I’ve been working on some faces on ustream. Check them out

One
of the things I really like to do is get the maximum use out of all my
art materials. This means that I like to hack them for a secondary use.
AC Moore recently had a 55% off coupon. SCORE! I headed in and bought
yet another brush pen. At 50% off I spent $4.30 for a Niji brush pen.
Sweet price.

When
I get one of these the first thing I do is take an exacto to the body
and separate the restrictor that forces you to fill the pen via
squeezing it. I stuff that into the brush part. (Video on this later.)
This lets me fill the reservoir with water in my prefered method- small
squishy bottle. Or in the case of this particular pen, a bottle of ink
and a blunt syringe.

I placed 4ml of ink into the body of the pen, greased the threads with silicone grease and screwed the whole thing up.

I now have a brush pen full of ink.

I
can fill this brush pen with any ink. Pigmented ink, acrylic ink,
fountain pen ink. Obviously it works best with ink that is watery in
thickness than super thick ink, but even super thick ink will flow, just
not as well. If using permanent ink you’ll need to make sure you clean
the pens out well and not let them dry out with ink in them.

Why would you want ink in a waterbrush? Uh, awesomeness.

Personally,
I really like how the colors flow together and I get a really nice
amount of blending and feathering when 2 colors hit the page. I love the
loose brushiness that the brush pens force me into. I can’t spend time
worrying about anything, overthinking kills the look of the brush pen.
Worry is it’s enemy. It forces me to be free and to not overthink.

(I'm currently testing my yellow inks for lightfastness, or lack thereof. I don't expect much from these. I'm probably going to pick up a bottle of Liquitex or other brand of pigmented ink.)

I attend a once a month artist meeting where a group of local artists get together and chat. Basically we shoot the breeze for a few hours in a low key setting. The gathering could take place in a bar but we get the use of a room at a local college. It's a very interesting gathering and I've met a lot of really neat local artists.

During one of the last meetings some of us talked about drawing and sketching together. I had been wanting to expand upon the bi-weekly get togethers that Jane and I were doing and get more artists involved. I hastily threw together the first (of hopefully many) Beverly Sketch Up.

Yesterday some people had to cancel so it ended up being myself and Scott of ArtfulChairs.com we spent a good piece of time shooting the breeze, as I think happens anytime you get 2 artists together. We finally got the the business of making art.

We parked infront of Maria's Pizza- there were chairs and a nice clear spot for us to view the street.

I set up my tripod drawing board, which worked totally sweet, and set to work drawing one of my favorite buildings in Beverly, the Brown's of Beverly bike shop building. (It also happens to be my favorite bike shop.) This location afforded us a view of Brown's, Casa de Moda, Cityside Dinner, Atomic, and a great view down Cabot St. It was also the frist spot we stopped at AND I have to admit I scoped it out as I walked to the meeting spot.

Scott took the tact of doing a lot of smaller drawings where I decided to work larger than usual. (I didn't get pics of Scott's work, he's shy.) I worked in pencil and then did a layer of fine ink pen. After that I layered in a lot of juicy water onto the paper. I was trying out the Fluid watercolor block with cold press paper. I'll write more about that later.

The final step after the image was finished and dry was to add some thicker line work and the brigh pops of clean color- the parking sign and the Irish flag hanging in the window.

It was a real challenge for me to draw with an offical set up in public. Normally I work small and pretty secretive. I try hard to not be noticed. This time I was totally exposed. We had a few people stop to look at what we were doing and kids looked at the art. Being so close to an art school I expected to be pretty much ignored, and for the most part, we were. People who did stop and look were very pleasant and very positive.

I enjoyed the company and the experience and I can't wait until next month! Anyone is welcome to join in on the fun, all experience levels, and any media. Stay for 1 hour stay for 4, it's all good.

I'm organizing a "Sketch Up" in my city. It's like a SketchCrawl but without the trademark and rigmarole of getting permission to use the name. Anyway, I created one poster already with a hawker type dude announcing the Sketch UP via speech bubble. I wanted to make these a really graphic type image, eye catching in their simplicity. Also made old school, these were sketched onto paper and then inked with a sharpie, it doesn't get more old school poster design (crappy) than sharpie and paper. 

The ketchup bottle idea came to me when I was just thinking over the idea at the cafe after hanging the hawker dude poster. Ketchup Sketch Up. Heh. It's funny in my head. I started out by sketching a quick old school round glass bottle of ketchup. I realized that maybe the kids in the area might not associate the round glass bottle with ketchup. Since the only ketchup in our house is heinz I went with a knock-off of their label and the shape of their plastic bottle.I sketched it onto a piece of cardstock with pencil. Erasing the extra lines.
Inked up those lines and added the text. My writing stinks but who cares, I didn't want anything computer generated on this bad boy. (Until I add the QR code, which I will later.)
I filled in the ketchup with black ink. Though you can see some overlap the scanner will read this as all black and it will print as such. I've still not added in the QR code but it will go right below the phrase "Beverly Common."

This brings me back to my days of wheat pasting posters around my University. i've written about my single handed causing damage to my former Uni after I was graduated, but let's not bring that up again.

I
started my picture a day project to find one beautiful thing a day as I
walked into my DayJob. One thing that would brighten my day, see it and
snap it. After many months, nearly a year of this project, I realize,
I’ve seen all the beauty in that short walk. Maybe I’m tired of the
scenery? Maybe I need a new photo a day project… Maybe I’ll look for
one thing in the afternoon that is beautiful.

One
thing I’ve learned with this little project is that no matter what if
you look for beauty in the world you’ll find it. Even if it’s as simple
as an accidental picture of your shoe.

Jetpens selected me as one of their August Favorites! Go check out my work and the work of other artists. I'm pretty excited to be on their blog. I buy my ultra fine line Uni-ball Signo DX and Bit pens from them, since I can't get them anywhere around here.

I’ve been thinking a little more on the whole haters gonna hate concept. I think it is borne of fear and a been there done that attitude. After all we’ve spent much of our lives being told that if it has been done before there is no reason to revisit it.

What if we all took that attitude?

Nothing would be tried again and we’d stagnate.

Just because something didn’t work for one artist doesn’t mean it won’t work for another. Time and place can make all the difference in success.

My chipin was 106% funded in 48 hours. That’s some wild support. Would that have happened for everyone? I don’t know. I’m sure that my results can be replicated by anyone with drive and ambition.

You must be willing to succeed.

You must also be willing to fail.

The difference in the two poles is what you do to make them happen.