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...