Limited Edition Print Available 5/2/09

I created an artwork titled City of Angels above. It will be available as an archival, limited edition print priced at $75 to benefit Stoked Mentoring, to be unveiled on May 2, 2009 at charity event. Stop by if you can and say hello! The details are below:


Update: here's a photo of me in front of my piece:

22nd World Wide SketchCrawl: Los Angeles

For Los Angeles version of 22nd World Wide SketchCrawl, a group of us artists went exploring downtown L.A. It was originally going to be a Metro crawl, where we ride the train from place to place, though in reality we covered a lot of ground by foot, encountering different people and landscape along the way.

First off, we met at Union Station and headed across Alameda Ave. to Olvera Street. Coincidentally, Blessing of the Animals ceremony was taking place, so I've captured the various animals and their owners waiting in line to get a blessing of holy water from Cardinal Mahony:



Here's a fun one below - do you think the dog owners (and a rabbit owner) resemble their pets?



Next up is Los Angeles Mall. It has a beautiful plaza, but the place was very desolate. I hope it's filled with office workers enjoying the space on weekdays. It had a clock and lampposts that were like artifacts from a bygone era, like something out of Tomorrowland in Disneyland - they looked "futuristic" as imagined in the early 20th century. The object in the middle is an empty glass case - I remember it used to hold advertisements in the window during 1980s, but now I think it looks like a time machine - very steampunk.



We ambled down to Little Tokyo, where we stopped at Kinokuniya bookstore. I got my favorite sketching pens (Uni-ball Signo) since all the ones I had finally ran out of ink and this is one of the only two stores in Los Angeles that carries these Japanese imports as far as I know. The one with squared-off cap is non-waterproof, and the one with angled cap is extra fine point (0.38mm) and is waterproof - they both have brown-black ink, which is basically a sepia tone:



Here's a sketch of Little Tokyo Village Plaza with the new 0.38mm pen. Most of the time we kept eating various snacks among us - imagawayaki (Japanese pastry with red beans), dango (essentially a mochi on a stick covered with syrup made of soy sauce and sugar), mochi ice cream, chocolate-covered chocolate cream puff...



We ended the day at an old-fashioned Chinatown eatery, Won Kok. The ornate columns caught my eye, so here's a sketch of a diner at another table near one of the columns.



I had a great time exploring the city with team of artists and a fresh set of pens! For more art from fellow Los Angeles SketchCrawlers, you can visit the forum here.

Illustration Friday: Fleeting

Here's a sketch I happened to do, which fits this week's IF topic of "fleeting" - the sky becomes gorgeous pastel shades of oranges, pinks, and blues when the sun is setting in southern California, and it lasts only for about 10-15 minutes. I like the challenge of doing a quick watercolor study of sunsets - it helps me remember the beauty of the moment, which is fleeting indeed.

Spring Sketches

Here are two sketches from one sunny spring day in San Fernando Valley. The leaves of the trees lining suburban streets were bright green and the cherry blossoms were blooming in Balboa Lake. It's all beautiful, yet springtime is very short-lived in Southern California - summer is right around the corner. Unlike cherry blossom seasons I remember from my childhood in Japan, the weather in the Valley was already hot and dry.

(...and it rained today. Maybe summer is not around the corner after all.)

Illustration Friday: Poise

I'm trying something different today - a political editorial art. For this week's IF topic, "Poise", I thought about whether or not President Obama can keep his poise while facing other world leaders on pressing issues during G-20 Summit. So far so good - hope his attitude can promote a dialog on how to best solve problems our world is facing.