Spirits

Finally made it out drawing. It's been a long friggin time. I even feel rusty that I haven't gone out to do it in ages. This one I drew sitting in the front seat of my car. It was a little too cold still to sit on the street. I can't wait for the warmer weather. There are tons of these big steel structures with letters on them all over my neighborhood. They are hard to miss. Actually they would probably make for better photographs than drawings. I'm just not so good around a camera though. My drawings will have to do. When I was just about finished I went to a little bar restaurant in my hood to get a beer and add the final touches to my drawing. I could feel a woman checking out my sketch over my shoulder as i sat at the bar. Her teenage daughter complained to her that she was bothering a stranger. I turned around and told the woman I didn't mind her looking at my work. She was with a few of her friends and so I handed them my book to look at. They were all excited, except for the daughter who seemed to be embarrassed by everything her mom did. When they were done I gave them some cards and stickers. As I was leaving they yelled for me to come over to their table. They wanted to invite me to join their yoga class. It was a few blocks down. They said all the neighborhood ladies went. I was very flattered. When I got home I gave Yun the info. She's more into yoga than me but it's another instance of me making friends by sitting minding my own business, drawing.

Cheatin'

Politicians cheat on their taxes. Baseball players cheat by using steroids. That leaves us artist as the only people not cheating. I take out my pen and draw. No cheating. It's quite novel these days.

Got The Blues

Today I tried to break away from the usual way I draw. People can fall into ruts. So I searched around my pockets and found some different colored pens. Then I forced my self to draw the girl blue and purple. It was kinda of freaking me out but I just kept at it. Not sure if I like it or not but at least I tried.

Joey

I recently found a lot of long lost friends from College. We found one another on Facebook. There is now a group for my college where we post old photos. One guy posted all the punk music groups from Buffalo at the time. You can see all the albums and 45's. Then you just click and play. Someone else at the time went around campus taking individual photos of students. Now years later he posted them all. We try to identify each person. We get new members each week. People are coming out of the woodwork. Buried deep in a draw I found an old 8mm film from a Halloween party at a house I lived in back then. Online I found a place that transferred it to an mpg file. I put some music and titles on it and posted it on our group. The music I chose was Sparks. They were a quirky old band from the 70's. This is sort of unrelated but once I went to see them at The Ritz in Manhattan a million years ago. My friend and I were wondering around the club after the show was over. We spotted a door at the end of a hallway in the balcony area. After opening it we realized we were standing in a room with the band, Sparks. No one said a word to us so we just sat down like we belonged there. As we looked around we noticed that the only other people in the room was The Ramones. Everyone was drinking beer. There was a big tub of ice, full of beer so we helped ourselves. We sat quietly while everyone chatted. That kind of stuff could happen in those days. Not so anymore.

Graves

My friend Ken invited me to see a New York rangers hockey game the other night. It happened to be the night they were retiring Adam Graves number. Most bloggers won't know what the hell I'm talking about. Ken's seats are right in the front row on the glass. The view in my drawing is the view we had in real life. It wasn't easy drawing with hockey pucks banging off glass five inches from my head. You do get used to it though. There was a nice ceremony before the game. Adam and the family were there along with a bunch of old Ranger greats. Turns out Adam was a big Sopranos fan. As a surprise, the entire cast of the show came out to be a part of it. James Gandolfini,
Lorraine Bracco, Little Stevie and a bunch of the others. It was pretty cool. The Rangers were losing with two minutes to go. Ken turned to me and said, you wanna leave?" I said, "no let's stay." I was really enjoying the view. How often do you sit right behind the glass. All of a sudden, boom. The Rangers scored to tie it with ten seconds to go. We were stunned. Unfortunately they lost in OT but it was a great night and I got a little drawing done.

Sighting

Something very interesting happened to me the other day. I went over to my friend Drew's apartment in Brooklyn. While I was crossing the street, someone called out my name. Turning, I saw a guy in a car. He seemed to know me but I couldn't place his face. I went over to the car. He had a beautiful little daughter sitting in the back seat. She was so friendly and chatty. Did I know these people? Suddenly he said, I know you from your blog. I have been following your work for years. I was stunned. A fan had randomly found me on the street. Wow. A celebrity. My head became very swollen. He was a very nice guy. He asked if we could draw sometime. Well hell, of course. I gave him my card and I'm waiting to hear from him. I'm sure I'll do a post when we go sketching in Brooklyn.