Following Jesus

"Following Jesus never ends with "what's in it for me?"

I heard this quote was from a sermon by Andy Stanly a couple of weeks ago. For me, coming back to faith was about "what's in it for me." I was in a rough place in life and needed help. After recommitting my life to God things began to get better. My attitude, health, relationships, etc. Life hasn't gotten easier but it has gotten much better.

I went from being a consumer to being an advocate.

Paint Your Little Village

"Paint your little village and you paint the world."

I love this quote because it feels so empowering to know that we don't have to buy a plane ticket and travel to another country to do a mission trip to help change the world. We can do it right here! At home, work, the grocery store, etc. A smile to a stranger, a kind word to the cashier, a phone call to an old friend.

We are all connected.

Sometimes I forget...

...how small we really are.

Thank you for stopping by and checking out my art! I really do appreciate it. :)

Summers at the Lake

Penny: "Hey, wait up!"

Parker: "Cannonball!"

Let's go for a walk!

Inspired by Pascal Campion's daily sketches, I decided to do a (future family) quick sketch of Heidi and I. Pascal's work inspires me to tell stories with art and I love how he focuses a lot of his work around his family. What a great way to also show love and pursue your spouse in the process. Heidi loves it when I make these kind of pictures and I can't wait to do more! :) 

Green Goblin Sketch

Heidi and I just saw the new Amazing Spider-Man movie and loved it! I was inspired to do some drawing after the movie, so here's my take on the Green Goblin.

A couple weeks ago at our wedding, my cousin showed me his sketchbook and asked for a critique. He's about ten years old and really getting good! For advice, I thought about it last week and this came to mind.

1. Have fun with it (drawing)!

• This sounds simple, but it's easy to forget.

2. Seek wisdom.

• Read scripture/books, hang out with good people, serve others, follow God.

Any advice you would give to an aspiring artist or to yourself when you where ten years old? 

Thank you for stopping by. :) 

Honeymoon Cafe' Sketching

Happy to announce, Heidi and I were married last Saturday (4/26/14) in Plymouth, Minnesota. It was a beautiful day and we were fortunate to miss the rain that lasted several days after the wedding. This was a sketch of her from one the cafe's we ate at on our honeymoon.

To the love of my life; thank you for being on this amazing journey with me. :)

Mariachi Robot

Just having some fun in the old sketchbook.

New Beginnings

Really happy to share the good news. Last month I proposed to my girlfriend (now fiance) Heidi and we plan to marry next year in the Spring. This is a sketch I did of us and my cat Stimpy. Our first family portrait. :)

I am blessed.

She's my best friend and I am grateful God has brought us together.

Superheros and Villains!

The first image are some character designs of superheros for kids. This was sort of like a dream to get this assignment for work. Definitely would like to do more cartooning and character design art in the future. 

The bottom image is a drawing of my favorite Marvel villain/vigilante, Venom. It was drawn today over my lunch break. The goal was to do a 15 minute sketch but it turned into 30 minutes. It was exciting; giving myself a time limit really made me think about how I was going to make what was all ready created in my head, and then actually do it on paper. The drawing was made with an ink brush and white out on blue construction paper glued to the back of computer paper.

Lonely Island Caricatures

The other night I bought the newest Lonely Island album (Turtlenecks and Chains) and can't stop laughing. The group is made of three guys including Andy Sandberg, Jorma Taccone and Akiva Schaffer and they are best known for their comedic music. If you've been watching SNL the last five years, you've probably seen some of their music videos as digital shorts. This drawing was done about a year ago and I was inspired to share it after the last couple days of ROFLing. So good... :)



Blog Update: 11/24/11


Couldn't help myself; I've been listening to the new album so much I had to caricature the whole crew. I think it'd be cool to do this drawing again and trace it in Illustrator to really get that clean, symmetrical look. I'd also play with their silhouettes and likeness more.

Thanks for stopping by and Happy Thanksgiving.

Season Panels

This was a fun little project I did at work (Embroidery Library) with the theme of nature and the change of seasons. The top image is how they turned out before handing off the project to the digitzers and the bottom image is the thumbnail sketches. In these four panels, I tried to create them to stand alone individually but look good if they were used together. I like doing drawings that go together for a series. Maybe it's something about designing them so that they all look unified. I also enjoy doing thumbnails and environment sketches now and then. Just another way to play with shapes, which is something I love to do.

Halloween Cat

Happy (early) Halloween! Black cats and and jack o' lants are the theme :)
This was a design I did for Urban Threads recently. Inspired yet again by the art of Skottie Young, the drawing above was a quick sketch to bring to a design planning meeting. A lot of my "rough" drawings are actually pretty tight, but this one wasn't as much the case. I think that's what I liked about it... not so much the art but the mentality of being open minded and just letting what ever comes through me (while drawing) to do so. I'm learning to silence my "inner critic" more and it feels really good and hopefully reflects in the art.

Hope you're enjoying the season and thanks for stopping by!

High in the Sky

This drawing makes me happy :)

Sketch Book Caricatures

Here's a couple caricatures pulled from the sketchbook. The first one is of the rapper, Emenem. I think it's funny how he looks so serious or doesn't smile in his pictures so I decide to "lighten the mood." As my project manager would say, "somebody needs a hug..." The second caricature is of the auther, Franz Kafka done for the Caricaturama Showdown 3000 over at Facebook. I haven't drawn a lot of caricatures in the last year and these were some challenges from my friend, Ricardo, so thanks for pushing me, buddy. It was a lot fun!

Nosferatu Drawing

My friend Ricardo and I live in different states (California and Minnesota) but thanks to the interwebs, we've been doing this thing were we sketch together using Skype. If you haven't used it before, it's a program that lets you call, instant message or video chat with other people. We both have web cameras so we can show each other what we've been doing in our sketchbook or just make weird faces at each other. It's a great way to catch up, do some drawing and share any thing new we've learned about art, life, etc.

This drawing is from the other day with Ricardo. I'm not familiar with Nosferatu, but I know of him from the early horror movies.

Sketchbook Caricatures

This first drawing makes me happy. :)
It's a caricature of my friends Dan, Natalie and Marko. I had a really good time seeing them and my friends in San Diego last month. I draw my friends sometimes for the sake of a memory exercise and it also puts me in a good mood. I liked how the stylization turned out so I decided to put it to the test on some celebrities. The next drawing is a caricature of the band Green Day. If I would do this again, I'd work on the likeness and expression a bit more. Otherwise I had fun playing with the shapes and simplifying.

thanks for stopping by :)

Food For Thought

Here's some kind of new art from the last couple months. The top image is another from my sketchbook inspired by Joshua Middleton. I remember seeing his work on X-Men covers when I was younger and recently fell in love with his work all over again. The second image is a caricature of Will Ferrell from the movie Anchorman. Couple of my friends from California are drawing celebrities for fun so that's our new thing. Finally, the last image is of an adult actor Jessie Jane done for a friend. I like how the ink in the background turned out, and as always, drawing sexy woman is a plus.

There's something that's been on my mind and apart of my focus the last couple months that is worth mentioning. If anything, I just want to talk about it more because I've kept most of it to my self and it's worth sharing . What I'm talking about is the laws of attraction and positive thinking.

About two years ago my mom gave me this book called "the Secret." It's a group of professional teachers, philosophers and speakers that share how they have come to understand the laws of the universe. It has a lot to do with gaining control of your thoughts and getting what you want in life. The ideas shared in this book are closely related to the New Testament from the Bible. What's really interesting to me is the more I research, the more it seems all other ideas, practices and religions that are out there all have many similarities.

I could talk about this till the cows come home, but for what it's worth, I'm really grateful to learn and practice from these teachings. I owe a lot of my good fortunes, relationships, health and wealth to this way of living. Each day is a blessing and there's a lot to be said about gratitude. Each day I look forward to learning more about these teachings.

Ooofda! That was a lengthy one. Thanks for stopping by! :)