Images Within

For the last couple of years I have been wanting to attend the Wings Over Wine Country air show, and I must report that I missed it once again. The only reminder I had this year was a very very loud airplane noise a couple of days ago, so I went outside the house and wow a very large plane flying over our city, the same large plane that reminded me about the airshow last year — a C17 Airlifter.

When I was a kid I wanted to be a pilot but I was told that since I wore glasses I couldn’t be a pilot and that was the end of that dream. Back in those days a friend and I would spend hours at the airport (whenever we could) looking at the planes land and take off, and bugged my Dad one too many times to take me to the airport to see the Air France Concorde take off.

Air France Concorde taking off

The arrival of the Concorde was also noisy and it would rattle the glass window of my room, I still remember seeing the Concorde fly over the horizon.  I also still have two photos somewhere (found them) of the Concorde  taken with a 110 Camera and a set of binoculars… that was a feat in itself (used the binoculars as a telefoto lol), amazing that I still have them after so many years. I will scan them later and post them here.

One of these days I may just go to the Pacific Coast Air Museum and perhaps sketch / take photos of some of the planes so I can bring back with me some of those youthful memories. If you live locally and would like to visit the museum one of these weekends for a mini-SketchCrawl let me know.

Video of Pacific Coast Air Museum

The Totoro Forest Project Benefit auction day is approaching, and everybody involved has been working hard to get everything ready.

I was recently asked to assist and for the past couple of weeks I have been helping Dice Tsutsumi, Enrico Casarosa and Andy Wang with some web maintenance duties, analytics / SEO. I also help them set up the new Totoro Forest Project blog, so I have been busy some of the evenings/weekends as well.

If you have not had a chance to visit the new Totoro Forest Project blog, you are missing quite a lot of cool information, they said they will be posting all kinds of interesting information as the date for benefit auction approaches.

Needless to say the techie side has taken over the artistic side (I have not sketched anything lately) and with Sketchcrawl 20th approaching (date to be determined), I know I need to get into shape. I have however been reading that book I mentioned a couple of posts ago and I can say it looks very good, now I just need to try the exercises.

I also took a few pictures I wanted to share with you, unfortunately my wife’s computer experienced a glitch and I had to deal with that (her computer is hooked up to the scanner, the printer and the digital camera), lucky person uh? :)  By the way if you have not had a chance please visit her blog, she is constantly posting all kinds of goodies as well that I am sure you would appreciate and she would also love to hear from you.

On my wall i have a note that reads “I lived as I dreamed.”

That little saying/message originated from the movie Neverwas, and every time I look at that note, It reminds me that some things we worry about are just not that important (some certainly are but not all), it also reminds me to keep my childhood dreams alive.

Related to the above I recently came across a talk from Carnegie Mellon professor and alumnus Randy Pausch (RIP), which once again puts things into perspective. I hope you enjoy his talk.

In addition to sketching and learning techniques to improve what I do, I have also started to follow a tutorial to create a 3D model of one of my favorite spaceships, a Battlestar Galactica Viper.

Below is my work in progress.

There is still a bit more to do, but at least it is starting to take shape.

If you have not had a chance to watch this show I recommend it. We started by renting the series via Netflix and eventually moved to watch it online, we also purchased a couple episodes via amazon.com Unbox service.

One of these days we will add the DVD sets to our collection.

Yesterday I was at the store shopping for a chocolate bar (the local market must have about 40 different choices, seriously lol), and overheard a conversation between two employees. They were talking about art appreciation, and the initiation of an artist.

One of the individuals said that people can be attracted to a piece of art, have great taste for art but when they start to produce art, what they produce and what they like and appreciate is so different, and that sometimes it takes years to achieve the level where what the person appreciates and draws and/or produces is at the same level, he also said that people at some point give up the process and quit due to frustration, instead of continuing to try.

I thought I would post this here just in case you the reader happen to be in this situation, which I am guessing happens to all of us at various different times.

On a related note, I found a copy of this book at a local used book store “The New Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain” book by Betty Edwards, along with her workbook. Hmm, it turns out you can get a new book at Amazon.com for about the same price as what I paid for the used book (in the United States).

We already had an older release of the book (not the workbook) so my wife and I are both eager to see what else we can learn from the newer revisions. I can tell you this however, I did an exercise a couple of years ago from this book, in my case I had the opportunity to draw Woody from Toy Story by looking at a drawing that was upside down, I did pretty good actually… pretty close to the original.

If you get a chance check them out, either at your local store or by clicking on the images above.