Buildings, Business Cards and Beacon Hill.

After almost ten years working at a big law firm in Boston, my better half, Josh Gardner, is starting up his own practice as a plaintiff's lawyer. Naturally I designed his business card. Josh rented an office in the beautiful Beacon Hill neighborhood, right downtown, and wanted an image of his new building on the card. I went up there one weekend and sketched his building and its immediate surroundings on Mt. Vernon Street, right behind the state house. I really love drawing buildings and houses, so it was a fun assignment for me. Back home, I finished up the drawing with ink and instead of the usual bristol board, I used a type of paper that I had bought at the art supply store previously: Border & Riley's #234 Paris Paper for Pens. It is super smooth, of high quality and I love it (though quite pricey, so it won't be for everyday use, that's for sure)!

I leave the web design to the experts, though. Freelance web designer/illustrator/cartoonist/editor and fellow member of Boston Comics Roundtable, Roho, is in charge of the web site's design and maintenance, and I will post a link to it as soon as Josh officially opens his practice (to visit Roho's blog and see his portfolio, click here).

Do you want a picture of your office building/house on your business card? Instead of a generic-looking drawing, the illustration will still have the characteristics of my usual style. Send me an email for info on rates, turnaround time and rights of usage!

A bohemian on Newbury Street

I made this piece (above) with ink on bristol board, then worked with the toning in Photoshop. I had started it a while ago, and originally envisioned it in full color, but that's not how it worked out! No surprise, really, because I love working in black and white. The sketch (below), however, turned out to be quite vibrant once I added color to it. I mainly used Copic and Mepxy markers. The scene is Newbury Street in Back Bay, where I spent some time sketching at the beginning of fall. I love to walk around this area and look at the buildings with all their galleries and boutiques, and all the stylishly dressed people walking around in heels, chatting on their smartphones, or walking in groups, heading for a club or a party. Sometimes I bring one of my numerous walking-tour books of Boston with me, and learn a bit about the apartment buildings--many of them old mansions--as I roam around. I love this area, but it is a bit like a bubble. A mix of the grandiose, past and present, and the corporate and fast-paced. And I don't feel entirely at home here, the streets are too clean, and most of the people on the street probably don't belong to the neighborhood either, maybe they work here, but they live elsewhere. On this particular night,  I watched the street light up its windows and street lamps as dusk fell. I sat down and sketched, but most people walked so fast, I could hardly sketch them fast enough before they disappeared around the corner. That was at the beginning of fall, when there was still some warmth in the air. Now it is winter, and freezing cold, but I shouldn't let that stop me from sketching outside. As they say back in the old country: There is no such thing as bad weather, just bad clothes.

Sketching in Boston and Brookline

I bring my sketchbook everywhere, and there is nothing I enjoy sketching more than cityscapes and buildings, preferably with people in them. Landscapes and cityscapes alike seem lonely if there isn't at least one living creature in them (a squirrel will do, but I prefer people, and most of all people with a bit of a personality or attitude that I then want to capture). Or maybe the way I draw people says more about me and how I view the world than the people in my pictures? You be the judge.

Kenmore Square. A made-up billboard ad promoting "romance, marriage and financial security" a toned-down CITGO sign and a crowd of indifferent students (how could they not be indifferent?). 

 The Koo Koo Cafe across the Brookline Village station. I used to come here all the time with friends, because there are toys for kids to play with at the back. Now that my kids are all in school, I only stop by when they have lemon poppy seed muffins (which is only once in a while).

On the C-line (which is more like a sluggish trolley bus than a subway train), a day in November. The quote is from Thich Nhat Hahn, and one of my favorites.

On a bench overlooking the Boston Commons. At lunchtime, there were people everywhere, spilling out from office buildings, the State House, schools and subway stations. They crossed the park to go who knows where to have lunch, to meet up, or, as the elderly (probably retired) guy on the right, to go for a run. I was listening to music, and some lyrics from Bob Dylan's Abandoned Love ended up on the pages as well.

Sunday at the Arboretum in JP. The brutal-looking concrete building housing the Mass State Laboratory was at once a contrast to the nature of the park, but also seemed to belong there, in the surrounding city with its eclectic architecture.

Greenland & Iceland

Sketches from Iceland

Nuuk, Greenland

Kapisillit, Greenland

This summer, I went to Greenland to visit a friend, via Iceland. I took about a million photos while I was there, the landscape in Greenland is amazingly beautiful, and reminds me of Norway, but--and I am reluctant to admit this in public--even more dramatic. Most of the sketches I did there were funny ones, describing what we did and where we went. In Iceland, however, I sketched as we drove around. We had rented a fourwheel-drive Lada (of all things!), that drove like a tank in the city, but was perfect for backroad driving. It was a bumpy ride on the unpaved roads, but I started the sketches in the car and finished them as we stopped along the way. The landscape in the interior of Iceland was very different from Greenland. The ground was barren, black, volcanic. Dramatic in its own way, and the clouds overhead seemed to be as much a part of the landscape as the ground, giving it also a shifting, restless character. This was not my first time in Iceland, but it seemed different somehow from when I first came here...probably because we took a tourbus back then, but drove around on our own this time. On those deserted roads, on a cold and windy Sunday, one can easily feel all alone in the world, lost in a strange and eerie landscape.

Copenhagen