Pacific & Sansome

I think one of my favorite parts in the process of creating a drawing is scoping out a composition and plopping myself down where need be. I love exploring the neighborhood near my work; every time I go on one of my excursions I become intently aware of these places, I see new things sometimes places or things that I've passed a thousand times. Passing this parking lot everyday I felt that there was something there that was interesting. I love the overlapping shapes, the negative space of the sky, the depth of the buildings.

Robert Bechtle

Lately I've been looking a lot at the work of Robert Bechtle. I love the detail of his paintings but more importantly I love his subject matter. I think, in the past, I didn't believe that you could do an evocative painting of or within the suburbs, a parking lot, old suburbanite ladies looking at roses, but whenever I look at Bechtle's work I am immediately corrected. My eyes become clear and I want to wander the quite neighborhood that I live in and look past the normalness, the familiar, the mundane... It makes me realize that I have to not focus on the surface but rather the feel, the energy of it all.

Spesus Christ

I've never really done illustration work but as a favor to a friend (and maybe for my own selfish reasons) I created this drawing for a website that he will be featured on. I really like the mood of this drawing; that classic martyr pose.
He's not on the website yet but its a great site that helps musicians promote their stuff. www.muxtape.com

Under the Overpass

I just finished this drawing. I've been working with very common place materials; paper, ball point pen, chipboard (stuff that I don't have to go to the art store and shell out $50 for). I like the accessibility of it all; inexpensive, unpretentious. I remember going through my Dad's desk at work and and trying every type of pen, pencil, marker that filled the drawers. I now have a drawer like that at work. This drawing is done of a near by on ramp to I-80. I love these places, under the overpass, industrial areas on the weekends. These places are empty, void of people, quite. On occasian there's some guy pushing a cart full of empty soda cans or a cop looking for a place to piss away a couple of hours on a slow shift. I am usually met with blank confused stares, I might as well be an alien or Boba Fett. I am increasingly drawn to the serenity of these places more and more as I get older. Aside from the dull white noise of the highway these places are almost deafening in their stillness. www.jbpainting.etsy.com