New York, NY

An edge of the Manhattan skyline over an industrious Brooklyn blockade.

The last handful of years I've made sure to aim for the city every couple months to putter around and routinely overdose on art.  At the center of these trips is a community of North Carolinian skateboarders who are peppered all across Brooklyn.  From this group I usually find a couch to borrow, which is always served with grade A southern hospitality.  

The Sketch above was made during a roof party on top of Joseph's art colony, located in the outskirts of Clinton Hill.  To honor Memorial Day, there was a consistently heated dice game going on around beers and grilled goodness.  The colony takes up a entire factory building in one of the most comfortable and inspiring set-ups I've ever seen in the city.  Check out some of Joseph's paintings here, and keep an eye out for the regular BlueTan shows he is involved with, which pop up all around the country.

This was from my first solo trip to the city when I was 19, sketched from a window reflection on the train.  After being accepted to Pratt, I was going down to visit the campus and see some old friends.  Due to a series of events, I found myself locked out of a friends apartment, where all of my things had been dropped off earlier.  Without a plan B, I ended up spending the night in the subway.  I discovered that the E train didn't announce each stop (as did all the other homeless subway refugees that evening), which allowed almost an hour of sleep between each full circuit.

At 9:30 am, I made my way over to Pratt where other perspective students and their families eagerly awaited the tour.  I don't know for certain, but I expect I was the only one smelling like pickled cigarette butts and old milk.

Ive been translating tidbits of my NYC trips into CartoonBand solos
this is one of my favorites from the last trip-
the text in the first panel is from The Onion, the second is from the last yoga class I took, the third was the subway announcement, from the B train, which I took through Brooklyn with the man in the second panel.

"paint comes across directly onto the nervous system"
I was in NYC over the past weekend and squeezed into the last day of a Francis Bacon show.

I think Marshall Arisman likes this guy-
really interesting narratives...
I love his portraits

During one of the model's breaks at the Society of Illustrators, I started gabbing with an ancient-looking man in the back who was sitting next to a girl with funky hair. At the end of the night, he invited me to a tour of Chelsea if I was ever in his neighborhood.
Its not every day you get insight into 90 years of experience,
so I took him up on it.
My girlfriend and I met him at 2 the following Thursday. Below are doodles and quotes I scribbled down from the 12 hours we spent exploring the life of Chelsea: walking the pier, digesting the galleries (and some fantastic French food!), listening to lectures, roaming the bars, drinking like fish, and happily overdosing on the art of the city.


It turned out to be one of the best adventures of the trip.
Cheers to John Doyel and the vitality of art!

The Simpatico -
its not a generational thing

When I was a kid,
I was as close to the Civil War
as I am now to World War 2

Its so few years actually
Things change so much slower

I knew who was when I was 4
It was a disaster
but I knew who I was

I still dont know much,
but I can survive

The sad thing is we learn from our mistakes
The bigger the mistake the more you learn
Frozen people die
you cant do that

The whole business is
keep interested
read comic books-any goddamn thing
you cant unread a book

facebook...I fail to understand that completely

Get in touch with the involuntary actions of the human body.
Without all these bugs in yer gut you'd be dead - instantly
Our brains are a remarkable instrument -
the fact that we're here

Everything is a fluke!






You have to help luck along

Tuesday nights at the Society of Illustrators, they host a figure drawing session, backed by an open bar and live music. The night we made it down this 2 guy band killed it, covering everything from Herbie Hancock to Joe Cuba. 

Every time I'm in NYC, I end up drawing oodles of people and giving them out, like picture satellites, on napkins, paper scraps, pages from my sketchbooks. Its a great way to gablessly schmooze, but people are way less annoyed if you give them a doodle after you've been candidly grilling them for 10 minutes.

Unfortunately, It leaves me empty handed at the end of each trip...and lacking reference to some great memories. So this time around I brought carbon paper. aside from giving me a carbon copy, It recorded every mark, scratch, mistake. The loose sheet of carbon paper jerked around the page a little as a drew.
By the end, my alternative versions grew on me, slow-shutter drawings of people in motion. Draw on agitation.

RIT's Illustration program has a class where everyone goes down to NYC for a week to OD on art and get loose with your professors...not bad. These are my notes from meetings before the trip.

I love riding the subway in NYC-
people who are reading are great to draw cause they usually dont notice you staring at them. If they do, you can always draw their boots. or wait till they fall asleep.