My Daily Sketchbook

About two years ago I started drawing a calendar grid in my sketchbook and doodling the events of each month as they happened. This became an evening ritual as I recounted the daily events and tried to visualize them in the small space I had given myself.

It was a fun project but only one I kept up for a year and a half before stopping. Over the following months I started to feel nostalgic, not so much for the act if sketching but being able to revisit past calendars and relive those daily events. I decided in March of this year to start this project up again, but this time using an easily portable Moleskin sketchbook. The Moleskin is nice and small and it frees me from the grid, allowing some days to take up an entire page, while others only a fraction of a page. Two things have come from this….

1. Some days just don’t have anything at all interesting in them, so it is a challenge to come up with something to draw. Other days I don’t seem to have enough paper.

2. The act of drawing each day’s events really slows down time. We have all experienced months passing right by when we feel we have very little to show for it… not any more, every day now has a character of its own and is a gift for my future self to relive in the coming years.

If you are interested I recommend you try it yourself. If you want more examples of folks that really do this right, check out Dan Price’s Moonlight Chronicles

Painting Tiles

A lot of my recent work has been virtual, and although I enjoy creating things in the computer I still pine for the opportunity to make tactile things as well. As I get older my need to “make things that matter” is thankfully fading away and I allow myself to make things just because it is fun to do so. I recently started playing with ceramic tiles as a medium. I wanted to see if I could create more tangible art that still had the fresh quality found in a sketchbook drawing. Without much planning I just launched into creating freehand sketches using ceramic paint and no goal or under drawing. I created 25 tiles and have posted them on Etsy.com for sale, purely as an experiment. You can find them here: Tiles on Etsy

Note: As of August 5th 2008 the tiles have been pulled from my Etsy story. Although I did sell a few, the cost of keeping the store outweighed the sales. Still, it was fun and has given me ideas for other items for the future.

Virtual Still Life

I have been playing with some of the 3D models I have been building these past two years. This time I am working with various ways to arrange, light, and “photograph” the models to create additional mood and atmosphere. Really, there is no reason these virtual places can't at least attempt to capture some of the drama typically found in more real world environments, or forms of entertainment like movies and photography. I will be posting my various attempts on my Flickr page.

My Latest 3D Work

After working for the past few years creating 3D objects and environments, the work tends to pile up. Since there really isn't much room on my portfolio site to display them all, I have created a Flickr page to do the displaying for me. If you want to see what I have been up to for the past two years, have a look here:

3D Work Flickr Page

Art in the Mail

Over the Christmas holidays I received a gift of a tin box filled with blank postcards, and a request from a friend to share correspondence in the coming year. I have to say I am having a wonderful time, and here is one of my recent cards, thankfully scanned by its recipient... thanks Craig!