Off to Costa Rica!

It's been tough to post lately - there's been so much going on! Tonight, some friends and I are flying out to Costa Rica for a week of hiking, canyoneering, zip lines and surfing. I'll be returning just in time for the Ratatouille Wrap Party on June 2, and will get you all the latest stories and drawnigs at that point. Hasta luego!

Point Reyes

Fueled by tasty breakfast tacos, Vicki, Chris, Kevin, Frank and myself hiked about 11.5 mountainous miles through Point Reyes this past Sunday, conquering Mount Wittenberg, crossing rolling hills overlooking the Pacific, exploring rocky beach caves, and even taking home a new insect friend along the way. My feet are still recovering two days later, but the time outdoors proved a much better alternative to watching the Warriors chuck 3s and collect technical fouls!

A rough start of 2 miles uphill led to some rewarding views:




A well-deserved rest at Sculptured Beach:

Coachella Follow-up: Videos

How rude of me not to have included video with the original post... here are some very poor quality clips of the crowds/shows, taken between Jason and myself.

Teddybears:


Arcade Fire:


The Coup:


Mike Relm ("O-Face"; check out how he mixes video!):


Rage Against the Machine:


Tiesto:

Coachella!!!

For the third straight year, the Coachella Music and Arts Festival delivered an unparalleled lineup of bands in the scorching hot SoCal desert. Six of us made the trek from Oakland to Indio...


... and each of us came back with a half dozen new favorite bands. Here were my personal favorites:

--- Best Performances ---

- The Arcade Fire - amazing show with a desert sunset backdrop.
- Teddybears - this year's Gnarls Barkley; party music that turned the Gobi tent wild. If you need some energizing sounds for the gym or car, check them out!
- The Arctic Monkeys - alongside Of Montreal, these guys got the festival rolling

--- Best Random Discovery ---

- Mike Relm - a kickass DJ with a great sense of humor who mixes movies alongside beats.

--- Best Discovery by a Friend ---

MSTRKRFT - some of the best new club music I've heard in a while

--- "Where Were You When the Revolution Began?" ---

- Rage Against the Machine - "What better place than THIS / What better time than NOW? UGH!!!!!!!"

--- "I Finally Saw Them!" ---

- Faithless - avid insomniac for over a decade!

--- Best Celebrity Cameo ---

- Ron Jeremy introduces Peaches
(note that I missed Scarlett Johanssen at The Jesus and Mary Chain)

----- Music Highlights -----

--- Friday ---

- Silversun Pickups - Good albeit sophomoric band, promising if not quite ready for the main stage. After one flat-landing joke from the band, credit the guy in the crowd who screamed "Humor!"
- Of Montreal - Fun! Must see more...
- Amy Winehouse - if you're into soulful stuff and hotties who can pull off beehive haircuts, this is for you.
- Arctic Monkeys - first great full set I saw. "I _ bet _ that _ you _ look good on the dance floor..."
- Peaches - (R: potty-mouthed, but funny)
- Peeping Tom - Who knew that girls could beatbox, too! "Okay - How many of you just peed your pants?"
- Faithless - I was right up front when they opened with "Insomniac" and the place went berserk! Crowd was absoutely wild for the first 3 tracks.
- DJ Shadow - Right up front again, great beats but the set was cut short as the Outdoor Stage was running a half hour late.

--- Saturday ---

- Hot Chip - (during hands-in-the-air, jumping-up-and-down-clapping climax in 107 degree tent) "Wow, thanks to whoever is spraying the crowd with that cool water! ... wait... that's sweat... ah screw it: 'LIKE A MONKEY WITH A MINIATURE CYMBAL!!!'..."
- The New Pornographers - "Keep it down, Travis!"
- Kings of Leon - much better than I expected, I had to skip the Decemberists to get postition for...
- The Arcade Fire - Eric and I fought off a literally suffocating crowd with elbows and hand grenades to get close to the main stage, and man it was worth it! This set just got better and better as it went on.
- Girl Talk - I missed the part where people threw empty water bottles at Paris Hilton on her cameo, but this was a fun 10 minutes from MTV's Spring Break Beach House.
- Red Hot Chili Peppers - from a distance, they were what they are.
- Mike Relm - laughing and dancing for an hour, everyone in our group will be looking for this SF native again...
- Tiesto - a cool beer before a huge dance party on the mainstage

--- Sunday ---

- Tapes 'n Tapes - one of my favorite discoveries of the weekend
- The Coup - Oaktown brings the funk! Eric and I were 3 people back, center stage
- Explosions in the Sky - didn't see nearly enough
- Rodrigo and Gabriella - another amazing discovery - this acoustic Mexican duo drew a huge crowd singing to their take on Pink Floyd's "Wish You Were Here"
- Kaiser Chiefs - I for one had a great time in the middle of this crowd :)
- Cut Chemist - wasn't getting off the ground in the dome, left quickly
- Richie Hawtin - meh. Felt like typical Sahara.
- Paul Van Dyk - good, but got kind of repetitive... I found myself freeing up memory on my camera.
- Teddybears - How can you not go nuts over a party band led by DJs and guitarists rocking out in suits with oversized bear mascot heads? I got to this one early for a spectacular spot, and was extremely glad I came. One of my new favorites.
- Rage Against the Machine - What better place than this, what better time than now to witness 50,000 people jumping up and down and screaming "FUCK YOU I WON'T DO WHAT'CHA TELL ME!!!" at the top of their lungs??? Rage's first show in 7 years was a blast. Paraphriasing: "If they were judged by the same standards we held against Nazi war criminals, every president since Truman would be tried, and hung, and shot ....... But the challenges we face go beyond the current administration. It’s not a system that changes every four years. It’s a system we have to tear down, generation after generation......... [breaks out] WAKE UUUUUUP!!!"



Expect to see all of us back in the desert next April... we've become extremely efficient at hydration.


'cause I'm a punk rocker / yes I am.

Gesture Drawing (Madam Mim)

Instead of drawing the model this week, I drew Madam Mim from The Sword in the Stone using the model's poses only for inspiration. I practiced for about an hour the night before class, getting a feel for the character ahead of time so I wouldn't have to turn to reference much. I think the archery pose was my favorite from this batch, but if I drew Madam Mim again I would definitely loosen up on the dress... Any way you look at it, this was a fun experiment!

The Power of Green

The New York Times Magazine is running an excellent article this weekend over how today's very divided and internationally rocky America is ripe for a galvanizing, cross-party Green Revolution... even given the economic realities of the challenge. This makes a lot of sense to me: former U.S. Military leaders, Democratic candidates, and even the leading Republican candidate, Rudy Giuliani, agree that energy independence (and clean energy) is absolutely crucial to national security, but none of the candidates seem to volunteer a real plan. If we really wanted to "support our troops" and promote democracy, why wouldn't we work to reduce our involvement in an oil trade that will almost surely grow more tense, authoritarian and destructive over time? Sure there's a lot of money and existing economic and political structure in the way of change, but democracy tends to work pretty well when people are captivated, pay attention, and make demands.

Some quotes from the article:

"A redefined, broader and more muscular green ideology is not meant to trump the traditional Republican and Democratic agendas but rather to bridge them when it comes to addressing the three major issues facing every American today: jobs, temperature and terrorism."

"You can illustrate the First Law of Petropolitics with a simple graph. On one line chart the price of oil from 1979 to the present; on another line chart the Freedom House or Fraser Institute freedom indexes for Russia, Nigeria, Iran and Venezuela for the same years. When you put these two lines on the same graph you see something striking: the price of oil and the pace of freedom are inversely correlated. As oil prices went down in the early 1990s, competition, transparency, political participation and accountability of those in office all tended to go up in these countries — as measured by free elections held, newspapers opened, reformers elected, economic reform projects started and companies privatized. That’s because their petroauthoritarian regimes had to open themselves to foreign investment and educate and empower their people more in order to earn income. But as oil prices went up around 2000, free speech, free press, fair elections and freedom to form political parties and NGOs all eroded in these countries."

"Up to now, said Lester Brown, president of the Earth Policy Institute, we as a society “have been behaving just like Enron the company at the height of its folly.” We rack up stunning profits and G.D.P. numbers every year, and they look great on paper “because we’ve been hiding some of the costs off the books.” If we don’t put a price on the CO2 we’re building up or on our addiction to oil, we’ll never nurture the innovation we need."

"President Bush claims he’s protecting American companies by not imposing tough mileage, conservation or clean power standards, but he’s actually helping them lose the race for the next great global industry. Japan has some of the world’s highest gasoline taxes and stringent energy efficiency standards for vehicles — and it has the world’s most profitable and innovative car company, Toyota. That’s no accident."

Gesture Drawing

Tried to push character a little today, though it needs to go farther! Included is an example of a train wreck salvaged by our instructor, Tom... the lesson being that we can be pretty liberal when interpreting a gesture to emphasize an action.

Today's Walt Stanchfield notes included some great pointers on how to overcome learning plateaus by breaking down problems into smaller, more easily overcome elements. A sense of progress would be very welcome right now, so I'll try to keep the sketchbook rolling...

Dave Chappelle @ Cobb's

Friday morning held a surprise twist when Jason sent out word of tickets going on sale for an unannounced Chappelle stand-up show in San Francisco the same night. Evidently his word branched out so quickly that it reached about 30 people we knew before the club sold out, leading to a somewhat awkward waiting line-packing scene which I still feel a bit guilty over. Fortunately, everything kind of worked itself out and we all got great seats.

Chappelle put on a pretty good show; it didn't really compare to the DVD release from the Fillmore a few years back, but the guy was on stage for over two hours! A lanky, gawkish sort of dude in person, he went through about 45 minutes worth of hatin' material to start, shared a phone call from some rapper named Qui-gon (or something like that ;), and then let the audience shout out topics for comment until the coffee and cigarettes could no longer keep him going. There was still a lot of vocalized bitterness towards Comedy Central, but as long as Chappelle can keep filling comedy clubs at $50/person, he doesn't seem inclined to do much else.

Gesture Drawing

So today wasn't the day to take up the goal from the last post (cartooning a character) since this model didn't have props, but she did bring some fun poses. I tried to emphasize her hips with varying success... Tom also had some great advice on dedicating focused time to address specific problems in a sketchbook at home, and using old disney model sheets to interpret poses into an existing character... on that latter point, guess we'll see how brave I'm feeling in the next class :)