Finally Got Around To Making Some Art For My Bocce Team: Texas Forever. We Roll Every Sunday Which Means

I DR NY

My wonderful friend has been going to medical school for long enough to be forced to decide where to do her residency.  The possibles were Boston, NYC, or Philadelphia.  Thankfully for all, especially me who has come to rely on her medical advice, she will remain in NY!  As a not-going-away present, I painted her a little something because she will, in fact, be stethoscoping New York. Watercolor (which is awesomely cheap) on water color paper (which is awesomely pricey.)

Rad photo by Mike Wechsler

Lobster Bird

This is a turtled lobster bird.  It’s a very sad combination of things that came to me while staring at a wall.  If you want to know, this is how most of my ideas come to me, staring at walls.

Bird 6: Northern Cardinal

Hello everyone, hope you had a great holiday weekend and that it was lazy and full of fine foods. Back on the birdwagon here. Today is a female Northern Cardinal, one of the prettiest northeast birds in my opinion. Haven’t shown much of a wing view yet, so here you go! The set is going well, many many birds still to go until I can even think about layout for the poster. Gonna pick up the pace a bit.

Pixel Strut

Another snippet from the Pixel Art Project, which is one of a few but the main one going.  This dudes got a pretty wicked strut.  With as few pixels as I had to work with, it turned pretty hard pretty quick but I like the product.  Check out the making of here for all the janky steps.

I have begun the Super Trip, wherein myself and two friends travel from Seattle to Los Angeles via car and bicycle. The first day wasn’t so exciting because it involved getting to JFK, sitting in an aeroplane for 6 hours then settling in at the friend’s apartment in Seattle. There is so much to come on this trip, and I plan to post some drawings.

Game Map

More work on the little iphone game I’m working on. Here is the ubiquitous swamp map. I like this swamp map a bit more than most because it is actually pretty inviting and good for ghosting ghosts if you ask me.

Found a whole mess of truck icons I did years ago. Dusted this one off because I liked it. Used to work in pixels so often.

Yoga Me

I started doing yoga a month ago. Doing the job I do, I was in pretty serious need of yoga without really knowing it, with all the sitting and staring for most of every waking hour.  I’ve quickly become obsessed, as I am known to do, so I drew a picture of me doing yoga thinking about the things I think about when doing yoga.

Friend Mold

Friend Mold is a comic I wrote and illustrated about relationships, detailing what one must go through to become more than a friend to a member of the opposite sex. Digital release took place over the months of January and February with the last page arriving on February 14th. If you're interested in publishing Friend Mold drop me a line!

My Year In Bicycles

I’d say my cycling enthusiasm level is now “avid.” It’s been about a year of serious riding for me (or since I was convinced to take my roommate’s 80s Schwinn road bike after he left for another coast of America). The bike was impossibly small for me and he’d kept anything related to comfort free of what he called the bi-cycle (top right).  I believe the frame was 51cm, with a plastic seat (I have to call them saddles now that I’m avid), and awful, bare drop handlebars. These words may mean little to you - simply put, the bike was a pain in the ass. And hands. And back. But, I speak of the bike in an ungrateful tone, which is completely the opposite tone I’d like to be speaking of it in. The bicycle was my entry into the mania that now permeates my everyday life. I returned the borrowed mountain bike (top left) I’d had for several years (having ridden it a handful of times [which was also far too small for me]) and set out every late-spring day on that little red beast to try to get my confidence up riding in the city. I’m getting ahead of myself however, I had to ride every day just to learn how to deal with something so foreign. The first time on a road bike is extremely unnerving and seems wrong - the way a lot of things you’ve never done and go against your basic human understanding of ‘how the world should work’ feel wrong. Two skinny inline wheels should not stay upright, especially when adding a skittery, lanky 140 pounder on top. Once you’ve given into the magical psuedo-science keeping a paper thin bike upright, you have to deal next with the posture a classic road bike thrusts you into. Riding on the top of drop bars is not comfortable, especially for a person with wide shoulders and lanky arms (me, I’ve already mentioned my lank) - but what’s worse is the leap of faith you must take to enter the lower part of the curved drop handlebar. If flashes of your face grating against the sidewalk don’t instantly pop into your mind, you’re a brave person with a brain problem.

Suffice it to say, I learned to ride the bicycle without too many issues - and through daily riding and an ever increasing interest in how the parts worked, I was well on the way to my present compulsion, need, and desire for all things bi-cycle. After taking the Schwinn to a bike shop and complaining of outrageous back pain, I was told the bicycle was about 4 sizes too small for me. They set me up on a monstrously large bike and it fit and was a revelation to my atrophying back. So I got a new bike (not pictured) and donated the Schwinn to a friend who still rides it lovingly to this day. My new bike was a low-end fixed gear that was promptly stolen after 3 months of use outside a bagel shop. I hope someone is enjoying it (or its various stripped-off parts) - I did, for the short time I rode it as it gave me a brief but thorough look into the world of fixies - a dangerously associative world I may not have escaped if my ride hadn’t gotten jacked. Despite thinking not all that highly of the New York fixed-gear order, I got another fixed-gear bicycle (bottom left) - but a nice, proper one. It was not long before I threw a freewheel on there though, and indulged myself a little coasting. The rest of My Year In Bicycles involves a lot of conversing with my old roommate who bequeathed the Schwinn to me about bicycle parts, trips we’ll take, and bicycles we need to buy. We’ve both begun a small collection at 2 a piece with a 5 bike plan in the works. My latest acquisition is an old French road bike (bottom right) from the mid 70s that I rescued from a Salvation Army and cleaned, painted and rebuilt as a fairly faithful restoration. I’ve begun training on this monster for a long trip myself and the Scwhinn’s original master are planning. I will always think very fondly of that little bicycle and the awfully wonderful time I had riding it.