Sunday, December 18, 2016

Pacifica - Mori Point


Nice day to dust off the cintiq companion hybrid and get back into some digital plein-aire sketching. The Air was crisp and the wind varied from light to moderate, but the umbrella I brought was a life saver in stopping the glare on the screen. In the distance is San Pedro point and the Devil's Slide area.

Monday, June 13, 2016

Iraq War Journal

I have been working on a story in my head for over a decade now. My deployment to Iraq in 2004-2005 with the 1/24 INF regiment has been looping in my mind for these years each day.

Sometimes I try to make sense of it, sometimes I try to avoid it, sometimes I try to just feel grief, anger and then just let it go.

But there it is the next day.



I kept a journal with sketches every few pages so I would remember more clearly. it is not perfect, not kept daily, but there is alot in there. I am working on transcribing it into digital form so I can try and get help from friends that understand narrative and figure out what I want to say with this.

I want to make comic book of this, pictures and words recounting the story fairly close to how I remember it. I had loft goals for why, so that I could somehow sum up the experience in a way that would make the next generation of people hesitate before commiting troops in any conflict.

However, I must be realistic that this may be out of my control. Who knows if the reader will find it interesting, useful. Maybe there has been enough of this, and the world is just too war weary to listen to antother count.

Well, I suppose i need to tell the story, even if its just to externalize it for my own mental benefit. Maybe another Vet could be helped by this. Or maybe not.

While transcribing I thought I would post a page of one of my sketches from that year of a horrible scene. Just to keep me accountable not to forget to work on this project.

Saturday, November 8, 2014

Works in Progress, or not to be?


I have been using some downtime to try and get a portfolio piece out there. You know, having that as a goal makes it really challenging to be creative at times. Pieces flow much better when they come from a place of true inspiration. As such, these are not ready for primetime and may never be, still I wanted to get something posted on here as its been a while since a real update.

Monday, October 13, 2014

art is hard

man, what a sketch. so much effort for such a weird thing. I am out of practice.

Thursday, October 2, 2014

St. Joseph Parish, San Mateo

I saw the morning light of early fall casting shadows on St. Joseph's Parish on the way back from dropping my son at school. I realized, wait a minute, I am freelance... I can just grab my watercolor pencils and sketchbook and run across El Camino and paint this right now!

   I took the sky in between the steeple and chapel too dark , if it was the value of the was on the left of the steeple, basically "just" there, it would have read much better. Live and learn. Used Ultramarine blue, Light Ocre, and burnt sienna.