Today was my first day running in 17 days. Two weeks ago all the gyms in the county were ordered to close due to the coronavirus and I'd been working out and running on the treadmill three days a week since January. I've still been able to workout at home and have been going for walks when it wasn't raining. Today was beautiful and a perfect day for a run at Lake Cunningham park. I did my usual routine, walk 5 minutes then run 5 minutes, walk 5, run 5... for an hour. That's 30 minutes walking and 30 minutes running. It's been a year and half since I ran on concrete, I'm used to the treadmill. My feet and legs are beat. I'll be feeling it tomorrow.

Today I spent a few hours working on a couple large drawings, "Hearts and Stars" & "Eyes and Mouths." H&S needed a little tweaking but E&M needed a lot more work. They both look much better than before and are a lot closer to getting inked for real, by hand, not digitally. I just wanna be done with these at this point. 

That piece I started yesterday, I'm still not done with it. It may take a few days to knock it out so here's another sneak peek.

I'm inking another old drawing of mine. I don't want to stay up all night to finish it, like I did with yesterday, so I'm gonna do it tomorrow. Here's a detail of the WIP

I pulled an all-nighter to get this done. The original sketch is almost 8 years old.

Tonight I inked a character I sketched in 2018

Here's another old sketch that I redid on the iPad today. I don't remember why I sketched this in the first place. Maybe I wanted recycling to sound more metal. I don't know.

In San Jose, we've just started the 2nd week of sheltering in place. I'm trying to stay busy, active and creative during the downtime. Trying not to stress too much about this pandemic. 

With all the downtime, I decided to get started with spring cleaning. I'm on that Marie Kondo sparking joy shit. Every year or so I go through all my crap and get rid of the stuff I don't need. Today I pulled a stack of old Thank You cards from brides & grooms I DJ'd weddings for. Sometimes I do good work. 

You know, that mouse guy...

I had the idea for this last year. I drew it out in Adobe Draw but didn't like the way it came out so left it alone and forgot about it. I still had the reference pic on my iPad so I gave it another go tonight and was much happier with the result this time around. 

I started inking this a couple nights ago and colored it tonight. It's based on a drawing a made in 2014 and another sketch I made soon after that. I got the idea from the many different ways we express ourselves on social media as we stare blank faced at our phones. 

Another digital doodle done on Adobe Fresco. I'm still getting a hang of it but liking this app a lot better than Adobe Illustrator Draw.

I was playing with the different brushes in Adobe Fresco for the iPad. It lets you draw/paint with vector and bitmap brushes. It also has Live Brushes that work like watercolors and oil paints. I messed around with those a little but everything I made looked like shit. I liked how the halftone brush looked so I used it as my background for this pink demon dood.

Looks like another thing.

I spent this morning reading over the EDD website (California's unemployment dept) to learn more about filing an unemployment insurance claim. I've already lost 3 DJing gig and 2 vending events due to coronavirus concerns so I figured it was time to file. After reading all the info, I called EDD and the recording said they were experiencing large volumes of calls and I wouldn't be able to file over the phone and to use the website instead. Doing it online took me a while and don't think I filled it out correctly. I'm really hoping someone calls me back. While I was on the EDD website I couldn't find "Mobile DJ" as a work-type, but saw that "Ritual Circumciser" was. Weird. After filing with what EDD I called my bank to discuss my car loan. I also called my credit card company, my health insurance provider, Covered California and my auto insurance provider. Since all events are canceled I'm not going to have much, maybe not any, income for a few months. Every person I spoke to was very helpful and understanding of the situation. Hopefully things get better soon and it's safe to go to events and things go back to normal. If not I might need to start a new side hustle performing ritual circumcisions.

The updated Coronavirus guidelines & rulings are requiring gyms to close for a few weeks. Lately I've been going 3 times a week to use the treadmill. Luckily I can go run & walk outside, as long as it's not raining. Here's the time lapse from the Adobe Fresco app, with some music, of the drawing I inked last night. 

I digitally inked this sucker tonight. I used Adobe Fresco on the iPad, which is a replacement for Adobe Illustrator Draw. I've been using Draw for a couple years. It's what I used to draw the vector based graphics for my t-shirts. Fresco is taking a little getting used to but it seems to be a much better app than Draw.

I got home from DJing an event last night and wasn't in a good mood. I got distracted and totally forgot to write a blog post before bed.

I figured it was only a matter of time until weddings started getting canceled due to Covid-19/Coronavirus concerns. Tonight I found out the wedding I was supposed to DJ in two weeks got postponed. Last Friday the fundraiser I was working got canceled that very same morning. DJ events at this time of year are already slow to begin with. So are the festivals where I sell my shirts. Two events that I was going vend at next month also got canceled this week. I know I shouldn't complain and I will try and remain optimistic, but damn, most of my income comes from working events. I'm going to try and file an unemployment insurance claim next week. I'll also need to contact my bank regarding my car loan and my credit card provider to see what my options are for late payments. Money is gonna tight the next few weeks, or months. Aside from that I'm doing my best to stay healthy and positive during this weird & uncertain time. I hope you and your loved ones are too. Let's hope we get out from under this soon.

Here are pictures of all the stickers I've made so far. All of them except for the SJ stickers and the new pink, yellow & blue ones were printed on paper. They weren't meant to be used outside and weren't waterproof. They were inexpensive so I'd give one of each (5 total) to people who bought shirts and at events I'd give one away for free to whoever followed me on Instagram. When I ran out of the paper stickers, around the time I made my SAN JOSE shirt, I made the SJ sticker using the same design. The SJ stickers are 4"x4" and were printed on vinyl but not UV coated, which means they'll probably hold up fine indoors but would eventually fade in the sun. I still have some of these and have been giving them away with t-shirt purchases as well. I've also sold a few. The new pink, yellow & blue Frankie Mcfly kiss-cut stickers I got yesterday might be my favorite so far. The whole thing is 5.5" wide by 3.5" tall and is UV coated so it should survive the sun & the rain. I'm still figuring out pricing for the new stickers and creating bundles with the SJ stickers and t-shirts so stay tuned...

I received them tonight. I'll be adding them to the online store soon. They'll be for sale but you can also get one free with any t-shirt purchase. They are laminated vinyl and they're kiss-cut so you can just peel off my name, but if you're like me you'll also want to slap that extra piece somewhere too.

Today I and counted all my shirts after the Local Color Daytime Market on Sunday and updated my inventory online. This is the part of the job that sucks the most so I'm always trying streamline and improve the process to make it faster and easier to do. Everything from the way the shirts are folded, stacked, stored & logged has had some thought put into it. I recently made changes to how I log the info so I can see how many total shirts I have in stock per design/style and made it so I can quickly figure out how many of each size & style has gone out. Making those little tweaks are fun and the data it provides is valuable. 

I didn't just tweak the artwork on my EMN design but I also made a minor change to the size labels too. My original label (bottom pic) had a tiny logo under my name so I made it a little bigger and moved my name up  a bit to give it more room.

Side note: This will be my first time printing 3X size EMN shirts. Last time I only made Small thru 2X. I'm a big guy, and I used to wear 3X, and it used to be tough to find cool shirts in my size so I want to make sure I have my plus-sized peeps covered.

I had so much fun at Local Colors Daytime Market today. I hung out with my artist/vendor buddies, saw friends who came to visit, made new friends, got a surprise visit from my cousin Rick and his wife Sabrina, drank some delicious coffee from Tono Coffee Project followed by some IPAs, brought home a new t-shirt, sketchbook & button, sold a few of my t-shirts & stickers, and ended the day with a big ol burrito before heading home. In the next day or two I need to count & fold my shirts, update my inventory and make sure my gear is prepped for the next gig which is San Jose Day on April 11th.

I posted about this a week ago but the event is tomorrow so here it is again... come to Local Color - Keystone at 491 West San Carlos Street (formally Keystone Restaurant Supply) in San Jose from 11am to 3pm for the local artisan daytime market. I'll have my San Jose t-shirts for sale and a bunch of other artist friends will have their wares available too. There's also a food truck and coffee service by Tono Coffee Project so come thru and "buy somethin' will ya!"

I was supposed to DJ an event tonight but I got text this morning saying it was canceled due to Coronavirus concerns. Bummer, because I really needed the cash. This time of year is already pretty slow for DJing. I did wake up to some good news though, an online t-shirt order came in. Before I got notified about the event being canceled I was planning on just bagging the shirt and sending it off. After getting word that I wasn't gonna be working I started drawing a Thank You card for the t-shirt order. I drew my head first then the tentacles & letters with pencil. Then I inked it with a couple Micron pens and fixed a few mistakes with Pro-White. When I was done I threw it in the bag with the t-shirt and a couple SJ stickers and delivered it. The customer lived 15 minutes from home so I figured I'd save him a couple days of waiting for it to arrive by mail.