Florasaurus 2021

Each January Native Poppy, a flower shop in San Diego, runs a dinosaur and flower drawing contest they refer to as their Annual Florasaurus Competition. While I don't usually partake in many contests anymore, this one is definitely one I still very much enjoy.

This year's contest is accepting entries through Jan. 17. Native Poppy will select 4 finalists and voting will be from Jan. 20 to Jan. 24. Winners to be announced Jan. 27.

Below is my entered drawing, wish me luck!

Feel free to check out their Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/native_poppy

Crown Drawing

March has generally been a busier month with some traveling and a heavier workload. This past week I've managed to take on a side project to get a pencil back in my hand. It's easy for me to get caught up in the digital world and designing on the computer, so I really value breaks that involve paper and pencil. 

A friend came to me asking for a drawing project of two crowns. I was tasked with recreating each crown and adding some design elements to them. Initially both were to get a swirl design added, however, there was a need to make one of the crowns more masculine. I began by sketching out each crown on a 5"x7" piece of Rives BFK. From there I used microns to perfect the outlines. I cleaned up the sketch marks I initially had and then went in to do shading and detailing with various graphite pencils. With that looking well I added the extra design elements. To the queen crown I kept the swirls per request. The king crown provided a bit of a design challenge, but I ended up sketching several options where the client chose one he liked the best. I completed that with the same micron then graphite process to get the final drawings. Below is an animated gif of the progress made with the queen drawing.

Throughout the process I filmed the progress of each drawing with my GoPro Hero 5 Session. I've been experimenting with the time lapse settings and believe I have found the sweet spot. Stay tuned for a future post of time lapse footage. Below are the drawings along with some detail shots. 

When In Doubt...

These words have been dancing around in my head for a while now, and I finally got them properly down on paper. When in doubt, be rad.

It began with a 4H graphite pencil sketch followed by a 005 micron outline. The 01 micron gave more definition to the letterforms with the help of a ruler to straighten some of them out. From there I roamed freely with a 005 blue micron to fill in the RAD.

Evening Rose Sketch

Separate Songs

I have quite a love for the band Restorations, and one of my absolute favorite songs by them is Separate Songs. This band is one I can listen to any day of the week, when I am in just about any mood. That's more than I can say about many other bands and music groups. Separate Songs has some of the most well-written lyrics in my opinion. From "You said you worry about me leaving, I fear I'm already gone" to the chorus of "all singing the same time to separate songs" and going into the killer bridge...

Anyways, listen to it. Listen to all of LP3. While you're at it, listen to everything you can and then go see them in person and be wowed. 

The other night I played around with hand lettering ideas and came up with this. The next time you see it, it'll be on my gray 3/4 Bell helmet. Stay tuned, the 1shot is drying.

The Houck H

I'll wrap up this delicate wedding theme with one final wedding gift I had created this month. Below is an ornamental, hand drawn "H" I have made for my friends-Ryan and Rachel who just got married this past Saturday. I wanted to create something unique and refined. I decided to go with a thinner font and the letterform developed as I took pen to paper. The final was 8"x8" matted and framed in a 12"x12" double matted frame. Below is the evolution of the "H".

Congratulations Mr. & Mrs. Houck!