Client Sketches and Cafe Sketches

cover for the Washington Post Sunday Outlook section about Obama, the loner president and how doesn't try to befriend people in Washington, make allies and play politics like you're supposed to to get re-elected.

spot for the Washington Post Sunday Outlook section about Obama, the loner president and how doesn't try to befriend people in Washington, make allies and play politics like you're supposed to to get re-elected.

maybe i'll start posting (some) of my sketches up. i think its interesting to see illustrator's sketches against the final. and you can see how horrible most of mine are.

spot for Golf magazine's rule's guy column. this one is about a ball that bounces out of the cup.





The first time i've pulled out my sketchbook in ages. sketching at "Look Mum No Hands" a bike-centric cafe on old street in London. I was sketching these 2 girls in front of me and thought they didn't know but they said they totally knew i was sketching them after they asked to see it when i was leaving. halfway down the block one of the girls came running and asked if they could have it. So i hung out with them a couple times so far and made new friends in London town.



another sketch from the bike cafe.



my flatmate at the Vintage Emporium cafe on Bacon street off of Brick Lane in London. A super cool place and my flatmate knows the owner and its right down the street from our flat.

first time i pulled out the watercolors and sketchbook in a long time. This was on another day at some french cafe on Broadway market in London. I've been on a decent cafe sketch run the last few weeks compared to my once a year average. It's sad, when I was a student it was every other day and now its been reduced to a few times a year :(

Its Doing My Head In

Britishism time. It's doing my head in means it's driving me crazy. Like, the occupy London protesters are doing my head in.



final drinks at the London Bicycle Tour Company before seb heads off to NY for 3 months.



I bought this Felix Fox tea towel at a store in Spitafield Market because i haven't purchased any UK stuff yet and foxes are thing that i have come to dig about the UK. the artist is Sarah Young www.sarahyoung.co.uk



occupy london in front of St. Paul's Cathedral.



I was thinking about how it would be cool to do some kind of art installation thing on top of bus stops so when you're on the top level of a double decker bus you can see it, but, did this guy that shoves q-tips into these gross balls of matter beat me to it with his schizophrenic art? i saw them on a few of the tops of bus stops along this route.



boot leg Korean bibimbap made with mince (aka ground beef in American)



AZ for Angel Zhang. this is at first thursdays, where galleries are open on the first thursday of the month in many areas in london. Basically its a lot of sh!tty art and a lot of people getting wankered and wandering around galleries. Occasionally there is good stuff. So it's more like 80% drinking and party and 20% art, which is fine sometimes.



This is the first painting I ever bought. I saw it at the brick lane market one sunday and couldn't resist because i have a tiger fetish. the artist J.M. Liberty is actually from the US and married a Brit, Barry the Barber and lives here now. I think you can find them teamed up at the brick lane market frequently on sundays in The Tea Rooms, part of the Truman Brewery on Bricklane where she exhibits her paintings and he gives old timey shaves and haircuts.

http://www.onesugarhill.blogspot.com/

http://barrythebarber.com/



I love it!

http://www.onesugarhill.blogspot.com/



you can tell these guys grew up in the early 90's because their eyes can't believe what they are seeing. Bung Hole



um wats going on here. In the US it's TJ Maxx. who came first?



I for one hate how the zombie and vampire genre has blown up. Now there are huge categories like this at book stores.



The Star of Bethnal Green, one of 6 pubs that I went to that night thanks to Steven, who always suggests another pint, and then i suggest trying a new spot, and then we always end up wankered.

A society party that was made up of a fashion show, live music performances, live painting, and a party afterwards that is put on by the Yumihu group every month in this decadent building in marble arch. what was i doing there?

artwork on the wall of one of the many rooms with 20 ft ceilings.



taken from the top of a rainy double decker. Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 (MW3) was released for sale this rainy tuesday night. there were event people dressed as soldiers with guns inside the store while a line of people that doubled around the block waiting to get their hands on this video game. excerpt from www.cartoonbrew.com "the biggest launch of any videogame in history. Within its first 24 hours of release, the game sold 6.5 million units in North America and the UK, earning $400 million dollars and well on its way to over $1 billion. “We believe the launch of ‘Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3′ is the biggest entertainment launch of all time in any medium, and we achieved this record with sales from only two territories,” claimed Bobby Kotick, CEO of Activision. By contrast, the all-time single-day movie gross record belongs to the latest installment of Harry Potter, which took in $91 million earlier this year."



crochet taxi on sclater street off of brick lane.









sign behind the bar at the old blue last which is owned by Vice magazine, which was my favorite magazine in NY and it's free. I haven't read it in a while so i can't say if it's still my fav but i read stuff online sometimes and it still seems good. they have the magazine in a ton of international cities now so the UK issue launch parties are always here.



here are a couple shoreditch "hipster" examples. Here is an explanation for my mom if she doesn't know already, which she might. basically shoreditch is the same as williamsburg in NY. If you didn't know there is a wide scorn for "hipsters" throughout the world, some of it coming from people who don't know they are hipsters themselves. The term used to be pretty specific but these days it seems like hipster style has expanded so much that much of the population of east london and brooklyn NY, and beyond falls into the hipster catergory. if you were to look at bob with his long asian jesus like hair, or me with my silverback gorilla hair you might think we were hipsters, and for all we know we could be since the term is so broad now.





here is a good example. this looks like it could be from 1980 and she would be made fun of profusely in highschool. But now in 2011 it's cool. There are a lot of sites like "hipster or homeless" or "Halloween or Williamsburg" where the show photos of either people in halloween costumes or hipsters in their hipster clothes and you have to guess what's going on. Also this is what i need to do all the time, ask people for photos or just take them, i got these because i was drunk and had the courage to ask them. I know it might be hard to believe that Jason Raish is scared to ask people for photos but its a lot harder than you think! If i want some truely captivating material i guess i'm gonna have to grow some balls.



Look Mum No Hands, a bike-centric cafe on old street. Angel and I drew those two blurry girls in the foreground.



man this camera makes everything look awesome.



my two on the left, angel's on the right.



party at Mariya of Bulgaria's attic flat. We met them randomly on the street one night.



hung over, i woke up to muddy dogs going apesh!t in my bed. they're so cute so its hard to be mad, especially when you're hung over too.



i tried to meet up with everyone for the lord mayor's fireworks show but the buses were all on diversion (diversion = detour in American) because of the parade and going weird places so i only caught a glimpse of it as i ran to the river. It only lasted 10 minutes though and everyone said its nothing compared to the fireworks you see on Guy Fauke's night.



King's Head Theatre pub. there is a door in the back for the theatre. we really like the interior of feel of this pub in Angel on upper street.

Camden market. somewhere between the street and the stables market. Camden market is huge and seems like it's for teenagers. they have stalls in old converted horse stables, but most of the stuff is for teens or hippies. I don't recommend Camden market unless you are a teenager or a hippie or a weirdo or play a dijeridoo. Also it was a transportation bermuda triangle that sunday. the trains were f'd because of Olympic refurbishing, the buses didn't stop cuz each one was full to capacity (two in a row kept driving on by). we ended up having to find the public bikes to ride home. We tried to get out of Camden for at least an hour.

Gobsmacked

Gobsmacked in American means utterly astounded, speechless. Gob means mouth, like "shut your gob!" + smacked and you have been smacked in the mouth and are therefore stupified and speechless. Some uses are, I was gobsmacked by the text message i recieved today, or I'm gobsmacked by this girl's beauty. Which I was but we'll get to that below



Fortnum and Mason is one of the high end brands if not THE high end brand. I sent this to my momma who loves english tea.



A Supermarine Spitfire MkVa WWII model plane kit flown by the brits. I sent this to my dad, a WWII enthusiast. We used to go to airshows together. He used to put these models together.



there's actually a lot of bikers in London. It's just not very safe so like half of the people wear these neon vests.



Sebastiaan is from Holland and is a tour guide at the London Bicycle tour company. He takes groups of like 20 people around London and gives tours in English or Dutch if he has to. It was cool to hang out with all the tour guides from various countries and drink with them after work here. Everyone was doggin' on each other and it was an international bros session.



chinatown in London is pretty small. only a few streets.



Rosie's friend Regina is from Taiwan and showed me Zhùyīn fúhào which is what they use to use to teach mandarin. Its like an alphabet of letters and is only 37 characters so its easier to learn and teach Mandarin Chinese. It was phased out in Mainland China in the 50's but is still used in Taiwan. Here is Zhùyīn fúhào in its own letters ㄓㄨˋ ㄧㄣ ㄈㄨˊ ㄏㄠ. So i guess this is why whenever i would type pinyin (the way of writing chinese words in english) to Ryan in Beijing he wouldn't know what i was talking about because he's taiwanese and uses this.



A 5th of November treat. Actually this was made famous in my mind by the movie V for Vendetta which is about Guy Fawkes and how he tried to blow up parliament on November 5th. Its called eggs in a basket and is butter grilled toast cooked with an egg in the middle. it's easy to make and gets you points for doing something new with a usually boring breakfast. give it a try!





Prams = baby carriages in American. All these prams are for a project Lucy is working on.



Ami's shoelaces frequently just pop undone when she's walking like she's a real life cartoon whose main problem for that episode is how her shoelaces keep coming un-done. If you can see by the left shoe you can see why, her laces are way too long. I think this is a funny thing to happen to a cute girl. If it was happening to me it would just be sad and pathetic.



recently bob finally listened to Amy Winehouse and has acknowledged her brilliance. So now he knows what a blow it was when she passed away. I thought even though she was influenced heavily by ska, and 60's girl groups, etc... that she was making the freshest, realest music out there (even though she hadn't made an album since 2008).



Pudding Lane, another example of Candy Land names in London.



raclette cheese from france is heated on one side and scraped off onto a plate or onto potatoes and stuff.



they were also making amazing looking grilled cheese sandwich things with this cheese too but i ate already so didn't try it. Looking forward to this in Paris if i don't get it here first.



at the tate modern. the artist was korean.



some pretty common beers to find here. London Pride maybe is the most common of the four. but the real star here is Doombar over on the right. I love that stuff.



what's that you say? at the old blue last



Taiwanese pork belly. delish, but not as delish as the pork belly at Ryan's friend's place in Beijing



Taiwanese toast. delish but not as delish as what i had in china. Inside is a creamy stew of sorts and its all contained in a perfectly hollowed out loaf of bread that is somehow completely fried lightly. this one is also 3 times smaller than what i got in China.



F U Chip and Pin!!!! chip and pin is the bane of American's existence in Europe. i have no chip on the top of my credit cards so i can't use them in tons of places.



I saw a lot of foxes in this week where i went to a lot of parties and was a nocturnal animal myself. this is on my street.



this is at Howl at the Moon on hoxton street. My friend on the right is from South African, the barmaid is from Swaziland and she was gobsmackingly beautiful. oh my god. this is not a good photo of her but she was a sight to behold.



so if you saw above the guy from south africa basically looks like jesus with that hair.



a scratch off map to show where you've been in this cool store in spitafields market. all of india is scratched off but only a few finger nails worth of Siberia is gone. and it looks like some exuberant Kazakhstanis and Mongolians had at this map.



closing time at Pimps and Pinups hair salon on the side of spitafields market.

on this hungover sunday i came to meet my friends at the antique emporium to find the place packed and the only available seat was occupied by the owner's other dog (the huge wolf hound was nowhere to be found). I came over and looked at him and he just looked at me and slowly opened up his legs as if saying "what up sh!thead, scratch my mother lovin' belly b!tch, i'm the king here". and so i squeezed in and did.