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::8.15.2004

The SKETCHCRAWL®©&™ was quite amazing. ;)
I had a great time through out San Francisco and it actually felt like a small adventure. It’s amazing how something like drawing makes you see things differently, in different degree of depth. It really makes you stop and smell the flowers. Well, draw the flower, but you know what I mean.
I filled 19 pages of my sketchbook with drawings and watercolor. I roughly walked around and drew from 10:30am (bit of a late start) till 10:30pm. I covered a relatively small amount of neighborhoods: Castro, Embarcadero (farmers market), Coit Hill, North Beach and Chinatown. I guess I might have to do a weekend SketchCrawl if I want to cover more of the city. Now that I’ve done this I am kicking myself in the head for not being more motivated in my other trips. Taking one full day for sketching in Paris or Tokyo would’ve been amazing … ah next time ! Anyway, I don't have a scanner at home, so you’ll have to wait till tomorrow to see some of the results. But here’s an interesting development: John Grillo mentioned in a comment to my earlier post that he might try and do one in Japan. Karen even imagined it to be an event for many artists to take part in, so an exciting idea is now forming: a collective SketchCrawl in Kyoto organized by John. Doesn’t that sound amazing ? I want to fly over just for that …
It’d be sooo interesting. I think a good way to do a collective crawl would be roughly like this:
You meet everyone in the morning.
You set a meeting place for the evening. (A good Izakaya would be great eh John?)
Everyone goes on their on drawing treasure hunt all day.
You meet at night for a good meal and to share all the sketchbooks, drawings and adventures … add Sake and I think you have it ! An awesome SKETCHCRAWL!
And here I can’t help but taking this further, wouldn’t it be great to put together a book of such a day’s drawings ?? If even just 10 artists participate, you’ll end up with almost 200 pages of artwork! Or maybe a booklet made of postcards … that’d be cool .
Well, ok, I am getting carried away a little … but remember me when this thing takes over the world, remember who started it all …
Eh eh X)

E

PS One of the very few photos I took.

::Filbert Steps

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I just had a invigorating swim ... a nice 30 minutes in the Pixar pool. Yes, yes Pixar has a pool ... and yes we are spoiled. BUT
the point is that I had a great swim and that when I swim I get ideas ...
So an idea I've been thinking about for a while has crystallized: THE SKETCH CRAWL.
I have been wanting for a while to take one free day and fully, irrevocably, wholly and absolutely use it to sketch from life, from dawn to dusk. A marathon of drawing ! Sketching anything ... things, people, streets.
So that is what I am going to do tomorrow saturday August 14th ! A San Francisco Sketch Crawl!
[why Crawl? you might ask, well a year or so ago we had a bachelor party for a friend here in San Francisco and the whole thing was called
a PUB CRAWL and it consisted in hopping from pub to pub using Muni ... and as you can imagine we were pretty much crawling around by the 7th bar we hit ... so I like the connotation of that and that's where the Sketch Crawl name comes from. (I might be crawling by the end of it this time too)]
Here's a few rules I am gonna set for myself ...
no car, no motorcycle, only walking and muni.
No books, no laptop nothing else to do but draw !
I will draw and document all I possibly can about the whole day using PENCIL AND WATERCOLOR.
I might sneak a photo or two in with my camera (to commemorate the experiment) but I am to keep that to a minimum.
and That's about it.
Of course I will be sure to let you know of the whole day and post some of the drawings. I am pretty excited about this, if it proves to be inspiring it'd be great to do it in different cities ...
well, ok then!
later

E

PS
some internet press
a Mia review here
and an interview here.

One photo, taken in Genova, Italy.

::Baccala

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::8.10.2004

Many thanks to Mark, Jing and everyone at Super7, the Flight signing/exhibition we had there last Saturday night was a ton of fun. Their store in japantown is really fantastic. It's filled with awesome books from all over the world, not to mention shelves of hard to find japanese toys.
The weekend was especially interesting since I got to hang out with some of the"Flight Kids", who came up for the event from LA … Kazu Kibuishi , Chris Appelhans , Erika Moen and also Derek Kirk Kim who actually lives here in San Francisco. If you’ve been under a rock and haven’t heard of Derek’s book “Same difference and other stories” run to a comicbook store and ask for it, you’re in for a treat. OR read it online here. The book only won an Eisner mind you. X)
Anyway, it was a pleasure to chat with all these cartoonists and share thoughts on publishing comics and whatnot … it’s quite a warm feeling to have a little community to belong to.
Here’s some photos from saturday night.

cheers

E

PS

The first Haiku5-7-5 review ever, at Comixpedia.

:: Super 7

:: The layout

:: Sugoi

:: Old style

:: Flight wall

:: Cat's awesome bird people

Listening to: Bookstore by Jon Brion from Eternal Sunshine of the spotless mind OST.