My Backyard

I did this sketch in the backyard of my building. There are a lot of phone/cable wires running across our back fence that drape down into the neighbor's yard which is full of overgrown plants, scrap metal, old cars and vans and what look like old wooden telephone poles. There is also an annoying dog that howls almost every morning at 7 o'clock.

We have a good amount of airplane traffic flying by as well, which is pretty cool because the planes are often flying pretty low.

I'm just about done my newest series of paintings, so I will be posting all of those next week.

Sternberg Park, Brooklyn

I went to shoot some hoops the other day for the first time in about 2 months. My shot was way off, but the court I played on was really nice and shaded by trees.

When I finished playing I sat down on one of the benches and did this drawing in my sketchbook. Not long after I started, a woman who had been practicing Tai chi came to see what I was working on. I guess she liked it, because she ended up sitting with me for entire time it took me to complete it.

Her name was Chung (I got her to write it in the bottom, right-hand corner) and she moved to Brooklyn from China in 1994. There was a bit of a language barrier, but I knew she liked something when I would draw a line or two and she would nod her head and say "yes, yes, yes."

She may have gotten a bit impatient at one point (probably when I was drawing the leaves), because she got up, grabbed my basketball and proceeded to launch some air balls for a few minutes.

When she returned she encouraged me to draw more branches in the trees.

After having drawn for about an hour and a half I finally finished the drawing and Chung nodded her head with approval. She wanted the original, but would settle for a photocopy she said.

You can view this piece a bit larger on the B&W page.

Sad Tales of An Adopted Highway

I can't remember if I've ever done a "humorous" comic panel before. When I was younger I invented over a hundred comic book characters, teamed up with friends to draw comic book covers of our series, "Never-Ending War" (featuring Marvel characters versus our own creations in a 100 issue series) and illustrated a full comic at the end of high school.
But I don't think I ever drew a funny comic strip.

I watched the Robert Crumb documentary, Crumb, last night for the first time in about 10 years. The last time was in 1996 when Sam was visiting. After the movie ended I think we drew for 5 days straight.

Anyway, I've had this idea for a cartoon in my head for a couple of months and Crumb inspired me to finally get it down in my sketchbook. As a kid it took me a long time to finally understand what it meant to adopt a highway. I never realized how emotional it could be.

Click the image to see it a bit larger if you have trouble reading the text.

Milk

This is one of the first illustrations I've completed from my most recent series. I have about 10 pieces in total along a similar theme and they're almost done, just a handful more to do.

I will post more pieces from the series soon. There will be lots of water towers for your viewing pleasure.

Hippo

I went to the American Museum of Natural History a couple weeks ago for the first time and it was amazing. I still have more to see as I didn't get a chance to go to all of the exhibits, but I saw a hippopotamus diorama and thought I'd do a little drawing of a hippo.