Basketball Jesus a.k.a. Woodgrain Larry

i did this piece (spray paint, acrylic and gold leaf on panel) with the intent on giving it to espn's bill simmons at his book signing in philly today... but alas i teach a section of drawing at the local community college at night and could only cut the class a bit short... so i jet out, hit the rainy highway and hope for the best. make decent time and arrive at borders in center city at 10 after nine only to have the doughy f*ck at the door tell me about their strict closing policy... bite me.

i am belligerent enough to get his boss down there who gives me the same schpeil and a "bill's been signing for 3 hours." no sh*t, i know what time it started and the truth is, i don't want him to sign anything, i just wanted to give him woodgrain larry and a hearty handshake. settle up a bit for the hours of procrastinating he's provided in my cubicle. so manager guy agreed to bring it up and put it "in bill's box." HIYO!

here's hoping the dough boy made good on his word and basketball jesus finds a home at the simmons's's's and not at the bottom of the border's books dumpster....

pens & markers

testing a line of pens and brush tip markers....

dive! dive! dive!

these are a few preliminary sketches for a large wall piece at the streets 2k9 mural event in new brunswick, nj. the arctic red jellies and pacific sea dragon didn't make the final cut. the diver mask was created as 4 layer stencil, the rest of the marine life was freehand spraypaint and paint marker. you can see the finished piece here.

The Northeast Corridor Challenge

a whole month since the last post? yikes. anyway i gave myself the challenge of doing a quick drawing at each stop while taking the train from hamilton to nyc. the train only stops for 30-60 seconds and i only (ok, mostly only) drew while the train was stopped. the final drawing is from the post office steps on 8th avenue looking at penn station/the garden. it was a fun excercise for sure...

overdue dump...

busy as hell with the new house (visible in one of the sketches) but wanted to try to keep the practice of regular posts up... hopefully i will.

illustration friday: cracked

ink and fabric marker on cardboard found by the copier.... i roll with what i got handy...

cover and closing....

thank god for random notepads... we closed on our new house yesterday and the only thing to keep me sane while we waited for some documents to roll around the interwebs were these little pieces of paper... i just scanned them all at once...












also, i wrapped up another pocket sketchbook... one of the last things i do is the cover. paint marker and sharpie...

open bar.

my wife was in a wedding this past weekend. since i only really knew, my wife and the bride (and groom to a lesser extent) it left me lots of time to doodle. and what better to do while doodling then have a few beers. and what better place to have a few beers then at an event that features those two magic words.... open bar... which leads to that heineken watercolor. it looks a little drunk itself. considering it was painted at the end of the night, and many had come before it, we can let it's structural issues slide.

it's been a minute...

time to dump a few things out of the ol' pocket sketchbook... a few quick ones from the college and then what i did to pass the time waiting to find out what the damage would be for stupid (on my part) traffic fines... the little guys at the bottom are bits of watercolor paper that i keep in the back of the book to leave behind... but the way robbinsville works, i felt it better not to leave anything behind, those humps would have hit me for littering....

illustration friday: impossibility

my son's dream pet.... an impossibility.
watercolor & pen on marker paper.

Harry the K

yesterday we lost the voice of my baseball life. longtime philadelphia phillies broadcaster harry kalas passed away at the age of 73. i honestly don't have a baseball memory without a connection to hk, by the time i was born he had already been in the phillies booth for 8 seasons and by the time i was aware of baseball it'd been well over a decade. i remember hearing him over the radio while helping my dad in the back yard as a kid and the joy of catching a few minutes of harry's call while wandering the concourse of the vet or in the infamous veterans stadium bathroom. i felt completely lost when i went away to college in portland, oregon before the days of the baseball package on cable or the internet, stuck with the rare espn or fox broadcast, wishing it was harry telling me about the long drives. i remember a few years ago living just on the outskirts of the philadelphia broadcast reach when i had to move my car around our complex parking lot to catch a fuzzy fourth inning just to hear harry send along birthday wishes and hoping for a classic "outta heeeeere".

i think what i'll miss most is that win or lose, good team or bad (and there were plenty of bad) harry was behind those phillies 100% and you knew it. he loved the players, he loved the game and it sure as hell felt like he loved us. and we loved him right back.



















*prints available - email conner.jonathan@gmail.com*

random

illustration friday: talisman

far out man.
5"x6" ink & watercolor

go heels.

here's another watercolor study, chopped up and taped into the pocket sketchbook.

solving a problem...

i love my tiny pocket sketchbook and i love doing watercolor studies in said sketchbook. the problem is that images often bleed through and cut down on the number of usable pages. it also leaves empty pages for the viewer. The solution i came up with involves doing separate watercolors on 11x14 marker paper and then cutting it up and taping it in. the marker paper is thin enough to not muck up the flow of the book but sturdy enough to hold wet media (ha!) without turning to pulp.

I'm really pleased with the new compositions that are created by chopping up a larger study.... i'm sure i won't always be so lucky, but right now i'm two for two. here is the first attempt, a fun study of my cube at work... i'll post the second attempt (my beloved tarheels) later today... enjoy.

first the original watercolor and pen study... then the four pieces taped into the sketchbook...

illustration friday: poise

i'm unapologeticly posting the second north carolina drawing in three weeks, but it's march, the heels are in the sweet 16 and dean e. smith was the epitome of poise when he was roaming the sideline...

in new jersey? go see this show.

went to the opening of the III Guys show at Artworks in trenton over the weekend. great work by three very talented artists. the show was hung well (ha!) and all the pieces really play well together. there is an artist talk on the 11th of april and you if you can make it, go. you can get all the info you need from the artworks website.

here is a quick sketch i did of artist anthony fearon's pieces. got to speak with him briefly and he was a very cool guy.