Saturday by myself

My wife and kids went to the inlaw's house for the day. That usually means I get to clean the house. But if I do then it makes for a sad weekend. Instead there are a few things I wanted to do. I am working on a sticker design. I've been wanting to make a sticker for years but never did anything about it. I always have high goals like: I want it to be awesome and be like no one else's. So basically I never come up with nothing, but excuses. So today I got out a lot of reference books for inspiration. I got Computer Arts magazines (the U.K.'s best illustration/design mag), Draw! magazine (how-to for comics and cartoons), Relax magazine (Japanese Pop Culture mag) - this particular one has a Barry McGee Twist cover, The Jack Kirby Collector mag (I can draw nothing like him, but I like looking at it) - The "King" Kirby makes awesome splash pages, and some graffiti zines & graphic design magazines. I been flipping through the magazines and doodling whatever comes to mind. While I was in the garage getting magazines, I pulled out some of my old CDs. So right now I am listening to the best of the Fu-Schnickens. Yeah. That's what I'm talking about. Originators of the Kung-Fu Rap genre. "On the left side...on the right side" - aw yeah. Track 9, the collabo jam has Dres of Black Sheep. That takes me back.

I was at http://www.urbancowboy.net/ today. He is an illustrator / designer that I found in "Computer Arts" magazine. He does cool vector style people. His site is mostly Flash. I double checked the prices at http://www.stickerguy.com/ for my stickers. He seems to have the best price for vinyl stickers. That is probably where I will go to order stickers. I went to http://www.1001freefonts.com/ to get a unique font for my sticker. Unfortunately they are free for a reason. All fonts are pretty homemade looking, plus a lot of ads pop up. Watch out if you go there. Today I added AdSense to my blog. If you hit the sponsored links I somehow get paid. How and when - I don't know. We'll see how it goes. I didn't want to do it because I thought they would be bothersome, but I think if you surf as much as I do, you get used to them, plus the links usually relate to what you are interested in. I'll mention Viagra now. Maybe there will be a link for it.

For lunch I went to the local Vietnamese place down the street called "Pho My". I got a Tai Nam Pho bowl because I usually don't like eating the weird fatty parts. I also got the spring rolls and iced coffee. I've always felt the Pho with the hot peppers went well with the sweet, bitter coffee. The spring rolls came with leafy lettuce and basil, something I am not used to getting, but very tasty to wrap around the roll. I also got a Chicken & Tofu rice plate with extra rice to go for later. The kids love rice.The Chicken and Tofu is one of my favorites recently. Something about braised tofu. How they do it - I don't know, but Very good. At 3:30pm. I originally went to the Pearl River Chinese restaurant, but they were closed and opening for dinner at 4:00pm. Not usually a big deal, but I am driving my wife's car. It is a stick-shift that I am not very familiar with it, so any extra driving is always risky for me. But it went off without a hitch. I had the car die at one traffic light, no big deal. A guy in the van behind me gave me a puzzled look and I gave the "I'm sorry I don't know how to drive" wave. At the same strip mall as the Chinese restaurant, I got a chance to get a lotto ticket at the liquor store. The win is approx. 110 million today. Wow. I bought 5 tickets. That was all the cash I had. Wish me luck, I want an Eichler house, nah forget it - I'm paying an architect to design me a house... Yeah, a bunch of them... In Hawaii. Then I can have an assistant type my blogs. Ha.

Finally finished watching the Triplets of Belleville DVD. It is actually a great animated movie. Lot of detail. I wish there were more special features. The director guy draws a basketball player. Awesome. Makes me want to find a book on the art of the movie.

Fryday of fried prawns

Blogs. What did I do today? Nothing much. It was hot. I took the kids to the park for like 30 minutes. HP released a bunch of products today and I had my hand in participating. I drew an illustration for the employee website announcing the news this week. Gil, my art director emailed me the final image today. It was cool to see it in it's final version. I put a lot of effort in that illustration. My friend, Erik said it was my best drawing out of the other illustrations I've done.

It seems everytime I get an illustration job, I get on the web trying to spend the money. I need new shoes. My Adidas Superstars are peeling apart. I also want to buy art, books, or toys, then I think to myself I don't need them. Basically talked myself out of it. I did subscribe to Computer Art magazine today. It is a magazine from the U.K. I don't think there is a better graphic design/art mag around. I am excited to get the first issue.

So tonight we had fried prawns & fried rice for dinner with the in-laws. It was basically a fryday. hah. Nichole and I tried to finish watching the Triplets of Belleville. It is so far a great movie. 2 Academy award nominations. The animation is incredible. It looks somewhat European comic artist with computer animation. Nichole fell asleep on the couch like she always does so I tried to figure out how the DVD recorder works. It works but something with the setup makes the sound and audio quality low for some reason.

My First Blog!!!

Hi. This is my first attempt at blogging. I hope to inform and entertain. Stay tuned for more.