Green Lantern

This is my 12th and final drawing for the Jogyesa Buddhist Temple 2014 calendar. At certain times of the year, they string up thousands of colored lanterns around the Temple. Right next to the Temple is a very large old tree. People walk around it with their hand outstretched touching the tree as they circle it. There is a slight wearing down of the bark in that area around the tree. It's a very tall tree. From a high vantage point, you can see the rows of lanterns and then magically, a giant tree growing out of the top of them. At night, the lanterns are lit up. It's quite something.
I'd like to thank everyone who came to my Etsy shop and bought prints and originals from me. They're going like hot cakes.

I'll Tumblr For Ya

If you have a Tumblr account or follow Tumblr, then you will understand this post. IF you see where my orange arrow is pointing, it is where Tumblr always posts a little random image from it's millions of images being posted all day long. I always wondered how that image gets selected to be there. Who knows. It's one of the great mysteries of the internet. I logged in 0ne day and noticed I was getting a ton of likes and new followers. What the hell was happening? Then I realized what was going on. My drawing of Lebanese coffee cups was suddenly the little image on the side of all Tumblr pages. It's not up very long, maybe a few hours. I got a 1000 new followers and the image got over 5600 likes on that image. Pretty good for a day's work. If you have a Tumblr blog and want to follow me, go here.

Vine

I am now on Vine. If anyone else is on Vine and wants to follow me. I'm easy to find.

Portrait Of The Artist Known As Me

World famous photographer, Craig Cutler, took this great portrait of me drawing. You will notice how egotistical and self centered I am. The t-shirt I am wearing is my own logo, promoting me, me, me. At first glance, I seem to be a man of the people but a closer inspection will prove otherwise. Jeans, work boots and an old hat are actually a very thought out, curated ensemble. Top of the line, raw denim double RL jeans, fancy Red Wing suede boots and a one of a kind hand made, Barbara Feinman hat. Oh no, I'm a hipster. Worse yet, a Brooklyn hipster. At least I'm aware that I'm a jackass. Although I do take a good portrait, if I say so myself.

The Calender Continues

I have been drawing a lot of details of Jogyesa Temple for the 2014 calenders. Finally, here is a wide angle drawing of the place so you can really see what it looks like. This is number 11, so I only have one more to go. I have spent many hours wandering around this place and I know every crack and crevice intimately. Also I have placed a bunch of new original drawings and paintings for sale at reasonable prices on my Etsy store. Get one for a steal. They make good gifts to frame for loved ones.

Brand New YouTube

All these dumb websites like Facebook, Tumblr, Vimeo, Google+ and YouTube are always upgrading their sites. New functions await. The problem is they always change the page layout. That means you have to change the design you made to fit their old format. YouTube is the latest to roll out a new thing called, One Channel. People can now have a header. This may be hard for the lay person to understand but the new header is designed to work in any formats. It will look good on laptops, desktops, mobile devices and ipads. The issue is you have to make your design fit into a very crazy kind of template with lots of photo and typography safetys. It took me over 3 hours to make my finished product. Every time I placed it into the new YouTube Channel, it wasn't quite right, so I had to go back to my original PSD and tweak it. This went on forever. How does the average idiot deal with this stuff? It's impossible to do unless you are some great designer or photoshop master. Please no more upgrades to anything. I like it all the way it is. If you want to subscribe to my YouTube channel, go here.

Bar-B-Que Season

I went to a fashionable BQ on the upper west side. My friends love to eat healthy. So there was lots of roasted vegetables and whatnot. I need that kind of thing even though it's a bar-b-que. Ordinarily I would chow down on dogs and burgers until I exploded. Thankfully this wasn't the case at all. Everyone was stylishly dressed. Being a fancy boy myself, you can image my ensemble. They have a nice view so I did a little drawing on their outdoor space. It gave me something to do, plus I could show off.

Romancing The Stone

At Jogyesa Temple in Seoul, there is a big stone wheel standing outside the main entrance. A Buddha sits in the middle of a lotus flower. It sort of feels a little like the wheel of fortune. I want to spin it when I see it but it looks like it weighs about a million pounds. I'm a weakling so there will be no spinning. This is another painting for the calender. I've finished 9 and it is starting to take shape. It looks good to me but what the hell do I know.

Temple Door

Not too many weeks ago, I was in Korea. On CNN and BBC, 24/7, was the constant news of impending war between North and South Korea. There was alarmist talk of troop movements and scary missile launches. It was clear that something WAS going to happen and happen soon. Foreigners were registering with their consulates in case they needed to be evacuated. I didn't get this same information when I tuned into the Korean news channel. The story didn't get nearly the same amount of intense coverage. In fact, they seemed quite subdued, as did the average person walking around the streets. On the plane back to the states, I read an article in The Economist. They said they had a reporter on the ground in Pyongyang and he didn't see anything out of the ordinary. He didn't see any soldiers preparing or any trucks or vehicles heading to the front. Nothing. I got the feeling that the news was really trying to sell this story so people would tune in to cable news 24/7 so they could sell you more toothpaste and deodorant, thus making the networks more money. The so-called Korean War was a good hook and they were going to play it for what it was worth. Then the Boston bombing happened and all of a sudden the Korean thing disappeared. Gone, poof. I haven't heard a peep since. What happened to this big invasion that was coming at any minute. I don't trust the news for anything.

This is my next installment for the Jogyesa Temple calender. All the doors of the Temple are filled with gorgeous wood carvings. Everything is hand painted with beautiful designs. I did this as a close-up detail. I'm always drawing the big picture but I hardly ever get up close and personal. This time I did.

Lebanese Coffee

I don't drink coffee. Never really did. My friend's mother has this collection of tiny coffee cups. I discovered them by accident and then began to draw them. She had more than I thought. After I started to draw, she fished around and brought out even more for me to choose from. It makes for a nice little OCD drawing.