March 23, 2011.
San Francisco, Friday, August 21, 1998. Age 30. Until my brother and I set foot on the grand and gorgeous city of San Francisco, the very City By the Bay that spawned the living legends of Alcatraz, Fisherman's Wharf, City Lights Books in the bohemian North Beach neighborhood, and TV's McMillan and Wife and The Streets of San Francisco, my well of ideas was dry. Bone dry! Wanting to feed my wanderlust...and write again, I set out with my brother to go west, to spend a weekend in San Francisco, only for me to eventually and accidentally come in contact with the avant-garde art, live jazz, Art Deco and/or classical architecture, the quirky and laid-back locals, and Northern California fusion cuisine that would provide poignant physical/mental imagery and forever alter the look and purpose of my work, namely my Travels.
February 5, 2011.
Tokyo, Wednesday, June 28, 1989. Age 20. Taken from my Tokyo notebook (which is considered "lost" because it actually doesn't physically exist, but was retold purely from memory), this sketch story surrounds the colorful, playful images of Walt Disney's vision of childhood and the relentless power and speed on the slik, streamlined Shinkansen ("bullet train" whose look suggests innovation and progress) with my impressions of my quality time with my family on a cold, rainy, and seemingly dreary Wednesday afternoon in the city, the beautiful and bustling capital of Japan. At the time, I did a dry run with my mom and brother on a Shinkansen underground and above the city center to help us become better acquainted with the rapid transit system and gain a much deeper understanding of life from the locals' point of view.
Dedicated to the memory of my dad.
October 31, 2011.
This afternoon, I walked to the Merchandise Mart with my new co-worker Zak, only to learn along the way that he has learned to draw during his brief sojourn in Holland. What prompted Zak to start up a conversation in our mutual interest in drawing was my habit of drawing or producing sketches five times a day. That's right. Five. I draw before I report to work, on both of my fifteen-minute breaks, on my lunch break, and on the train home from work. And I really don't mind investing that much time into my work because I love it and it's worth every single minute of it.
And this latest sketch, my friend, is proof positive. Here, the student, a tall, beautiful, and plus-sized young woman (and a woman of color), poses proudly with her new black belt around her waist....
October 29, 2011.
Blessed with beauty, brains, and athletic prowess, Robin Scorpion, our heroine, returns to the ring, ready to put the bad guys in their place...at the hospital, that is!
This afternoon, I arrived at Mr. Holmes' barber shop and took a seat, ready to finish this drawing in my sketch pad until it was time for me to come up and get my cut. Honestly, I was glad the older man came before I did. Otherwise, I would not have taken the time with this drawing. And the soulful, socially conscious music of the late Julius "Cannonball" Adderley on the CD player/radio made my work much easier to do...and a lot more rewarding!
In the course of my spirited conversation with Mr. Holmes, my every-other-Saturday afternoon barber, he informed me of a new neighborhood art studio that was going to open in a month because he saw me drawing and coloring away with wild abandon. Gorgeous Galleries Art, Inc., I do believe, is its name. And I thanked Mr. Holmes with a tip for the tip! I'm definitely going to check it out as soon as it opens. Incidentally, it's right next door!
October 28, 2011.
Having enjoyed another rejuvenating, uninterrupted nap on my Futon, I got up around 12:30 in the AM, ready to complete this latest drawing while I'm still fresh and alert. So I got my sketchpad, turned on YouTube for a round of soothing, feel-good Seventies and early Eighties hits (Poco's "Heart of the Night", Chuck Mangione's "Give It All You Got", Herb Alpert's "Route 101", and England Dan and John Ford Coley's cover of Todd Rundgren's "Love is the Answer"), and began applying more lines, not story lines, on an attractive young woman (don't let her looks and the title fool you) who seems willing and Abel to do away her opponents in the ring!
January 23, 2011.
"Yes, the good life, full of fun seems to be the ideal..."
Whether I was taking an audio tour on a hop-on, hop-off Gray Line Paris bus around the city, walking down the crowded, but bustling Latin Quarter on a sunny Saturday morning, or simply enjoying my second petit dejeuner next to Claude Monet down in the basement at my hotel, those very lyrics lingered on in my head like the sweet and tangy taste of red wine rolled and swished around in my mouth. Yes, that classic song took on a much deeper meaning for me when I spent my first weekend in Europe. In France. In Paris. In the dead of winter. Solo. Ever!
On the afternoon of February 27th, a Saturday, I met a couple of guys (a Black man from St. Louis and his friend from Berlin, Germany, respectively) on the Gray Line Paris Blue bus, asked the bus driver with my limited command of French for directions, sent him a Merci beaucoup, monsieur his way before he got back on his bus, and started walking around Les Invalides, hopeful that I would find my muse, a Thinker named Auguste Rodin, before I returned to the States.
Or was I really searching for myself?
October 26, 2011.
As the title of this latest sketch suggests, especially to a die-hard fan of television soaps, this girl's got the looks, the smarts...and the moves to land the bad guys at the general hospital!
September 3, 2011.
"Saturday in the park, I think it was the Fourth of July..."
Robert Lamm and Chicago (1972)
I thought it was, too!
October 25, 2011.
Normally, I apply the colors on my subjects, finishing my sketches and call it a day. However, I never bother to ask myself, "Why do that?" Why cover...why hide...why mask the undulation of the lines swimming, swishing, clashing, and rippling against one another as to make and confirm something beautiful, something rare, something...raw? So this time, I put my coloring pencils aside, took Vincent van Gogh's cue (I visited a retrospective exhibit about his life and work at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York in '05), and let the lines tell the story.
Undated.
Set at the annual Chicago Jazz Festival on a beautiful, warm Saturday afternoon, the afternoon of September 4th, on Chicago's Grant Park and Millennium Park, respectively, this sketch letter, prefaced with the feel-good Seals and Crofts classic "Summer Breeze" (1972), is an ode to both old school jazz and summer as it shows the writer/artist keeping busy with his sketches, staying under the influence of the cool, red wine and the hot, classic sounds of Ella Fitzgerald, Maynard Ferguson, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, and the recently departed Abbey Lincoln (an amazing storyteller in her songs), to name a few, among the legends of jazz.
September 17, 2011.
Enriched with a tempering of the rich and dramatic reds, browns, and blacks with the bright and airy blues and yellows, a pinch of unbridled passion, a dollop of depth, and equal splashes of inspiration and an appreciation for realism, this latest sketch aggrandizes the subject, a beautiful young African-American woman, as she stretches her muscles and clears her mind, ready to commence training in her dojo. To me, this drawing of this young lady filling nearly every inch of space on that single page with her pulchritude (coupled with concentration and dedication to her art) affords a deep and lasting joy, considering that it is the kind of image...a positive example of African Americans...I always longed to see, a picture of another side of Black life I never saw as a child. That changed when I met Diane, my first and last homeroom teacher of color, a twentysomething woman already with a brown belt in Shotokan karate...and someone who looked like me.
September 9, 2011.
Not a moment goes by on the streets of Chicago that you don't see either a panhandler, a StreetWise vendor, or a Greenpeace/Illinois PIRG canvasser on the corner vying for your dollar...and your bleeding heart. Then again, it's another thing altogether to watch a street musician of color try his/her hand at a Handel and/or Haydn classical trumpet solo, disproving the myth that classical music is a white person's domain. Really, you don't see that very often, which is exactly the point of this sketch letter. Being an avid fan of both the opera and old school jazz, it does my heart a world of good to see a musician of color, particulary an African-American man, play anything other than classic R&B, urban contemporary, and reggae because we as a people want to be able to assert our versatility and open-mindedness whenever such opportunities present themselves. For me, nothing's more important than that.
January 25, 2011.
When someone looks at the Eiffel Tower, whether it's in a picture or in person, many things associated with the iconic Paris landmark come to mind. Magic...glamour...mystery...intrigue...majesty. And I would be remiss if I didn't include history on the list! History? Yes, history! It just so happened that on the late afternoon of February 28th, a Sunday, just an hour or so after I completed my tour around the Chateau in Versailles and took the RER-C back down the Yellow line to the Latin Quarter, I came into direct contact with Gustave Eiffel's architectural wonder, that striking vestige of Paris' storied past, when I held onto the rails and scaled five or six flights of stairs from the Jules Verne doorway to the first floor, feeling the very strong and cold winds rush in my face. Had to hold on to my black Kangol cap for dear life! As I did, a local boy and his grandfather behind me stopped midway to catch their second wind.
My pilgrimage to the Eiffel Tower was clearly rewarding. Nothing short of inspirational. I got to catch a panoramic and breathtaking view of the beautiful city that Paris is, especially at sunset (even if it wasn't from le sommet), and shared a table with a seemingly nice local (and young) family, whose toddler son was coaxed into eating his gofres avec chocolat (waffles topped with melted semi-sweet chocolate). As he did, I kept recording my adventures in my Moleskines over a dark chocolate beignet and cafe creme. Tres bien ("Chocolate cake")!
October 10, 2011.
Intended to be a pun on Edgar Allan Poe's classic poem "The Raven" because the title is spelled backwards, this sketch letter is purely a fictional account of an actual (and awkward) encounter with an attractive and petite young woman in my Shotokan karate class at NIU so many years ago.
Named for the edge and spirit of adventure cascading down her long, wild jet-black curls rushing down her shoulders, Raven, the lovely protagonist in this drawing, is a composite of the women I knew who possessed and exhibited such qualities, inspiring me once again to put my imagination to work. So off I went to the steep, isolated steps where no one was around and used my fifteen-minute work break to draw every minute of my experience with the raven-haired beauties who impacted me, in one way or another. Would have named her Robin because of her crimson red headband, but black suits her...and me...just fine!
October 22, 2011.
Just hours before my brother and I re-joined our old high school buddies and their families for a Halloween get-together at one of their houses (and it has been twenty-five years since we last saw each other upon graduation), I finished this sketch of a tall and beautiful young woman (and a basketball player!) stretching her left leg before she resumes her training in her dojo.
November 23, 2010.
Friday, February 26. Early that Friday morning, I, a Young and Restless writer, got out of bed, feeling not the least bit tired from staying up all night and writing away in my Moleskines at the secretary. Surprisingly enough, I felt rather refreshed...and really hungry! Ravenous is more like it. Wanting to savor more of Paris, I went to the bathroom, starting to get myself ready for another day...single and solo...in the city. Getting out of my 40-hour, work-a-day, Western mindset for just that weekend, I started taking a bath...not a shower...because I was, after all, on vacation!
Once I got ready and gathered my essentials in my travel vest, I left my room and took the Red Elevator down to the basement for my first petit dejeuner, but not without bidding the front desk manager a fond Bonjour, monsieur!
For the rest of the day--under the rain and in the cold air, mind you--I met some seemingly down-to-earth people from Paris, London, and Los Angeles on a Gray Line hop-on hop-off Green bus, journaled over a Caffe Americano in a salon on the second floor at Starbucks St. Michel-Cluny (a popular hangout among college students), took a Gray Line Blue bus (accidentally) later that afternoon and discovered both the Picasso museum and Georges Pompidou Center along the way, prayed in the comforting partial darkness inside the Cathedral of Notre Dame, waited in a long line at Le Champo for a movie (but never it shortly), and enjoyed both a fetching young female server's hospitality and a light dessert (a dark chocolate torte with a cup of regular black coffee) at a small cafe across the street from my hotel.
So how was your Friday?
December 21, 2010.
Before his untimely death in 1969, Jack Kerouac, one of my favorite escapist writers, wrote several novels whose unpredicable characters and story lines are based on his real-life exploits, especially with his fellow bohemian poets, abroad and Stateside. One of those novels, a story of an uninspired, but aspiring young writer and his wayward friend traveling across the United States and to Mexico in search of adventure and a new identity apart from the repressive status quo, would eventually become not only a representation of Beat culture for a hungry new generation of thinkers, artists, and writers on the East and West Coasts in the 1950s and 1960s, but also the inspiration and paradigm for my San Francisco (1998), New Orleans (2001), and Paris (2010) notebooks. That novel, my friend, is On The Road.
Keeping Kerouac...and my dad, an adventurer at heart...in mind, I gathered my passport, boarding pass, and tools of the trade (including a digital camera and three small Moleskine notebooks), left the apartment, and walked confidently out into the brutally cold morning air under the overcast skies, excited to go to Europe. To France. To Paris. To see the world again! But this time, alone. Just as Sal Paradise and his buddy Drifter Dean Moriarty do, I had to step out on faith, learn the customs, etiquette, and language of my host country, and keep my wits about me at all times because I was going to be thousands of miles away from everything I've ever known and grown comfortable with. Alone. Equipped with a command of French words and phrases to help me get by and a little more than a hundred euros for the adventure of a lifetime. Didn't know a single soul in the city, friend.
The reservations have already been made and confirmed and you've got your passport on you. Paris awaits! Once you reach O'Hare and take the evening flight to the city, there's no turning back. And once you take off and vanish into the dark blue night sky, you're free, I thought, brimming with the vision of an inspired and grand getaway!
And once you take off and vanish into the dark blue night sky, you're free. Free. Free to explore and enjoy Paris at any pace and in any fashion I want. Free to be myself, especially with other people. Free to meet other people. Free to indulge in new experiences. Free to take chances. Free to stay up as long as I like. Free to do my own thing. Free not to answer to anyone else, to be encumbered with someone else's demands and concerns. For those reasons, friend, free...is a good four-letter word!
Boarding the next morning Metra to the La Salle Street Station, I lugged my American Tourister to my seat,
shivering with excitement...and it wasn't just from the cold and the hardening, powdery snow. Edward, let's Paris, I told myself.
Silently.
October 14, 2010.
On my first day solo...ever...in Paris, on the forty-third anniversary of my parents' wedding, I helped myself to a huge slice of the City of Light, admitting that it was more than I could chew. Much more! In the bitter cold and sparse rain under the overcast skies (and it was, after all, winter, my friend), I enjoyed my first ride on the RER-B along the Blue line to the St. Michel-Notre Dame stop in the Latin Quarter, did a little journaling and people-watching over a cup of regular black coffee (with a small, complimentary dark chocolate truffle) at a Brioche Doree on the corner of St. Germain amd St. Michel, visited and took pictures of and around the legendary Cathedral of Notre Dame before I checked in at my hotel, took a few pictures of some amazing art (including the Mona Lisa, Venus de Milo, Winged Victory of Samothrace, and a few Degas delights) at the Louvre and Orsay, journaled and watched more people passing by over dinner at Le Petite Perigourdine, a nice restaurant within a block from my hotel, and had a mocha at Starbucks St. Michel-Cluny for dessert. Under the full, golden moon! Wrote quite a bit in my room...in unsettling silence...until one in the morning!
November 12, 2010.
Thirty years earlier, the country...or rather, the world...lost a visionary in former Beatle John Lennon when he was senselessly murdered at the hands of a deranged and obsessed fan. Four years earlier, my second grade homeroom teacher Ms. "H" introduced me to that amazing singer-lyricist and the other Fab Three when she brought a 45 of the Beatles' greatest hits, a compendium of their playfully saucy and driving melodies for her students to enjoy during recess. Honestly, it wasn't until I became a teenager and adult when I realized just how strong an impact Lennon's lyrics, melodies, political philosophy, and social activism had on the world at large. Because they left such an impression on me---and because the thirtieth anniversary of Lennon's death was a month away, I felt more inspired to pick up a pen and produce this sketch letter for a man who once dared to Imagine a world void of hatred, poverty, and violence.
