A portrait of the JoBro's, in honour of the oldest one being married off. I don't know his name, or any of their names, because they are more of just a total group entity. While their star power may be slightly diminished, the JoBros will continue to set young girls hearts a flutter and produce forgettable pop songs for at least several years to come. Here the JoBros are portrayed as a three-headed media monster, because together they are strong, but on their own, completely unmarketable.

When I was younger I would always get really excited about doing a special project over the Christmas season. The holiday decorations and items would all come out of storage somewhere, and I'd dive into the books, like Ted E. Bear Saves Christmas, the Honeybears, Tolkien's Father Christmas Letters and the Grinch. Eventually I would get inspired, and go into production mode, writing and illustrating some Christmasy thing, often a book, and more often than not, getting stalled on the perfect title page. One year when I was 12, I burned the midnight oil to have my own illustrated version of Night Before Christmas, done before the big day and actually succeeded. Perhaps the sign of a budding workaholic or maybe just someone who liked Christmas, I'm still very proud of that one. With text written out in typewritter serif and alternating red and green each letter, how could I not be? About five years ago, I continued on in that tradition, doing some artwork for a small press children's book, My Best Christmas and found out that a good holiday project never loses its fun.

Here's a new painting of a couple of buildings in San Fran's Chinatown. There are some unique buildings throughout the city, especially in Chinatown with its strange mix of architectural styles and periods.
This painting is done on a 24x36 canvas, larger than I usually work, but the direction I'm going in. The process began with a built-up, textured surface. After that, to keep the underdrawing intentionally loose, I airbrushed in a rough sketch of the buildings, allowing me to cover the large surface area quickly and use a few grey values without having to mix paint. Once ready, the painting was completed in oils, working gradually towards more detail. Typically I prefer to paint all in one sitting, but due to the scale, it was done over a period of a few weeks.

Arrived back from an inspiring and relaxing trip to Cuba this week. Havana was amazing as far as visual experiences go. Lots of of old crumbling buildings and all kinds of good stuff. Very happy with some photos I snapped and managed to fill up my sketchbook too. Will show some of it in future posts. I came home to find my new business cards had arrived. I was going for the simple old-fashioned style, of a business card just having a name and what the person does, like " Yosemite Davis, Inventor". It was a 4/4 job on coated stock...got a great price for 1000 from an american print shop, www.copycraft.com