I was up past sunrise making buttons from a couple of old comic books. They came out looking really good!

I spent more time today going through my old comic books and trying to decide which ones to keep. (It won’t be any of the books pictured below) It’ll be some cool first issue covers like Venom: Lethal Protector, Generation X and X-Men Alpha & Omega. I was a sucker for the foil covers and those have some great art on them. Unfortunately I didn’t take any pictures of them tonight.

Today I went through my collection of trading cards & comic books that I’d been saving since the early to mid 90s. Most of the trading cards are shit so I’ll be getting rid of them. I’ll probably keep some of the comics and reread them. I’m gonna take the rest of my 25+ year old collection to the flea market as part of this recent purge and hopefully others will find joy in them and bring them home.

Tonight I went through a tub full of my old sketchbook and labeled them with the years I drew in them. My oldest sketchbook was from my senior year in high school. 1999. I’m planning on scanning old drawings and using them in zines.

I worked on this some more and inked Donatello’s body

I'm in the early stages of purging a bunch of stuff I've accumulated over the years. Today I went through a bag of stuff I used to have pinned to my bedroom wall in the while I was in high school. Mid to late nineties. I threw away a bunch of crap but held on to these concert flyers. I didn't go to the Danzig or Pantera shows but I think I picked up these flyers around the time I went my first concert, to see Megadeth at the San Jose State Event Center in 1995.

Tonight I inked a little bit of Michelangelo from a sketch I drew last year. The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were one of the main reasons I started drawing, back in the late 80s & early 90s. I liked the cartoon so much that I would draw the turtles over & over to try till they sorta resembled the cartoon.

Today I met with local artist & musician Ben Henderson, a Local Color member, to talk about music for Local Color's 31 Skulls fundraising campaign/event. Last week Ben recorded a sick 80s style synth recording and shared it on Instagram. I DM'd him and told him about my idea for promoting 31 Skulls like an 80s horror movie and that his music sounded perfect for it. Today I visited him at home and he recorded and produced a minute-long song in a couple of hours. Now I need to attach this audio to some video. I would love to film a campy 80s horror movie scene, complete with grainy footage, and use it in our fundraising campaign this year.

​I attached a snippet of the song below.

My buddy, Jon, and I went to Vasona Lake and walked the Los Gatos Creek Trail Monday afternoon. We were in my car, drinking beers, laughing & reminiscing of good times for at least 20 minutes before hitting the trails. Once we got going we saw an ice cream truck in the parking lot. The ice creams were expensive at $5 each but we bought them anyway. The last time I bought ice cream from an ice cream truck (I was a kid) the most expensive ones were $1. I picked the WWF bar and as I walked away I thought I saw Mark Zuckerberg in line to buy ice cream.

A few friends & family received their t-shirt orders today and I started sketching ideas for a big new project coming up! More on that later! 

....F R A N K I E.
The red & blue USA prints give me an Alpine White kind of vibe. They remind of the Nestle candy bar wrappers from the 80s. I should do an Alpine White version of the map with a white background and blue states to make it a complete set.

I finally went through all the drawings and sketches I've been hoarding over the years and organized them into piles. One pile is old drawings from middle school & high school, making them 20-25 years old. The other piles are of monsters, aliens, head things, shape things, graffiti, video games as well as a large stack to trash or repurpose. The reason I went through all of them today was to look for an old sketch I did in high school of my buddy Victor's band name, QMI. He ordered a t-shirt of mine yesterday so I wanted to surprise him with a custom button when I ship it to him so I redrew the artwork digitally and colored it in. The design might be a little too detailed for a 1.5" button but I'll find out tomorrow when I print it out.

I drew myself as the titular character from the original Donkey Kong video game just for funsies. Fun Fact: Mario made his first appearance as “jumpman” in the Donkey Kong arcade back in 1981.

I did this just for fun. When I was a kid I loved Ninja Turtles so much I remember drawing them over & over till they looked sorta like they did in the 80s-90s cartoon.

I spent all day cleaning and at night drew myself dancing with a broom, like Turbo in the movie Breakin’.

It feels like an adventure, exploring new places with the help of a map. Instead of carrying a sword I got a small pocket knife. My phone’s gps serves as my compass. Grant Park has wild pigs and Hyrule has moblins. Today (Wednesday) I came across a hallowed out tree that looked like the the entrance to level 1 from the original Legend of Zelda for the NES. I was wearing my Zelda: Wind Waker mask today too FTW.

I recently bought prints from local artist homie, Eddie Ramirez, and the package arrived today. My drawing desk was the only available space that wasn’t cluttered so I opened it there and took advantage of the mounted camera & lights by filming an unboxing video. I think unboxing videos are lame in general but I thought, “what the heck?” I need to get more use out of my rig and was planning on sharing pictures of Eddie’s prints on Instagram anyways. Two birds, one stone. The three prints are of local San Jose retail store signs that have been around for as long as I remember.

Check out Eddie’s work at eddieramirezart.com and on Instagram @eddieramirezish

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.

Inking for Hearts & Stars is complete. Now I'm on the last level, Eyes & Mouths. I saved the hardest one for last. This one has a lot more detail than the previous two and will require a few different size pens. I tested them out today. My main pen will be the Copic marker but I'll also be using most, if not all, of the different size & shape Microns. Wish me luck!

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

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.

Today was a super lazy day. I didn't go to sleep till around 5:00 AM this morning and woke up with just enough time to eat get ready to watch a live taping of the Retro Game Guys Podcast in Downtown Campbell. I've been listening to these guys for months. It's four guys that play old video games to see who gets the highest score. They also dig up cool facts and other fun tidbits about the games. Today they covered the game Contra for the original 8-bit Nintendo and even raffled off on old cartridge. It was fun to watch and meet the guys after the show. The Contra podcast episode drops next Wednesday but you can watch the live video recording here.

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.