Jim

April 2011

Thank you for being such a great, though elusive friend, friend.

I ♥ LA

November 2006

This is a 'memory map' I think I doodled for my very first design studio five years ago. It is certainly unfinished, inaccurate and unfairly skewed toward Hollywood - the LA that all outsiders seem to envision when thinking of Los Angeles, but I find it fitting that I see all of its flaws after five years of architecture school and can still appreciate it at face value, regardless.

my friends in their rooms - 2

May 5, 2010

my friends in their rooms - 1

May 5, 2010

I find private dwellings, especially the ones of a few good friends, utterly fascinating, because a person's room can tell so much about the occupant. For these if I'm lucky to have some reference photos on hand, they're based off that, otherwise I make things up. Roughly 50% real, 50% imagined.

more blankets tributes

August 2008

The drawings I drew but never sent as I had hoped to, to Craig Thompson, whose work blew me away after my friend Dan handed me a copy of Blankets to read.

doodles 1

February 2, 2010

This will be an ongoing series of snapshots of doodles I neglect to scan. The graph paper book is one that I share with my friend Steph - we started in high school, writing and drawing to each other and passing it off to each other in-between classes. It was a definite catharsis and here we are in college, still carrying on. My silly side definitely comes out in full-force in my doodles to her.

reading girl

February 2, 2010

I think I need a bigger sketchbook since it seems I can't stay within the boundary of a 5"x8" page. I also need to work on the human form and physiology - my figures always look so stiff.

found

c. 2003-2004

An unfinished illustration of a polaroid of my friend Steph that I started in high school. At the time I was infatuated with the work of Adrian Tomine, and if you look closely at the line work I think that is slightly evident, or else a bit of a stretch, ahha.

underwater dining

c. 1998

As a child I loved to concoct whimsical scenes of underwater life (and of course many other things) and I'd imagine my own kinds of angelfish, sharks, coral - whatever, and all in the brightest, most vibrant colors. I'm most amused by this one because I can still remember which fish of each group I had drawn first just by pinpointing the one that's most carefully drawn. There would have been a second drawing after this one with all the fish inside said 'restaurant', but I guess the urge for that slipped away as the inspiration for other drawings surfaced.

I'll be posting some of these old drawings because I recently found a huge cache of them upstairs and, when I'm in a production slump I like to look at how I've evolved and remember what it was like being carefree and drawing all my afternoons away.

arowana!

January 18, 2010

The arowana of the freshwater bony fish family Osteoglossidae is one of my favorite fish, because its strange oblong yet thick body, covered with huge armor-like scales makes it look prehistoric. Plus they come in a large array of colors, which I failed to show in this sketch, but instead began to convey with texture.

various ♥s

January 18, 2010

My sister got me into drawing parts of the human anatomy - specifically the skeleton and muscles. Which is much more valuable practice than drawing hearts, but I found an image of many different anatomically-correct hearts that I was compelled to draw.

westie sketches

January 18, 2010

When I want to draw but my creative juices are lacking, I instead sketch to improve my line quality, going off of references rather than my imagination, which I believe is better than sitting there waiting for an idea to come. Today was one of those days, and I worked on quite a bit of these kinds of drawings.

I definitely need to practice rendering fur.

rover

November 2, 2009

Another thank-you note. Reference photo taken by Tommy. I'm trying (somewhat unsuccessfully) to improve my line quality...

say thank you with westies

September 23, 2009

I am sending someone a thank-you note, and I didn't want it to appear blank. As the recipients are proud dog-owners themselves, I did a sketch of my Westies, I hope they like it!

languishing

But still here.

(hastily scribbled)

July 15, 2009

show flyers

For my friend Joe G.