It's up the Stairway to Heaven on the Highway to Hell, but just past the Escalator to Nunavut

I tried to do more with life drawing these weeks than just pastel and conte, and explore more color combinations and visual styles. Sparing use of pastel and lighter colors gets you this really spiffy sfumato effect, while using warm colors to make up a base tone means that cool colors can be used to make really psychedelic, popping highlights. Using markers forces shorter drawings to be more precise with form and line economy, but for longer drawings, a decent range of markers can basically be used in same way as water color.

The most taxing thing I have to face in my day to day is balancing that work load with my new found dream of being a mangaka. Yes, I've just finished reading and rereading Bakuman, and I too have become enamored with the idea of creating action adventure battle manga targeting the 10 to 14 demographic.

So like... :

"It'll be about a kid who escapes from the pressures of his life by spending his dreams inside a meticulously crafted personal fantasy. Think of it as his own personal Land of Ooo, or Narnia, or Gondor, but with giant robots and samurai and shit. One day he discovers that everything he does in the dream world has somehow become a metaphor for his troubles in real life, and by overcoming obstacles in his fantasy world, reality itself would change to reflect the results of his fantastical adventures. In this way, he attempts to deal with his real life issues by escaping through dreams, since he can now face them in a more comfortable context. However, he finds the difficulties of interpersonal relationships do not get easier through the looking glass, and there's no way of pussyfooting around love, lies and people. Ultimately, it'll be a coming of age story about owning up to life, peppered with elements of giant robot battles, knights vs. samurai, sci-fi dog fights, and lighthearted awkward teen romance."

Seriously, reading Bakuman makes me want to be a mangaka like Freddie Mercury wants to ride a bike. It was electrifying.

I got a chance to go cafe sketch at The Rex Jazz Club this week. It was oozing atmosphere out of its pores, and the best part about drawing there is that everyone's focused on the music, so no one's looking at the shadowy, escaped convict looking guy with the sketchbook. I took some of the sketches and tried things with them. Painted one, did some sort of sketchy Art Deco thing with another, and compiled the rest (poorly). That last full bar room scene I would like to polish up, with its multiple cool light sources flooding into a predominantly warm room and all. 

That bassist was really projecting the groove. The entire bar funked as hard as a collection of senior citizens could funk. Good times.