I woke up this morning and realized I forgot to post a blog entry yesterday. Last night I emailed the first drafts of the artwork for the award I was asked to design. For the past two days I'd been working on coming up with three different designs for the award. Once I emailed them I felt like my work was done for the day and called it a night. I'll post the designs once one gets approved and finalized. The next step will be to get it framed and deliver it to the organization that will be resenting it on a couple weeks.

Today I ate breakfast. Animated the arms on my little robot guy. Cooked my "household-famous" lentils, but was light on the lentils. Ate the lentils plus more food with the family. Watched the new Rick & Morty episodes. Read a couple comics and ate more food. The only thing left to do is post this blog entry and sleep off this food.

My friend Amanda emailed me yesterday and asked if I'd be interested in designing a graphic for an award her organization will be presenting in a couple weeks. This morning we discussed details over the phone. I put together a couple designs today and will work on at least one more to submit for consideration. More on that later. I also finished designing my robot in Illustrator. Tomorrow I'll import it into After Effects to animate. 

I was dragging ass all day. The most productive thing I did was buy groceries. The next most productive thing was go over some basic tutorials in After Effects. The tutorial, on object parenting, had all the resources and instructions was within the app. When I was done I started drawing objects in Illustrator to make my own animation. I'll try and knock it out tomorrow.

I recently posted these pictures on my Insta and said I might be revisiting & finishing them soon. The characters in the picture on the left were drawn with oil markers. The middle piece was done in spray paint and the canvases in the right picture are brushed on acrylics. Some are over 6 years old. I used to display them at my booth at Subzero but didn't sell any. They also kept getting damaged from always moving them around so I left them as-is. I might have an opportunity to display them all which means I need to finish them and maybe make more.

I drove back home from Ukiah today. It felt good to get out of the city and hang with my cousins Bob & Liz for a couple days. My souls battery was able to recharge bit. Now I'm looking forward to starting new projects and wrapping up old ones.

When I got into town yesterday it was already dark so I wasn’t able to see much. Today I was finally able to check out my cousin & his wife’s huge backyard in the woods and go on a short walk/hike near their home. Afterwards we went out for lunch, beers and groceries. At night we we lit the fire pit and gazed at the stars before coming in for dinner. It was a super chill, laid back Saturday.

I’m visiting my cousins in Ukiah for the weekend. I’m gonna be here till Sunday just hanging out. That is all.

Originally I thought about making zines from my Inktober drawings but recently I changed my mind and now I want to make books. Small hardcover books similar to Edward Gorey's. Black ink/print on white uncoated paper. Today I started researching how to get hardcover books printed and pricing. I would really like to get these made so I'm looking for a good vendor to make help make it happen.

I fired up After Effects tonight after watching some tutorials and made this little turd. It looked all crispy & clean before I exported it. Apparently there's a lot I gotta learn.

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 watched a few video tutorials today on how to use After Effects and InDesign. I want to create animations with After Effects for fun and to promote my brand online. InDesign is perfect for putting together zines or books, which I want to do with my Inktober drawings. Tomorrow I'll fire up After Effects and try to create something cool. I'll get to InDesign later. The Inktober zine/book project is on hold till I get the proper gear to take good photos of my drawings. 

I've been subscribing to Adobe Illustrator for a while. It cost about $21 per month. Last week I got an email from Adobe to upgrade to All-Apps for $30/mo. I think regular is $53/mo. I was already thinking of adding Photoshop, which is $10/mo, so I hopped on this deal. Today I downloaded Photoshop as well as Indesign and After Effects. I'm familiar with Photoshop but I've never used the other two. Indesign is for creating layouts, which might come in handy, and After Effects is for creating animations, which looks like it could be lots of fun. I became interested in After Effects after watching videos created by this guy named Cyriak on Youtube. I want to learn to make animations like these:

I DJ'd a daytime wedding today. The ceremony was at 11:30 AM and the event ended at 4:30 PM. In  my experience, it's super rare if anyone dances at a daytime wedding. I think it's partly because it's still bright as day outside and most people won't get on the dance floor unless it's dark. I also think people don't drink as much during day weddings, compared to evening weddings, and booze gets people on the dance floor. I didn't think anyone was going to dance after dinner/lunch today. What I thought was going to be the nail in the coffin was the venue's strict sound restrictions. The speaker volume had be brought down really-really low during open dance. The volume on the dance floor was so low you could talk over the music. All the guests outside and in the room next door couldn't hear my music or announcements because the volume was so low. No one was even in the room I was DJing in for the first 3-4 songs after opening up the dance floor. I went around and invited to people to come in and dance. The bride, groom and flower girl came in first and soon more people trickled in. It would get quiet and awkward at times while people danced so I got on the mic often to announce songs & give shoutouts I explained that the venue made me turn my speaker volume down but they could get loud and make noise. I somehow managed to keep them on the dance floor till the last song. It felt like I MC'd the dance set instead of DJing it.

I spent about 10 hours today painting this sucker. Gonna come back next week after it's completely dried incase it needs touch ups.

I only had a few hours today to get the materials, prep and draw the outlines using a projector and chalk. I left early to attend an event at Local Color and snapped a pic of my EMN mural while I was there. Tomorrow I'm going in early to knock out the Redwall logo.

Here's the mockup (top) of the Redwall logo I'm painting at my brother's Studio in Fremont tomorrow. I forgot we painted it on an actual red wall (left) in his San Jose location a few years back. I also designed the logo. The original pencil drawing (right) lives in on one of my old sketchbooks.

I few weeks ago I started wearing a new brand of hoodie that I've never worn before with the intention of using them as blanks for my brand. Here are some of my notes:

• The quality feels really good. It also feels thicker than other hoodies I've owned.
• The sizes run small. I wear a 2X t-shirt from the same brand that makes the hoodie but the 2X hoodies is really snug. A 3X might fit me better.
• The damn pull string for the hood kept coming out when I washed it. I swapped the original string for a fat white shoe lace but the lace got tattered after a few days from snagging on the zipper and looks like shit. I think I'm going to replace the original pull string and just tie knots at each end to prevent it from being pulled out.
• It sheds A LOT of lint. I think I've washed it 3-4 times now and it's still shedding. It gets caught in my stubble and on my clothes. Last week I washed and dried it with other clothes and they all had lint all over. I had to wash everything again and washed the hoodies by itself. 
  
• I'm still thinking about how I want to embellish my hoodies. I have some ideas but nothing solid. I hope I can get something ready and out the door while it's still cold outside.

The event today at Orange Moon Salon was a lot fun. I got to meet you new vendors and hang out with old friends. Many thanks to Catrina for inviting me and Ruth the salon owner for hosting the event. Check out the pics below 

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. 

If you're in San Jose and want to get an early start on your holiday shopping and support your local artisans... well come on down to Orange Moon Salon on 953 Park Ave. for the Luna on Park Artisan Market. I and other vendors will be there selling our wares. Also check out the salon on any other day to get your hair did. Ask for my friend Catrina or the salon owner, Ruth. They are super cool people and I would totally get my hair cut by them if I had hair.

For the past few weeks I've been in contact with a gentleman who stopped at my booth in October  during the First Friday Street Mrkt. He was with his son who talked with me for a little while about my San Jose shirts. They didn't buy anything but I gave them a flyer before they left. A couple weeks later the dad emails me because he wants to buy a couple shirts, and my online store showed I was sold out. He asked when I would have more available again because he wanted to buy a couple for his son and his son's girlfriend as Christmas gifts. I let him know that I was in the process of printing more and I contacted him as soon I as they were available. Today I delivered the shirts after his son left home because they're going to be a surprise. Just thinking about the excitement of unwrapping Christmas presents, and those presents being my t-shirts, totally made my day  :)

Today I packaged and sent out some online orders. I've listed the process below.
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• If the sale is made via the online store then the inventory will update automatically. If it's paid with cash or Venmo then I have to go manually online and remove the specific style, size & color from the inventory.
• I pull the shirts from the boxes and make note on the appropriate log sheet. There's a log for each shirt design & color. 
• I package the shirt along with stickers and any other extras inside the mailing bag. In the past I've made hand drawn thank-you cards. Today I included candy and comics leftover from Halloween.
• I use a template and Adobe Illustrator to make shipping & return address labels with my logo, website.
• If it's a local address, and I have the time, I'll drop off the package myself. If it's out of town, an apartment complex, or someplace I wouldn't feel safe leaving a package then I use the postal service. 
• Normally I would wait in line at the post office to pay for postage but today I bought a printable shipping label online. I still went to the post office and asked if everything looked alright. It was all good.
• After dropping off the packages I'll send a note to the buyer and let them know their shirt has been delivered or is on its way.

There's plenty of room to simplify the process but the truth is currently don't have a lot of online sales going out the door. I'm hoping to change that!

Here's a progress pic of the photocopy I've been sketching on. I cleaned up and inked some of the lines I drew yesterday.