ANIMAL CONNECTION 019 : Girl on a smiling horse

I decided to try something a little different for this drawing of the Animal Connection and be a little more creative with the composition of the image. It's a little more fantasy like. Pardon the mouse on the top corner, the pages are starting to curl up :) 

framing exercise

The second workshop exercise with Jorge was all about framing and accurately representing depth. Above is my attempt. The shading was done mostly with Faber-Castell PITT artist pens "shades of grey". It was a great opportunity for me  to practice with brush pens, which I don't use very often but was always a little curious about.

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Newton got to take longer walks this week and spend a little more time exploring the outdoors. We need to work on the leash, he tends to pull a lot and wants to meet every dog along the way, which is kind of cute. But not every dog wants to be around an excited puppy. 

The first time we went to the park he kept trying to climb up on my laps. It's hard to say no to that face. I try not to give in too much so that he doesn't become overly dependent. But he's only 3 months old. 

And he's my drawing buddy :)

practice makes perfect daily sketches

Over the past couple days, I started to draw a couple quick daily sketches of various subjects to get back into urban sketching and just practice a little more. It's a fun thing to do and it doesn't take too much time and I don't erase anything, I just draw with a pen and add color with simple Crayola markers I have laying around. Above are the images of the past 10 days or so. There are a lot of images of Newton as he loves to spend time sleeping on my lap while I work on the computer and he's a fun subject to draw. Not sure how long he'll be able to do that as he's getting bigger and heavier every day :) 

pacman

I decided to draw on blank stickers and stick them inside my notebook. This is the results. I like the idea of videogame graffitis. They add some fun to people daily routine. It would be a very fun project to do in a city as an art project. 

ANIMAL CONNECTION 018 : Mike Tyson and pigeon

For the animal connection portrait No 18, I decided to draw Mike Tyson with a pigeon (based on a portrait by photographer Paul Mobley), which I believe is his favorite animal. He actually had a show on Animal Planet about pigeons called Taking on Tyson. He's an interesting man. I hope to get a chance to see his show Mike Tyson Undisputed Truth at some point.  I first heard about it on the Joe Rogan Experience Podcast and it sounds interesting. It's just him talking about his life. I'm sure there are a lot of valuable lessons to take from him. 

I'm also fascinated by his face tattoo. It's bold and unique. After doing a bit of research on it, I found out that it's inspired by Māori tribal tattoos called Tā moko. Not that he planned on it, apparently his tattoo artist convince him to get this design as opposed to a bunch of heart in his face. Good thing he listened to the artist! 

taking my urban sketching to the next level

Last year, out of the blue, I discovered the wonderful world of urban sketching and started to experiment with it on various occasions. I also started to follow the urban sketcher blog, joined their facebook group and a series of urban sketchers I really admired. 

One particular urban sketcher that stood up for me is Jorge Royan who's style is simply amazing. He's an architect and photographer and the way he frames his drawings and put things together inspires me. I remember thinking that I should study his drawings in order to improve my own and started to emulate his framing style. Now I'm one of the lucky few going to the 4th Annual Urban Sketcher Symposium in Barcelona (so  excited about this!) who are getting online lesson directly from him! How amazing is that! 

Above is my first homework from our online workshop. I'm a little rusty from not doing urban sketches on a regular basis, but I'll be getting back into it in no time, specially considering this great opportunity to not only learn from a master but also the other students in this workshop. There's some great talent there and it's awesome to be part of something like this. 

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The weather is finally getting a little warmer, so we had plenty of occasions to explore the outdoors a little more while figuring out how to walk on a leash. He's a very photogenic dog, I couldn't help but taking tons of pictures.  He also turned three month this week. Sometimes it's hard to believe he's still just a puppy. 

think... love... choose... live

This time I decided to experiment with labels and stuck them on the pages. They almost act as posters and prevent the ink from the Sharpies to go through to the other pages.  I was inspired by the popular "obey" poster. 

i am other

It's been a little while since I took the time to doodle in my Walls Notebook because I couldn't think of something interesting to draw (even though I should just start instead of waiting for inspiration). However a recent tweet from Pharrell (shown below) sparked this idea for i am other. It's an interesting project with a neat manifesto. 

Tweet your OTHER art to @i_am_other for a chance to be featured in our photo gallery on FB: on.fb.me/Jrp1Jw

— Pharrell Williams (@Pharrell) April 17, 2013

15/52 What are this

This weeks photos are inspired Jenna Marble's recent video of her own IG : Kermit. I've learned quite a bit about the breed from her videos and this latest one definitely shed a new light on Newton's personality : He is definitely the curious kind. I guess it's not just a puppy thing. :) 

the opposite of fear is love

I heard Tom Campbell say "The opposite of fear is love" during an interview, and it inspired me to create this little piece. Every decisions that we make are based either on fear or love: Fear being the most negative state (creating negative outcomes) and Love being the most positive state (creating positive outcomes). As more and more people choose the take the red pill and live their life based on Love, all of the world's problems will slowly disappear.

There's a really neat explanation of what it means to live your life based on fear and love in the book Power by Rhonda Byrne. I stumbled on a the audio intro to the book and it was rather interesting. I might add it to my list of readings. 

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How fabulous is Newton this week, eating his bully bone :) It's crazy how fast he's growing. We really see it by how how high he can reach some shelves and how long his body is when he stretches out. 

jar challenge update 3

A tiny increase in the measurement of creativity last month. A little is better than none ;)

hold on to your freedom

This one was inspired by Banksy's balloon girl street art. I had George Michael's song Freedom in my heard on a loop as I was drawing this : "Freedom! I won't let you down. I will not give you up..." 

How often do we voluntarily give away our freedom? Do we even realize it? What are we giving our freedom away for? Is it really worth it? 

no man can get rich himself unless he enriches others

This is a quote from Earl Nightingale's "Strangest Secret" speech that I try to keep in mind and apply regularly. The way I see it, the word "rich" means more than accumulating wealth. I think it also means  accumulating wisdom, happiness, ideas, skills and knowledge. 

TGIM sketchnote 10

I'm not going to lie, after listening to this week's TGIM my first thought was : " This year, I'm getting to  Phenomenal with ET". It's that motivating! Although I think ET's already at the door of Phenomenal, changing the lives of so many people. I have A LOT of catching up to do so I'm going to go back, review all the videos and all the sketchnotes and make sure I got everything covered before he posts the videos for the second quarter.