LA Contemporary Dance

Went to check out the LA Contemporary Dance group perform at LACMA. It was a lot of fun to see what they did inspired by the works of Magritte. It was family day, so there were tons of funny little kids all over. A woman next to me explained to two little girls that what the dancers were doing was surrealism. The little one sat quiet, then pointed and knowingly said "That's funny!" and she was right. Another kid was pushing chairs, and many others provided additional entertainment in their own confused and happy way. The dancers loaned us kids some cool green apple masks, wigs and scarves. I sported a curly blue clown wig. It was cool. It's pretty cool to see so many parents bringing their kids to check out art, and then to see them understand it and enjoy it in their own way. I always feel like that's how it should be. Afterwards, I grabbed some food then checked out the Crafts and Folk Art Museum with my brother Waqas. That place always has amazing stuff. This time I got to see works by Ramona Otto, who was there to tell all kinds of fun stories behind her pieces.

Hong Kong Six and The Autumns

Met up with and welcomed my talented musician pals Anand Subramanian and Arthi Meera to Los Angeles and checked out a show at the Gig on Saturday. We caught Hong Kong Six (first two sketches) and the Autumns (the last image). Nothing like some live music to end a workday.

Wednesday Drawing

Got to this session a little late, due to work, but it was cool to see what I could pull out of it. Our model was Michael Q. Schmidt who's always good natured and gives us artists some challenges.

Samaj sai Samjhauta

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Aashish Khan Sarod and Swapan Choudhury Tabla

I went to a Music Circle concert to see Aashish Khan play Sarod with Swapan Choudhury on Tabla and David Goodheim on Tanpura. I love these concerts. I can't say enough in words to describe how much fun it was. I just sat there with a goofy grin until it felt like my mouth was going to drop off. I also did some painting. For one of them, I decided to try and draw it all in with pencil first. I guess one should bring an eraser...but I did without. Accuracy is not really the point here. Most of what I've been doing of late, or really for a while has been straight watercolor or straight ink and watercolor so there's no erasing anyway. It's a good way to try and train myself to make those first marks the right ones. The tree is from just outside the chapel where the concert took place. It was a quick sketch done before they let everyone in. Lastly, my friend Robin Sukhadia took some photos during the performance, and a few were of me :). Thanks!

Wednesday 3s and 5s

Did some drawing. It was fun. Here it is.

Forever Flamenco

To round out my Sunday, I head over to the Fountain Theatre, for Forever Flamenco. The first sketch is of the cafe at the theatre. Next I did one of José Tanaka playing guitar, Richard Chavez dancing, two of Lakshmi Basile dancing and finally one of Rosa Maria Prats singing. I didn't get to draw Luis Pena, but he too was amazing. It was all over so quick. Very energetic and fun. There was so much expression. Not a bad way to prepare for the next grueling work week.

Nitin Sawhney Temple Bar

Went to check out a DJ set by Nitin Sawhney. Before hand I got to see Carmen Rizzo and Satnam Ramgotra's set. It was good to be out. Here are a few sketches from the Temple Bar, just to keep it going. I got to try out a new pocket sized watercolor sketchbook. I like.

Featured Artist: Jorge Martinez

I wanted to feature a piece by my extremely talented friend, Jorge Martinez. We actually met at a show at the Temple Bar a couple of years ago, and I saw him again at a show there last night. I did a few sketches, which I'll post after this, but he did one too. I was going to post that, but he sent me this other piece to put up instead. He does amazing things with cut paper, markers etc. I've been trying for a long time to get him to put his work out there. He is an amazing talent and this is the smallest taste of his work. Please email him and encourage him to setup a presense on the web.

Laguna Beach

The week just passed my by again. Last Sunday I went to Laguna Beach, checked out galleries and tried to paint a little, but mostly just sat on some rocks and stared out into the ocean. That place is like a little piece of paradise.

Here are my two favorite galleries there:

Laguna Fine Art (have a look at the amazing Dali etchings).

Richard Macdonald (beautiful sculptures and an amazing sculpture garden in the back).

Wednesday Figures

3, 5 and 1 minutes.

Colored Ink and Watercolor

I'll stop saying work is nuts...because it is and will be...but I did these today. The colored inks and acrylic ink are really fun to work with. With black ink I have to be careful not to bleed too much or I lose too much of the image. With these colored inks, you get all kinds of interesting colors and textures from ink mixing with watercolors.

Drawing Club: Santa Part 2

The rest of my Santa sketches. Take a look at what the other artists came up with here.

Work Much. Fun Little

Working a lot lately...very tired, but it was fun to squeeze in this life drawing session. Just playing some more with ink. The three poses in the second image and the three poses in the last image were all 1 minute poses. The rest were 3 and 5 minutes. Off to bed...

Wednesday Figure Drawing

This week I tried out some new art supplies. My friend Cholki suggested I try different line widths a while back, so I picked up some dipping pens with various nib widths. It's a little tricky changing tools when you're doing very quick sketches, but for this session I used one thick and one medium nib with red and black waterproof ink. It completely changes the way you think about adding color with red line versus black. It'll take some practice to get more out of it.

Thank You

I Have a Dream

"But there is something that I must say to my people, who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice: In the process of gaining our rightful place, we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again, we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force."

Beyond Vietnam

"This I believe to be the privilege and the burden of all of us who deem ourselves bound by allegiances and loyalties which are broader and deeper than nationalism and which go beyond our nation's self-defined goals and positions. We are called to speak for the weak, for the voiceless, for the victims of our nation and for those it calls "enemy," for no document from human hands can make these humans any less our brothers."

Thank you.

Wednesday Life Drawing

Here are this weeks life drawings. Being able to spend a couple of hours in the middle of the day doing these is great. It's just enough time to warm up and start getting somewhere. It gets tricky to find space for these to dry as I'm cranking them out during these sessions. I like laying them all out on the floor at night and choosing the best ones to post. I culled about half of what I painted today, which is pretty good and even the stuff I cull keeps getting a little better each time.

Santa Monica Tree

I spent most of the day out in Santa Monica, wandering about, enjoying the weather to try and get away from working in front of the computer. I ran into my pal D'Lo who was wandering about as I painted this tree. Later I picked up some more inspirational Ralph Steadman books and visited my pal Gary.

I could have done so much more with this one if I hadn't painted in the darker values on the second layer of branches...oh well. I tried to use some blue and red to get that sense of depth back, but it would work better if it wasn't as dark. Those trees are amazing!

Watts Towers

My friend Chris took me to check out the Watts Towers. He is a very talented photographer, so be sure to check out the photos he took that day. I did this simple watercolor sketch there. You can see some of the photos I took here.

Wednesday 3s and 5s

Today I got to try out my new sketchpad. It's a Canson Watercolor Biggie Jr. These are big 50 page watercolor sketchbooks, about double the size of the ones I was using before. Perfect for flying through in these life drawing sessions.