Not So Much...

So that didn't go quite according to plan.

I suppose I have only myself to blame. I originally had in mind a street art project. Kind of a dipping-my-toes-in-the-water street art project. There is a lot of great architecture in DC, but some of the most interesting building in the city had been demolished years ago to make way for large sterile office buildings. On this part of 9th St. there used to be an amazing strip of buildings, including restaurants, movie theaters, and a burlesque house. I had in mind to make a piece honoring those lost buildings.

While there are lots of street artists I could name for inspiration, the main concept for this piece came from Delta Inc. who had made a wheat-paste street art piece that degraded over time in a semi-controlled way, revealing and becoming a new work in the process.

So I created two layers to my piece. The bottom being an image of what used to be, the top being what is now. The top layer had several purposeful cuts made in it, so that as it weathered, it would fall apart in a way to reveal the bottom layer. It being sort of a reversal of what actually happened, this time the office building is destroyed, returning the strip to the beautiful lost architecture that once was there.

Alas, when I returned to the location a week after putting it up I saw that the piece had been completely removed. Which I should have expected, as that part of Chinatown is kept pretty neat and tidy. I doubt it made it past the Monday after I put it up before it was removed.

I'll have to be more clever about this next time...

Urban Sketchers > Washington DC

Washington DC now has a Urban Sketchers blog: URBAN SKETCHERS > WASHINGTON DC with an eager group of sketchers to call its own. The site will be sharing the sketches of our members, and also the sketches of the DC Sketchers class a the Capitol Hill Arts Workshop, & updates of different drawing events happening in and around the city. Please visit, comment, share, bookmark, link to, follow, stumble upon, tweet & whatever else you can think to do! All of us on the site are excited to share the work & the city with the world.

On The Fly

This is the last sketch I have from the Rally a couple of weeks ago. Technically its the first sketch I worked on, but I never got a chance to finish it up until recently.

On The Fly is another food truck in town, and it made a good choice coming to the Mall during the rally, as I never saw it without a line. Time dictated that I get moving towards the crowd and events, so I didn't join the line. On The Fly has a pretty good methodology, supporting local companies, using smart cars as trucks, eco-packaging, etc... they've got their green bases covered.

This sketch is also the first drawing I'll be contributing to the new Urban Sketchers > Washington DC blog. Please check it out to see more sketches by more sketchers from DC. They are indeed a talented bunch.

After&Before

A couple of 3' x 4 1/2' drawings of 9th St. DC, then & now, I'm going to use for a project.
More pics in a week or so...

Rally To Restore Sanity (and/or Fear)

Well that was fun.
I had a horrible view, it was a miserable Metro ride into the city, and I barely got there on time, but Rally To Restore Sanity (and/or Fear)was a lot of fun. Despite not being able to see the stage (nor jumbo-trons) very well, all parts of the show kept me and the crowd laughing for a solid three hours while making some very good points about our national conversation. At the end, as the 200,00o people shuffled off the mall, I got a little closer to the stage and managed this sketch. I'm a little disapointed I didn't get a sketch of Kareem Abdul Jabar or R2D2, but I did get a few of the other people who attended.

I have a few more half-done sketches, and will share them as soon as I finish them off! Until I get those done, check out Joel's get sketches, as he showed up to sketch too!

Sketchcrawl #29.5 Rally to Restore Sanity (and/or Fear)

OCTOBER 30.

All Star Rollergirls

Last weekend was Sketchcrawl #29.. which I will address again later... But that later that same day was a Dr. Sketchy's figure session with the DC Roller-girls All-Star team. Now, I don' t know whats wrong with this town, but I turn out to be the only person to show up. How there weren't dozens of people there, I'll never understand. And while I would have totally understood the team calling it a night and getting home early, they actually stuck around and let me draw for a few hours. So just know that they are indeed as awesome, hilarious and nice (& frankly bad-ass) as you would hope.

I should also add that I wish some figure-class models I've seen had posed half as well as the roller-girls did. They consistently modeled fantastic poses, many of which surely made them sore the next morning.

Pictured above are dr. SKabs (standing), Gun'Her Down (kneeling), and Small Frye (reclining).

50 (Mostly) Blind Contour Self-Portraits

Below are 50 (mostly) blind contour self portrait drawings I made recently, and I thought it might be interesting if I layered them all into one image. Hence the picture above. I still am playing around with it, and tweaking it in Photoshop, but I like how it turned out.