The Days Are Long, But The Years Are Short

This quote keeps me mindful of how quickly time passes. This quote has been attributed to author and blogger Gretchen Rubin, author of 'The Happiness Project' and 'Happier at Home'. Hand-lettered and scanned, minimal cleanup then colorized in Photoshop.

You Can Do Better

Hand-lettered, scanned/cleaned up in Photoshop. Traced/refined in Illustrator.

Prints, tee shirts and more available at Society6. Support starving artists!

Production photos: Loose drawing:

Inking in progress:

Scan. I originally thought of keeping the rough look, but eventually went for the clean, smoother lines.

Eat Well, Travel Often

Life is too short for bad food and sitting in one place.

Prints and more available at Society 6. Support your local starving artist!

Tools: Hand-lettered, scanned/traced/composed in Illustrator.

YOLO (You Obviously Love Owls)

I turned a stupid, overused phrase into something meaningful.

Tools: Moleskine Sketchbook. Shot the sketch with the iPhone 4s, colorized in Photoshop (CS6).

Original sketchbook drawing:

All in the Name of Science

I was going through some old sketch books and discovered this. At the time, my son and I thought it would be absolutely hilarious if our dog had wheels instead of legs. I guess you had to be there. I showed it to him today, we still had a laugh.

Tuesday is Soylent Green Day

I watched the movie 'Soylent Green' last Sunday night on Amazon. When I was a kid, I thought it was the coolest movie ever. This movie ranked up there with 'Westworld', 'Logan's Run', 'Omega Man', 'Planet of the Apes' and 'Silent Running' as my favorites of the pre-Star Wars era.

I especially loved the detailed illustration on the movie posters - riot police with trucks scooping up people and putting them in the back of trucks to be carted off to who knows where.

Soylent Green was filmed in 1973 and set in the year 2022. There are 40 million people in New York. The greenhouse effect' makes it hot all year round and the only food is rations of processed colored soy crackers. A new flavor 'Soylent Green' is introduced, made of a new 'high energy plankton' - but it's in short supply and riots are frequent. While investigating a series of mysterious murders, the main character 'Thorn' (Charlton Heston) stumbles upon the Soylent Green's main ingredient.

(Spoiler Alert: "It's People!")

Tools: Sharpie and Micron pens. Scanned and colored in Photoshop.

The Meatier Meteor

This morning I woke to the news that a meteorite struck the Earth, injuring over 1000 people.

This drawing has nothing to do with that event, but it's a phrase I've been trying to find a use for since I was a kid.

So, there you go.

Happy Friday. Don't let any space junk hit you in the head tonight.

Happy Valentine's Day: Forever Alone

This is for all the lonely hearts out there on Valentine's Day: Give up, you'll be forever alone.

I actually did this one a while back while experimenting with the Procreate app on the iPad. I also had just picked up the More/Real stylus cap. I like this stylus cap because it slides over the end of a regular sharpie, giving it a more natural 'pen' feel and weight. It's also got a firm tip, which is more natural than drawing with a mushy tipped stylus.

Tools:Procreate App on the iPad 2 using a More/Real stylus cap.

At Some Point, Excuses Don't Matter

“He that is good for making excuses is seldom good for anything else.” ~ Benjamin Franklin

“An excuse is worse and more terrible than a lie, for an excuse is a lie guarded.” ~ Pope John Paul II

Tools: Copic Multiliner SP BS, Brush Tip, Strathmore Tracing Paper. Scanned then outlined in Illustrator. Composition in Photoshop.

Eat Food, Not Too Much, Mostly Plants

“Eat Food, Not Too Much, Mostly Plants” - from Michael Pollan's Seven Words and Seven Rules for Eating.

The posting of this drawing is not a coincidence, as I've decided to spend this month re-examining how I eat. And what better month than the awful, cold and gloomy February to do it. I eat pretty well (for the most part) and exercise but the holidays are a great excuse to slack off. I don't want to turn around in May and see that my shorts are a lil' snug. It's not a nice look.

Eating properly isn't that hard, it just takes a little more planning and a lot of discipline. I'm keeping a food diary to keep tabs on what I eat for the next month, cutting back on beer (sad face) and cutting out the junk. Wish me luck!

The seven rules according to Pollan are as follows:

Don't eat anything your great grandmother wouldn't recognize as food. "When you pick up that box of portable yogurt tubes, or eat something with 15 ingredients you can't pronounce, ask yourself, "’What are those things doing there?”" Pollan says.
Don’t eat anything with more than five ingredients, or ingredients you can't pronounce.
Stay out of the middle of the supermarket; shop on the perimeter of the store. Real food tends to be on the outer edge of the store near the loading docks, where it can be replaced with fresh foods when it goes bad.
Don't eat anything that won't eventually rot. "There are exceptions -- honey -- but as a rule, things like Twinkies that never go bad aren't food," Pollan says.
It is not just what you eat but how you eat. "Always leave the table a little hungry," Pollan says. "Many cultures have rules that you stop eating before you are full. In Japan, they say eat until you are four-fifths full. Islamic culture has a similar rule, and in German culture they say, “Tie off the sack before it's full.”
Families traditionally ate together, around a table and not a TV, at regular meal times. It's a good tradition. Enjoy meals with the people you love. "Remember when eating between meals felt wrong?" Pollan asks.
Don't buy food where you buy your gasoline. In the U.S., 20% of food is eaten in the car.

Illustration details: Hand-lettered, scanned and recolored in Photoshop. Watercolor paper background. There was minimal cleanup in Photoshop to keep the loose, hand lettered feel.

Fake Enthusiasm

Some people are just full of shit.

Tools:Pilot Precise V7 Stick Roller Ball Pen, 0.7 mm Fine Point. Colorized in Photoshop.

Feel The Fear and Do It Anyway.

I'd heard this phrase a while back and jotted it down in my sketchbook. I then discovered it's also the title of a popular self-help book.

It's a handy phrase for when you're too scared or think you don't have the balls to do something. It's also another way to tell yourself to get off your ass and just do it.

Unless your decision involves death (yours or someone else's), dismemberment or whether or not you should get that cool neck tattoo – just go for it.

Tools: Headline Type: Pilot Super Color Jumbo Marker (which was a gift from the super-talented Philly artist, Sean Martorana, who inspired me to get off my ass and start doing more art-related projects). Subhead type: Sharpie on Bristol Board with Sakura Pigma Sensei 0.4mm touch-up Background: Stock photo

Think Outside the Box

'Think Outside the Box' – those very words used to send me into a blind rage. An old boss used to use this term all the time, thinking that the very phrase would inspire creativity and magic inside me.

He also used ambiguous phrases like "make it crisper", like I was cooking french fries instead of designing a logo.

Good times, good times.

Tools:COPIC Multiliner Brush Pen on bond paper, scanned then Image Traced (Sketched Art) in Illustrator CS6. Traced art dropped into Photoshop for final composition.

Alternate version:

It's Going To Be OK

Sometimes you stray from your path, fall off the horse, lose yourself in the forest or (insert whatever euphemism you choose).

Take a deep breath, get yourself present and remember: There is only now.

Worrying about the past is a waste of time; only a fool trips on what is behind him.

Worrying about the future? Instead of letting your mind conjure up all the awful things that could be – face your fears head on and take action. Why worry about what could go wrong - think about all the things that could go right.

Don't worry.

It's going to be OK.

Prints and more available at Society 6. Support starving artists!

Do Your Own Thing

Not so much a 'resolution' for me personally, more like 'advice' to all the Cubicle Farmers and Corporate Stooges who want to break free. Trust me, once you do, you'll never look back. Daily drawing #6. Hand lettering scanned and traced in Illustrator.

Support starving artists! Prints and more available at Society6.

Kiss the Cook [Walter White from Breaking Bad]

Today's drawing is some hand-lettering featuring a caricature of Walter White from Breaking Bad.

2 weeks ago I was hit with the flu, which had me pretty much out of commission. So, while I was flat on my back, I spent some time with Walter White and Jessie Pinkman with a Breaking Bad episode marathon on Netflix.

When this show premiered in 2008, I didn't take to it right away. The main reason was that I started watching at Season 1 / Episode 4. If fans recall, Episode 4 ("Cancer Man") was where Walter reveals that he has cancer. At that time in my life, I was also going my own'cancer episode', so I wasn't real keen on watching a show about it, as my own reality was hard enough to take.

Looking back, I really wish I'd watched the first three episodes, because it's definitley up there with some of my favorite television right now (along with 'The Wire' and 'Mad Men').

5-Minute Drawing: Make Something Cool Every Day

Here's a time-lapse video I did of a 5-minute lettering practice. There was no tracing, no sketching, no guideline, just a blank piece of paper and a pen.

Pen:Sakura Pigma Sensei (0.4mm) Paper:Canson XL Recycled Bristol Board

Stop Wishing Start Doing

Hand-lettering on 9"x12" Bristol board. Scanned and colored. Minimal cleanup in Photoshop.

'You Missed Your Numbers!' [Illustration]

An illustration created with the 'Paper' app on iPad. I used the Fountain Pen brush for the main strokes, then used the Magic marker and Pencil brushes for some detail work. I used a More/Real Sharpie stylus cap, which gives a more natural drawing feel.

The Five Basic Tools of 'Paper'

I fell in love with the 'Paper' app when it was first released. It's a very stripped down, simple app. You have a simple set of 5 tools and a basic, muted color palette. That's it. The tools are in a handy 'drawer' that slides down, out of your way, to let you get down to business. You can organize your drawing in 'notebooks' that mimic Moleskine journals. You can add/delete pages and move them from one journal to the other. The best part (for me) is the ability to share drawings via email, Tumblr or Twitter, or just save to Camera Roll.

'Paper' is great for loose illustrations and diagrams. It has no layers, filters, import or color correction and you can't change the color palette. But that's kind of the point - keep the tools out of the way and get your ideas on paper. If you're looking for something more robust for the iPad, I'd suggest Procreate.

Paper AppMore/Real Stylus Caps

'San Francisco' Script Lettering

Thinking about travel destinations. A quick sketch done in my Moleskine 5.25" x 8.25" unlined sketch book. Inked with Staedtler 01 and 07 pigment inks.