of Daniel himself:

(Re)contextualising

I'm trying to be a little bit like this right now. Taking in the universe and making something from it. Recontextualising, reinterpreting, rethinking, recreating.

(A postcard I sent to a friend; pen and ink on watercolour paper)

Fresh

Sometimes going back to something brings a fresh perspective. At the time I originally painted it, I didn't really like this self-portrait. But coming across it in my sketchbook I added the blue-green background, and now I'm rather fond of it. It reminds me of the work of brilliant Belgian cartoonist and illustrator, Brecht Evans.

Pregnant with possibilities

It's been a long summer, and I've not managed to get as much drawing done as I'd have like to. But nevermind, I'm here now.

I've been trying to ease myself back into the routine of drawing by sitting down in public - in stations, coffee shops and the like - and sketching people as they walk by. It's obviously impossible to draw someone in the same way as you'd draw them for a posed portrait; they're moving fast and you just get an impression. Sometimes the drawing doesn't even look a thing like them. But it gets your pen or pencil moving across the page, which I think is important in itself. So, here are some sketches, with more to follow soon.