Here, in images, is a week of tulips on my desk ..read more

There’s nothing like standing in the corner of a room bustling with energy and drawing it. On San Jose Day, Empire Seven Studios let me hang out in a corner of their gallery and sketch for a bit. There’s nothing like live sketching. Still, I kinda enjoyed watching my first-ever full basketball match (on tv) and sketching. The nice thing about basketball is that it’s easy to figure out what’s going on. So even a no-basketball-knowledge person like me enjoys it ..read more

Some recent machine-centric pages from my sketchbook. This is Russ, working in the front yard with a very noisy paver-cutting machine. Spotted in Japantown on San Jose Day, and I had to stop and sketch it, of course; A gorgeous blue lowrider. I should know the name of this classic red Italian espresso machine at Roy’s Station in Japantown. I don’t, but I do love how it looks like a very sleek, highly polished automobile. Standing beside the trains at the Railroad Museum in Sacramento made me realize just how huge they are. My favorite part of the trains is the beautiful hand lettering on t ..read more

Pencils4Tea hosts a Zoom-based portrait sketching session every Thursday where participants take turns posing for each other. Portraits are times by the length of songs. I drew these two spreads in one such session, mostly using a blue and brown ink combo ( I love these two colors together: the blue really warms up the brown!) with a range of drawing tools. It was a fun, relaxed way to draw and experiment. I’ll be doing more of these soon! Check out Pencils4Tea‘s profile to see if the Zoom session works for you. That same brown ink looks quite different when paired with graphite and colored p ..read more

Westside Billiards in a San Jose institution that has been around since about 1947. So it was super exciting to see the sign restored. Restorations like this might look like little projects but you can bet there’s tons of commitment and partnerships between business owners wanting to preserve history, preservation folks like Preservation Action Council of San Jose, and the San Jose Signs Project put in tons of work to make this happen. I sketched this sign (originally from 1947) in 2015? 2016? And it’s on the back cover of my book, Vintage Signs of San Jose. So it was fun to draw it again ..read more

These are four pieces I made last week. The first one is a sketch of withered daffodil heads. This one below appeared on my page the next day as I chatted with Paul Wang (we’re bringing you a new PlayLab session soon!) I can’t photograph this piece below well, but it’s a little zine-like thing made of tracing paper, just something I did one afternoon to break up my finish-the-taxes day. (I’ve managed to push that day out over a few weeks!) And this last one is a collaged piece in my sketchbook. I did three versions of sketches of oranges from my backyard while chatting on Zoom with Nina Kha ..read more

It’s spring, and it’s PINK everywhere I turn. This glorious tree was captured from my car studio, which allows me to carry far too many supplies, and throw them all at the paper, all at once! I know a base of bright pink ink and Neocolor II crayons were part of this mix, but I cannot remember what else was involved… The magnolia tree below is in Nina’s neighborhood. She locates promising ones during her morning run and then I go over and get a guided sketch tour of the neighborhood trees-in-bloom. Here is a sketch of another magnolia tree, this one with bigger blooms. These final two are fr ..read more

We might just be done with the big downpours of the year. It is warm and sunny now and it seems hard to imagine that most of February and early March was all rain and no sun. I did this quick sketch after a very wet grocery run. After it had rained continually for a few days, I gave up on waiting for a sunny day and headed out on a little walk in the rain, sketchbook in hand. I didn’t get far, my book got wet, but still, I’m glad I sketched ..read more

Most years I participate in Marc Holmes and Liz Steel’s “One Week 100 People” challenge. This year I just sketched more people but didn’t count them. Until now. Here is where I ended up. Right now I’m a bit obsessed with finding a way to use my dip pens on location. I need a setup that is hands-free, but portable. Here’s a video of my current setup that I used in many of these sketches. You can see the first few sketches had plenty of splotches and blotches till I (kinda) got the hang of the setup. Then I took it to the farmers’ market and did a whole bunch of people in 2 colored inks. Colore ..read more

Last week (or was it two weeks ago, it’s been a blur!) this happened. The buckled and cracked concrete in my front yard was pulled out to make way for a paved driveway and some native, low-water plants to replace the grass patch I never water. It was SO noisy; there was that thing that I call a digger (I’m sure there is another name for it) and that pneumatic drill. And I could see and hear it all from my desk in the studio. So I tried to put it all on paper: chaos, dust, sound, and all ..read more