For as long as I’ve been around, and before I was born, my dad’s side of the family always got together to celebrate on Christmas Eve. It’s always been a big deal for the grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, nieces & nephews. It’s a long running tradition that had to be canceled this year because of Covid. Yes, it’s a bummer but today wasn’t a bad day. I hiked a couple more trails at the Sierra Vista Preserve this afternoon and got a little bit closer to completing the whole space. I just need to do the Upper Calaveras Fault Trail, east of the Cutoff Trail, and the Lower Calaveras Fault Trail, which is a doozy. Just the Lower Calaveras Fault alone is almost 10 miles round trip and a 5-6 hour trek. I’m thinking of doing one hike to finish the Upper portion and coming back another day, nice & early, to knock out the Lower part. Depending on the weather the next few days, and how much it rains, I might be able to 100% complete the preserve before the new year.

These remind of when you’d get your assignment back from the teacher and they marked all the mistakes you made. The best was when you had the opportunity to fix the mistakes and turn it back in for a better grade. That’s basically what I’m doing here. I’m going for that A++++

My grandma is visiting and, since we have plenty of time to kill at home, I thought it'd be a great time to start a new puzzle together. We did one a last year and it was a lot of fun. It's really interesting to see how my grandma tackles the puzzle versus the way I do it. She groups pieces by color then starts trying to put them together. I like grabbing pieces then looking at the poster to figure out where they go. That's how we roll. We're a few hours into this puzzle, and as you can see in the picture below, we're using two tables to work on it. I think the puzzle we did last year only took us a couple days and I kinda hope this one takes a little longer. If we finish early I'll probably go and buy another puzzle and maybe a game to pass the time with grandma.

My cousin Reyna sent me this picture earlier today. It's Arely and I standing in front our booth at the San Jose Jazz Summer Fest last year. The sales weren't great that weekend but it was still a lot of fun being there and meeting new vendors. I really miss working events. The plan was to do more events this year before the 'Vid fucked that all away. 

I ordered a small drafting table this afternoon that's scheduled to arrive on Friday. I've been wanting a table with an angled drawing surface for a while. After working on those large ink drawings for weeks my back began to hurt, most likely from being hunched over a flat table for hours at a time. I put off working on my "protester" drawing, which still isn't done being penciled, till I got a proper desk. It wasn't very expensive, so I hope isn't dogshit. The reviews were pretty good and I like that it's very basic, just the tilting surface and height-adjustable legs. I even got the last black one in stock.

And in other news... I was going thru boxes of old drawings and snapped a few pictures of drawings I did in my early teens.

1. Power Rangers Suck (1994)  - I think I drew this in summer school between the 5th & 6th grade. I don't know what my beef was with the Power Rangers but I copied the cover of Green Day's album, "Dookie," to shit on the them.

2. Ozzy Osbourne (1995) - This was long before the The Osbournes TV show. I copied the characters that were pulled off the internet in 94-95. I think my cousin Dani printed out a webpage for me at her parents house one day. It might have been my first introduction to the internet. I took the pages home and redrew the little Ozzy characters.

3. Inside an Alien Ship (1996) - I'm not sure if I pinched this too but I definitely took Alien Workshop, an actual skateboard brand, from the ads in Thrasher magazines. I still love this drawing, there's so much to look at, I might redraw it.

Last night I started reading Lord of the Flies again. I had to read it in middle school or high school as an assignment but I don't remember much besides the general story of a bunch of young kids getting stranded on a deserted island and becoming savages. What I'll never forget is a scene from the 1990 movie where they kill the character named Piggy. He was a dorky fat kid in glasses and I saw myself in him cause I was/am a dorky fat kid. I think that scene scarred me for life. It's a short book and I'm 3 chapters in right now. When I'm done I'm gonna rewatch the 1963 black & white movie and the 1990 color version. 

After posting this on Instagram someone commented about a real life "Lord of the Flies," where 6 Tongan schoolboys got shipwrecked and stranded on a deserted island for 15 months in 1966. Their story was a much happier than this book by William Golding.

Except for go on a walk and make this animated gif.

I'm calling this one finished, even I could have spent many more hours tweaking it. I originally drew it 8 years ago. It was inspired by my walks to school every morning, listening to cassettes on my Walkman. 

I came across a picture of a Tiger Electronic game on Instagram today and got the idea to draw my own. Tiger Electronic sold a bunch of these cheap LCD games back in the 90s based on arcade and console games. I think I had the Double Dragon handheld. It was a piece of shit compared to the real game. They all were.

*batteries not included

I took a bunch of photos while I was working on my first Cells painting years ago. I knew I wanted to make something with the photos afterwards so I made a time-lapse of the cells multiplying from the center out (starts at the 1:22 mark) Everything leading up to that is the painting process, cans I used, my workspace, feral kittens, and notes that I scrawled everywhere including the cans.

Here are a few details about the piece: The red can of MTN 94 is only used once as a 5 sided shape in the center. Everyone other color was used multiple times to make 5 & 6 sided shapes until they bled off the sides. I made sure no shape was touching, or too close to the same color shape, so they're all spread out evenly. The 2nd large scale Cells painting I made (Cells MK2) looks very similar but I used a completely different process. For the second one I mapped it all out on my computer first then painted one whole set of the same color at a time. 

I originally posted this on an old YouTube which is still up bit no longer active. Before using the alias Frankie Mcfly I used the handle I Draw Weird Stuff. The song I used is "Singing' In The Rain" by Mint Royale (used without permission) and it synced up almost too perfect.

My friend Arely Cardenas, along with artist Jesse Hernandez, were commissioned to paint a mural during a Google conference, in collaboration with Local Color, a few months back and today it was donated to James Lick High School in East San Jose, CA. A faculty member walked me to the new building for the unveiling and as we walked thru the old halls I told her I went to summer school here in 1998. I went to Mount Pleasant High School, which was a couple miles away, flunked a bunch of classes my freshman & sophomore year and had to make them up during junior & senior year. It was that summer in between. MP didn't offer classes that summer so all our dumb asses went to Lick. 

That was also the summer The Beastie Boys released the album Hello Nasty. My friends and I went to go buy the CD when it came out at Circuit City (by Eastridge Mall) after school on a Tuesday.

Lately I've been uploading old drawings onto Instagram. I drew these in a sketchbook back in 2010. I wasn't drawing a whole lot at the time and these were exercises to fill up whole pages using ink without fucking up.

December 26th, 1980. That's the day I was hatched. My mom said if I was born on the Christmas she would have named me Jesus. Yikes! It's always been a shitty day for a birthday. When I was a kid my Christmas presents doubled as birthday gifts. When I got older, people were too tired & broke after the holidays. It's not fun. I once joked to my cousins about switching my birthday to different date and they threw me a surprise birthday party on that day, months after my actual birthday. That was pretty cool. Today I didn't feel like doing anything special. All I did was treat myself to some Mongolian bbq for lunch.

Bah humbug! Here are some old Xmas themed doodles of mine.

I'm heading out of town soon to hang with the family-bamily so I'm posting this now so I don't forgot and miss two in a row. Enjoy these old Xmas themed pics: Me as Santa, My homemade ugly sweater  with decapitated polar bear head and a Secret Satan gift tag. Happy Holidays from me to whoever's reading this shit.

8 years ago I joined my buddies non-profit group known at the time as Mexico Extravaganza. The year before I joined they put on a theater production called "Monarca" and they were gonna do it again. One of the scenes involved a large tree in the background. Someone had built them a tree the year before but they needed something bigger so they asked for my help. We went to the hardware store and bought two or three 2-inch thick 8'x4' styrofoam panels, paint and supplies. I think I shaped it with a knife and boxcutter then cut the grooves with my Dremel. I brushed on a lighter shade of brown inside the grooves then rolled on a darker brown on the surface to highlight the texture. When it was done it was 16' tall and about 10' wide at the bottom. In the end I think it was too tall so they had to chop off a few feet. I only built the trunk and someone else made the top. I don't remember if I got a chance to watch the show. I might if had to work that day. I think all I saw was the picture below.

I've been cleaning house these last few days. Knocking out some to-dos, clearing out email and deleting old shit. Today I came across the flyer for my first, and only, solo art show. (October 1st, 2011 at 8:00 PM,) an animated gif I made from a drawing (Plantimal,) and a crappy picture of the Hoverboard prop I made for my Marty Mcfly Halloween costume many-many moons ago (that's where Frankie Mcfly came from)

And in other news:

• The date for my next scheduled art show is Friday, May 1, 2020
• I've added a Contact page & form to this website

Last year I took pictures of drawings from old sketchbooks. Each book has it's own photo album/folder so I also took pictures of the covers for easy reference. They each have their own stickers & markups. 

I went to check out a space today for a possible art show next year. Nothing's official, so I won't share any more details other than it's in downtown San Jose. This is really exciting. I'll share more as things progress. 

The pics below are from my last, and only, solo art show at my brother's old studio. I took the pics the night before, when I finished hanging everything. I forgot what year it was. It might have been 10 years ago now.

I went to Smart & Final today to buy candy to have at my booth tomorrow at Orange Moon Salon. I had candy dish with Bazooka bubble gum that ran out at my last event. I chose Bazooka because they used to have little comic strips inside the wrapper when I was a kid. At some point they switched from comic strips to them to puzzles & games. I was excited to find out they made a Throwback version of the gum with old school wrapper and original comic strips featuring Bazooka Joe. 

I DJ'd a corporate event tonight and dance floor was empty soon after we opened it up. Not just the dance floor but the whole room eventually emptied. Everyone went outside to the patio. It's a beautiful venue with string lighting outside, fire pits, heaters, and a bar so I can't blame them. But it got me thinking about my first few years DJing. I used to hate when nobody danced. I felt like I failed to do my job. It would ruin my weekend, sometimes my whole week. What made it worse was playing fast, upbeat dance music to an empty dance floor. After a few more years of DJing I realized there will be occasional empty dance floors but instead of playing nothing but dance songs I've started playing more laid-back & less dancy music. Stuff I usually don't play during dance sets. I figure if people wanna lounge I'll play more lounge type music. Today I don't feel bad if no one wants to dance.

The video below is from a wedding I did exactly 3 years ago today. It was as hot as hell inside and everyone, except for one older gentleman, was hanging out outside or had already left. It was just this one man sitting in a chair directly across from me.  The song was the bride's request and it was just too funny so I filmed a bit of it.

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This is now two days in a row running a day behind with the Inktober drawings. I was supposed to draw & upload Day 13 tonight but I'm gonna do it tomorrow with Day 14. A twofer. Back to Day 12 - I already knew what I wanted to draw and that it would take me a long time to finish but I DJ'd a wedding Saturday night and didn't want to pull an all-nighter so I did it today. My inspiration and reference was an animated short from Sesame Street. I used to watch it all the time when I was a little kid growing up in the 80s. It's the pinball cartoon that teaches kids to count to 12. It's called "Pinball Number Count" and it was produced in San Francisco and vocals by the Pointer Sisters

​"1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 ,8, 9, 10, 11, 12"

There have been several times I've had screen printers try and sell me on using cheaper blank shirts for me to print my designs and I've told them this story: 

I've always been a big dude so finding cool shirts that fit has never been easy. The shirt I'm wearing in the picture below, taken almost 10 years ago, was one of the few tees that fit and had a cool graphic. I loved it. I probably only had it for a couple years then threw it out because it faded or the seams came undone, or maybe both. Soon after, I bought myself a few American Apparel blanks to see what the hoopla was about this brand. The material was super soft and felt better than almost every other shirt I owned. I loved them. I wore them all the time up until a couple years ago. The shirts are over 8 years old and they still look and feel great, The only reason I stopped wearing them was because I dropped from a 3X to a 2X. When it came time to choose which blank shirts I'd use for my Frankie Mcfly shirts the choice was simple, American Apparel. I want other people to love my shirts as much I do and I want them to feel great wearing them. Yes, they cost more than other brands but I feel it's worth it. 

My oldest memory of drawing was with my cousin Rick when we were little. My family went over to my aunt's house and Rick was drawing rocket ships. I thought it was pretty cool then I started drawing them too. After we went home I remember drawing even more rockets and hanging them in my parents bedroom wall.

Back late 80s & early 90s I used to love the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I watched the show, the movies, collected the trading cards, ate the pies with the green frosting, had  the bed set, the toys... all that shit. I loved them so much that I would draw them over and over until they sorta looked like they did in the cartoon. That's what got me into drawing.

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