He Said, She Said

I'm usually a good listener and for the most part, if you're speaking with me, you have my full attention in that moment. But once in awhile...I'll find myself distracted with the little details of everything that's around me. A lot of those times its for good reason, because I see a lot of the interesting moments in life when I pay attention to those "little details." Below are two scenes I witnessed in my daily errands. 

I saw this scene below at Pangea Bakery where I like to draw and work on art stuff...

...and I saw this scene here at the local Petco where I shop for crickets...for my frog. Sigh...boys will be boys.

                                                                                                                               -G

Its In Her Eyes

I remember reading The Great Gatsby when I was in high school and not really understanding why the characters did what they did. I guess it was just a world that was too far removed from my life as a kid. I read the novel again when I was older and the actions and thought processes of the characters made so much more sense.

I'm slowly at the point where I'm looking for artwork and photography to decorate my blank walls in my house. I wanted to start off with the wet bar area. I've always loved the original painting for The Great Gatsby cover, "Celestial Eyes" by Francis Cugat. It had a haunting quality to it, the eyes in the painting always looked so sad. I thought the original artwork would be cool to have up, but decided to recreate it with my own interpretation in order to have a more personal touch to it. I want all the art and photography in my house to have a personal touch or connection. Below is my own take of Cugat's painting.

I wanted the eyes to have a more confident look and the female figures in the pupils were updated. I added my beloved San Diego skyline at the bottom too. Save, Print, Frame.

Wet Bar Art...done.
-G

"Celestial Eyes" by Fracis Cugat

Monsters In My Room

Saw a design Maxim Cyr created for a Threadless t-shirt and decided to create my own take on it. Its amazing how easy it is to make monsters horrifying and hideous compared to making them cute. Or maybe that's just a reflection of whats wrong with my own mind...
-G

Reservoir Deer

Sometimes I'll get ideas about new projects or new aspects that I want to try out. Most of the time, these ideas sit and marinate for a long time before I take any action. But, on a rare occasion, I'll be hit with an idea that just won't leave my head, and the only thing I can do to get rid of it is to complete it. Luckily my latest "must-do" idea was fairly simple and not time consuming at all. To up the manliness of this piece, I sipped bourbon as I drew it. Random...perhaps, but manly nonetheless. 

Young Bucks, step aside...the Stags are here.

-G

Anpanman Fighter

I'm not a painter, but I've always admired that skill. Whether its watercolor, oil, or brush painting, there's a very freeing and liberating quality to painting that is a bit different from other styles of art. What really catches my eye is when that medium is applied to "non-traditional" subjects. Found this link that showcases artwork of Anpanman characters drawn to the style of art used in Street Fighter IV promotions. It might actually be graphic art made to look like brush art, but either way I think its really unique and cool looking. How the artist managed to make these goofy characters look so dark and edgy is pretty impressive. Anyway, the link is here, but I've screen captured the images below also. I have no idea who the artist is, but kudos.

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100 Years of Paramount

Paramount's 100th Anniversary Celebration Poster

Seems like this would've been an awesome project to work on.
See the it in Full Size here.

-G 

Dreamscape

With Facebook's Timeline being implemented to everyone's profiles, I wanted to do something other than just a photo for my Cover. In middle school creative writing classes, we were taught an exercise called "stream of consciousness." I remember literally just writing whatever came to thought and just not thinking too much about it. Sometimes when you apply creative exercises used for other outlets into art, it becomes pretty interesting. I started sketching through stream of consciousness for this piece. It turned out pretty fun and weird. I added a photo of my face dreaming the design and it all came together.

-G

Assemble

Looking forward to The Avengers coming very soon...

-G

The Corner

All things have their time and place.

-G

Inner Imagination

After church on Sundays, my parents would go shopping at the local Asian markets for groceries when I was a kid. I loved it when they took us to the Japanese stores because they had Japanese bookstores there that I could browse as I waited. Once when I was ten, while waiting for my mom to shop, my dad found me reading an Anpanman comic/storybook. Seeing how much I liked it, he bought it for me.

I poured over that simple children's book over and over, mostly because I think I just loved the world that Takashi Yanase created. The simple story lines and colorful drawings still pull me in today. A majority of my Orchard Heroes inspiration comes from these stories of Anpanman and his friends. This was the stuff that made me smile as a boy.

This book was volume 1 out of 3. I remember returning to the store a few weeks later and discovering that they had sold out. I've regretted not buying the other two books for years. Ever since I was old enough to realize that there were two more volumes out there, I would spend time browsing every asian bookstore that I've ever been in, looking for volumes 2 and 3 of the series. With the internet, Amazon and Ebay, you would think locating these books wouldn't be that difficult, but THEY ARE! The books went out of print back in 1990 and are extremely rare. For almost 20 years, I've searched online and browsed through bookstores from Los Angeles to Taipei looking for these books that perhaps ignited something artistically pure and innocent inside me.

I had almost given up the search in recent years, but last week out of pure random chance, I came across a website that had a description of a book that might have been what I had been searching for. A used bookstore in New York listed the book, and 19 years, 2000 miles and 10 dollars later, I was able to relive that childhood inspiration.

I had finally found Anpanman Vol. 2

I have the rest of my life to find Volume 3, and I hope I still do. Its hard to explain why a grown man would spend so much hope into finding a children's book, but there's something that is captured in the imagination of your inner child that you'll always cherish and never forget. As an adult, if I can get even a tiny glimpse of that moment again, I could spend the next 30 years in that pursuit and still feel satisfied.

Here's to making that inner child in us smile from time to time.

-G