In any case, they always end up sparking a little bit of inspiration, and amidst the drunken haze and frozen fingers, I was able to snap a few pictures and collect a few items as memorabilia to create a loose sketch of what our view was for 3 days in the frozen tundra that was Georgian Bay, Ontario, over the New Year.

Not too many words today, as I have been occupying most of my free time to putting together portfolios for the various destinations that could become my next home and adventure. Among all this new work and revisiting my old work, I’ve come across a lot of ideas for what I could do with this blog, my website, and other things, if I could just have the time to get it all done. There will be some changes coming up in the future, but I can’t say when, since I honestly have no idea. Till then, the posts will focus more on the sketch and less on what I write below it… Unless I have something really important to say.

I’m starting to become aware of the fact that I ask a lot of my handful of readers all the time. Granted, most of the times it’s for something importance, and I have yet to ask you to give money, ’cause to be honest, I wouldn’t want to shell out my hard-earned dough just because some blogger asked me to. In this case, I’m still not gonna ask you to give money to anything. The economy sucks, so feel free to use your last $2.35 so buy a toothbrush and a lighter so you can make that prison knife that’s gonna be your only defense in the dark alley you’ll have to live in now that you lost your job and all your money.

No, children, while I am not asking for your money, I do need your attention, and your support to kill yet another senseless bill before it becomes law. I’m talking about SOPA/PIPA (the Stop Online Piracy Act, and The Protect IP Act), both of which, if passed, will give the government far too much control of the Internet we all know and love. Some people even speculate that this bill could kill the Internet as we know it.

So here’s what I know about it, and why I think it’s bad.

The sentiment behind these bills sounds sensible: content producers all across the board have become less likely to profit from their creations since the Internet came along. The main complainers here are the music industry and TV/movie studios. I’m not saying the most affected, but definitely the loudest bitches of the pack. That’s not to say the content created by them isn’t the one most shared throughout torrent sites and other file sharing bases, but they still have money to allow Nickelback to make records, or Tyler Perry make TV shows and movies. If that doesn’t scream “disposable income,” I don’t know what does. So go ahead and continue the illegal downloads you have going on in the background while you read the rest of this post.

But wait, o wise and all-knowing Santiago, you may ask (word by word); aren’t you someone who creates content that may or may not be used without your permission? Shouldn’t you be supporting a law that protects copyrights on the web?

Well, yes. Visual artists such as myself are subject to getting ripped off only all the time. That’s why there’s something called Creative Commons, which most designers, photographers, and artists adhere to. In the case that we don’t want to leave something in the open terms of CC, we specify that the images are ours and we’ll sue your pants off if you use them. The system is not perfect, and sometimes a talented artist who makes his living on his craft, such as The Oatmeal, gets ripped off by other sites that grab his images and post them on theirs, next to ads. They profit from publishing stuff he posted on his website for free. These guys are assholes, and you can’t stop them, even if you make them illegal.

The proposed solution is the near-sighted SOPA/PIPA acts. Under these acts, the government is given permission to step in, should something like this happen. The problem is that the bills give the government power to block or disable entire websites because of the acts of one idiot. So if that girl you went to college with decides to post an image of Ryan Gosling on her Facebook that happens to belong to Paramount Pictures, then the government would shut down not just her profile, but all of freaking Facebook. How then, will you pretend to be doing any work at the office? You can’t go back to Spider Solitaire, man!

Furthermore, the bills aim to stifle and regulate one of the few sections of the US economy that continues to bloom: technology and Internet startups. If Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, et al. feel threatened by housing their servers and offices in the US, then they will simply take their business elsewhere. I would. Then, happy-go-lucky web and graphic designers would be even less likely to find a job in this economy.

This week, the vote is going down, and the Internet is protesting by blacking out on Wednesday.

I suggest you read up on SOPA here, and sign a petition here, and protest by not posting anything on your social media outlets on Wednesday.

Well, I almost didn’t but I’ve been slacking too much lately. Besides, not only do I collect labels, tickets, and other awesome stuff that I use on my sketchbooks whenever I travel, but I totally had a sketch ready for today. A bizarre and disturbing abomination of a sketch. And no, it didn’t come about through the consumption of that Jack Daniel’s, I just love the label design they have.

This sketch actually happened while consuming eggs Benedict, coffee, orange juice and later on, a banana fudge milkshake in Toronto. One of my friends randomly asked, while pouring cream in her coffee, “wouldn’t it be great if we all had 6 udders that actually lactated, even guys?”

There was nothing I could say to that. Nothing anyone could say to that. Only an insane person would volunteer to draw such a thing. Naturally, I did.

The end.

(I seriously wish I could say more about this, but Udderboy here speaks for himself)

Well damn. It seems it’s been yet another week when I’ve skipped out on the blog. I’m gonna try to make sure this doesn’t happen often, but I’m also gonna try to not let it worry me too much… There, that worked.
I write this from my brand-new, I-don’t-care-if-a-new-model-comes-out-tomorrow, iPad. Anyone who knows me and my whorish lust for all that is Apple knows this is a pretty big deal for me. However, it’s made me think about how art is evolving faster than artists can keep up. Most artists, anyway.
One of the things that stuck with me the most out of all the things I heard my Art History professors say was a comment about the Renaissance artists. My professor in Art History Survey II (a course that covers the basics of Art History from the Renaissance up to modern day) mentioned that the painters and sculptors of the era were using oil paints, frescoes and sculpture not because of a tradition of painting, but because those were the most technologically advanced methods at the time. Think about it– there was no iPad back then.
I awl ayes think about this because it makes me wonder what a genius like Leonardo or Michelangelo or any of the remaining ninja turtles would do with a device such as this one. There really is no telling; perhaps they’d do something absolutely mind-blowing and cutting-edge, or perhaps they’d squander their talent and play Angry Birds all day.i wouldn’t blame them if this was the case, that game can be very addictive.
In my personal case, I find that the iPad has replaced the notebook in more than one key aspect, but not in the straightforward role o free sketchbook. When I buy my stylus, that may change, but even then I don’t see myself fully abandoning a good old fashioned paper approach to sketching.
With that being said, i believe the new technology we get access too also needs to be incorporated into the creative process. And since I don’t have a scanner (or a computer for that manner) at my disposal, I’m left having to post a digital sketch instead (courtesy of the Poly app, a really fun image manipulator). I don’t foresee many of these popping up, but I’ll post one of these up whenever I feel they’re worthy of sharing.
Welcome to the future, everybody.

It’s been a really long time since I skipped a single week writing a post. I usually try to keep these posts as regular as my mornings after a bowl of Special K Chocolatey Delight and 2 cups of coffee, even after I’ve run out of my comfortable backlog of sketches, as I did a few months ago. Usually, if I’m not out of town, and sometimes even if I am, I make it a point to post every Monday on the dot.

The delusional me that pretends to be a celebrity blogger who gets a billion reads per week feels the need to apologize to his loyal readers. The realistic me says sorry to his 5 regular readers. Either way, you deserve an explanation, and here it is: I was at the office all weekend (both Saturday and Sunday), working for a really humongous project at my new job. Surprisingly and uncharacteristically of me, I love this gig, so I didn’t even mind the extra hours so much. The only downside is that I had no time whatsoever to draw a new sketch, let alone post it and write about it. to make things worse, I still had quite a lot of work to do during the week, so I couldn’t even post an apology note.

Thankfully, I know nobody who reads this has sensitivity issues (I’m pretty sure I’ve already alienated those after almost 130 posts).

Anyway, I did do something for this week. If it looks like sort of a cop-out, it’s because it sort of is (did I mention I’ve been busy?). But sometimes these cop-out sketches lead to something interesting, and knowing me, I’m going to have to put the time into this and apply my brainpower to make something cool out of this little pseudo-collage I created.

I write everything down. I always have a notebook, notepad, or something of the sort next to me when I am working, and I try to carry a Moleskine with me wherever I go (although I’m rethinking my choice after many years, since they recently decided to pull a stunt* asking designers for free spec work. This is how I feel about spec work. This is why). Even though 99.99999% of the sketches you see on this blog are drawn on the pages of my Moleskines, there are times when I draw on other surfaces (shocking, I know). Sometimes these surfaces are larger and fancier than the notebook, and I like to call these paintings, but other times, these are less fancier surfaces, particularly notepads and legal pads I keep around in the office to write down my notes. I still haven’t been able to bring myself to write work notes on a personal sketchbook, probably because the risk of a co-worker giving me their input on my note on my sketchbook, and I absolutely loathe it when people put their mark on my sketchbook.

I find that at times, some of the doodles that end up on the margins or empty spaces of a page can be as interesting as some of the ones I make on a Moleskine. However, since they’re not on a sketchbook, but on the regular pads, they get almost no exposure.

Fortunately, I was in a bit of a bind when it came to time and this week’s sketch, and I was not going to allow myself to skip 2 posts; this is how these things start. So I took a pad from my previous job and scoured some of the weird little drawings I drew when I was bored (all the time), distracted (all the time), or frustrated (all the time).

Some glue and random assortment of tissue paper later, and there’s your result.

I hope I didn’t throw out all my notes from college because I had a treasure trove of doodles in there that I could totally use to turn into something interesting. If I find enough of them, I’ll make this into a pseudo-series of sketches. If not, I’m going to make more time to make more interesting sketches anyway. I hope to not disappoint with the future weeks.

*This links to antispec.com. I suggest all designers and artists who read my blog to jump over to their site and browse their manifesto, etc. We should all be informed about when and how to charge for our work.

That being said, if it wasn’t for the random Spider-Man comic book I found at a Walgreens when I was 11 years old, I could have ended up as an accountant or some ridiculous crap like that. It’s because of this that Spidey will always hold a special place in my heart, as will any kid I hear about who likes Spider-Man as well. Today’s sketch and post are about one of these kids.

My cousin is a nurse at a local children’s hospital (she asked me to keep things vague because apparently you can’t share too much info about these sort of things without some clearance. That being said, I still believe this story needs to be shared, even if the details are generic). Anyway, she called me a couple of days ago and told me the story of a little boy currently being treated in her ward. I believe he’s 10 or 11 years old, and the infection he was suffering from forced the doctors treating him to amputate all 4 of his limbs– both arms, both legs.

I usually treat my blog as a playground for silly humor, cynical comments and shenanigans, but I have no such material for a story like this. This boy is a complete stranger, but still, hearing his story broke my heart. I literally stop myself from thinking about what his parents must be feeling at the moment, let alone the boy himself.

When my cousin called me, it was because he told her that his favorite superhero is Spider-Man. She wanted to know if I would make him a drawing to cheer him up, and with that I couldn’t think of a better reason for going back to drawing superheroes.

I hope he likes this when my cousin gives it to him, and it cheers him up, even if it’s just a little bit. As for anyone reading this, I hope this story makes you realize that contrary to what you may think at times, your life doesn’t suck. It really doesn’t. Think about the magnitude of your problems and compare them to something as devastating as this, and feel better about your life. Be thankful to whatever it is you want to thank that you are where you are.

My cousin is thinking of ways to help this little boy. I postponed this post in order to wait for information on how to help him and his family out, but as of now, I have zip, zilch, nada. If I get that information in the next few days, I’ll post it. If not, I hope reading this has inspired you to help someone who could use your help, even if it’s with a sloppy Spider-Man drawing.

I’ve written about Thanksgiving before. Meh. I love turkey, I love stuffing probably more than I love turkey, in spite of the damned olives, I love Thanksgiving, and I love being able to say I love Thanksgiving because my life is the tits and you wish it was your life. That’s pretty much the same thing I have to say about the holiday every time it comes around, so I’m gonna spare you the whole ramble, even though I can’t exactly think of much to write about the drawing above.

This whole “paste images from a magazine with tracing or tissue paper on top” thing I’ve been playing around with lately is pretty cool. The glue plays a role in this, as does any ink I choose to put on top, and of course my imagination (or lack thereof).

There’s not a lot to say about this one. I never liked drawing cities in detail and tracing them is no different. This is odd because I love urban landscapes, but maybe it has something to do with the fact that I don’t have the patience for the excruciating detail and rigid straight lines necessary for urban landscapes. This is why every urban-like drawing I’ve ever done is a deformation of an actual urban landscape. This one is no exception, and I even had the picture in the background to cheat with.

To be frank, I kinda wish I had used a better tissue paper for this; something that would show more transparency when in contact with the glue. I guess next week I’ll have the chance to do that. For now, I’ll stick with this weirdly sort of deconstructed image of what is supposed to be the New York City skyline.

Whew!

For a second there, I thought I was gonna skip this week. I knew for a fact I was going to be late with the sketch, since I was busy yesterday finishing up a little project I was working on for a client. Once that project pans out completely, I might shamelessly plug my handiwork on the Interwebs. Until then, you’re all going to have to use your imaginations when it comes to figuring out what it was that kept me so damn busy that I was unable to doodle something, scan it, and post it on my blog.

Thankfully, I have mountains and mountains of sketchbooks new and old to draw from (that, kids, is called a pun. Take notes). Though most of my favorite sketches from sketchbooks past have been scanned and written about in entries past, but luckily for me, some of them can slip between the cracks, leaving me with an ace up my sleeve for those occasions when I want to pretend I have a life outside of that of the creepy man who scans drawings and writes about them once weekly.

This particular one was especially lucky, because I actually have something to say about it. I’ve been pretty candid about my struggles in college during art school, because I believe it is important to let the “my kid could do that!” idiots know how demanding art can be when evaluated by the right minds, but also because I can’t be honest about what got me to where I am creatively without owning up to the fact that a lot of my work was pretty crappy, especially during the first few years of college. Fact is, my professors pushed the crap out of me to constantly get out of my comfort zone artistically, and I eventually listened (those who didn’t ended up having pretty crappy work at their final show). Happily, this advice applies to a ton of other things in life, not just art.

Well, this sketch is a miniature of an already existing drawing. If I’m not mistaken, I did this to waste time during a class when I couldn’t think of anything to do, but it might have been something I did because I was bored and felt the need to revisit this. The original is a very large drawing that took me forever to complete, and went through many incarnations, but eventually became the ancestor to the Souvenirs series.

It started out as an “intuitive” session, something which I was not originally a fan of, since it reeked of new-agey, flower child bullcrap where you were supposed to grab a utensil and draw without thinking. I would still consider it hogwash if it wasn’t for the fact that my first intuitive session produced one of the most interesting things I created in my college years. This one was round 2 at intuitive sessions. I had just returned from Italy and, for the months that followed (and still today, to an extent), I wanted to return– the body had left long ago, but my mind remained there.

Slowly, elements of my experiences in Italy began to show up in the drawing, so I went with them. The arches became arches; the columns became columns. Finally, the floor plan of the Colosseum, a visual tattoo on my mind that I still find just… bitchin’ demanded to be made into a presence, so it showed up.

It was a success. Sort of. It definitely gave me the direction I needed to take my art on, and it became a very big piece of the puzzle I had been struggling to complete.

I ended up working on it over and over and over, probably too much, and then I felt compelled to paint a little replica of it on a sketchbook. That’s probably directly related to the fact that it was such a huge stepping stone in the artistic development that took me to where I am today.

And a good 4 years after that original drawing, it saved my ass from being absent with a blog post. This piece just keeps on giving.

In my long history of using Moleskine notebooks as my sketchbook of choice, I’ve noticed a pattern. By now, I’ve collected give or take 25 to 30 notebooks filled with my notes, ramblings and of course, countless sketches. Just like there are sketches and drawings that don’t necessarily make me a happy camper while there are some that I love, the same can be said about the notebooks as a whole. I have some that I still enjoy flipping through and looking at all the things I put in there, while there are some that are complete dullsville, and I’ve come to find that the most beat-up, shredded, altered, water-damaged, ink-stained ones are also the best ones.

This knowledge is actually dangerous to me. I run the risk of overdoing it with the messy stuff and just ruining what actually turns out to be a very expensive item for a notebook. I point this out today because this week’s sketch is one of those messes, as was last week’s, and this direction is actually making me love this notebook more than I did 2 weeks ago. I’ve had this specific notebook since April and it’s getting messier, more raggedy and more awesome.

This week’s damage was achieved by grabbing one more sheet of some fancy paper I bought when I was but a college freshman for a project, and have been using ever since then for random stuff such as this sketch and other random sketches you can probably recognize or look around for. I’m feeling too lazy to link to all of them. However, I had never pushed this paper to its limits as much as I did today. I felt like being more painterly with this sketch and the one downside to the type of sketchbook I like to get is that the paper is too thin to take in that much water. This other paper is nice, thick, and somewhat spongy, so I decided to got for my old crappy watercolors and my favorite black drawing ink and give it a go.

I found a photo I liked and went nuts all over the paper. The wild trees are really not that wild in real life– they’re just some trees outside of my old apartment in Toronto, but they look a lot darker in this image (something that I like).

This paper is super water-absorbent, so I glued it to the sketchbook while it was still wet (in fact, as I write this, it’s still wet and I haven’t been able to scan it). Naturally, this has created warp on the pages and given the notebook yet another battle scar, making it all the more interesting.

Deadlines suck, but clearly they were put there for a reason. I’ve been in situations where I don’t have a set deadline for a project, and I’ve been in situations where the deadline is impossibly close and sleepless nights are an absolute certainty.

Like all the “evils” that creatives come across and complain about, myself included (deadlines being among them, along with difficult clients, browser compatibility, etc), they may be annoying, but they also serve to push the brain into creating something. Anything. Before the deadline bites you in the ass.

This is why I have been so strict about my Monday deadline regarding these sketches. Like in college, the results have been mixed: sometimes I hate what I came up with, even though I had the sketch prepared since the week before, and sometimes the last-minute attempt ends up being something really cool. Case in point: today’s sketch.

I’m writing this as I watch one of the best shows on TV right now, The Walking Dead, which comes on at 9PM on Sundays. That’s how much I procrastinated this week on my sketchbook (hey, I happen to have a job right now, so it’s not like I’ve been staring at the ceiling all week). I had no idea what I wanted to do; I couldn’t even think of a subject matter (and if you look back at the archives on this blog you’ll agree that substantial subject matters are not always my main priority, so the artist/writer’s block was pretty intense this week.

On a desperate attempt to come up with something, I started flipping the pages of an old magazine I had in my room, and found a painting being used in an ad, and I remembered my deadline crisis mode from my art student days: when all else fails, collage.

The rest came along easily, thanks to some glue, tracing paper, tissue paper from a pair of shoes I just got, some glue and some ink. And seriously, I think it’s one of the coolest things I’ve plastered on the Internet in recent memory.