Diary

Entry 2

Japanese restaurant (click on image to expand)

“Moss! Moss!” I was awakened yesterday by the sound of MF calling my name on my answering machine. MF is a Japanese photographer friend of mine who lives in Tokyo. We talk now and then on the phone. But because of the time difference, MF always calls me at the crack of dawn when I am still savoring my last moments of sleep. This time I picked up the phone. I couldn’t talk long, though, as I had to get up to finish my diary. MF said he’d call back, maybe today.

After my morning ablutions, I took a seat at my drawing table, manuscript in hand. National Public Radio had on its never-ending coverage of the Middle East, and yesterday, for some odd reason, I was not in the mood to hear it. I threw on a Carter Family CD and sketched some ideas for the illustration. It was a simple “spot” illustration for an advice column. I drew variations on a doctor looking at a woman’s feet.

Backstage (click on image to expand)

One recurring issue for an illustrator (and for all media, for that matter) is race. You can’t always draw people of the same race. Well, you can, but it’s important to realize what it means if you do. This was not addressed when I was in art school. Once I drew people “of color” in an illustration, and the the art director, who appreciated that I had, asked me not to do it the next week, for the sake of variety. It is always a concern, and for good reason.

For lunch, in honor of MF, I ate at a Japanese restaurant on Houston Street. As I waited for my bento box special, I finally had a chance to sketch. No other customers were in the restaurant, and the sushi chefs were out of view so I was forced to do a cityscape/still-life. Although I prefer to draw people (they’re funnier), I still can find pleasure in drawing inanimate objects. Ever since my freshman year at art school, when an instructor introduced to me Giorgio Morandi’s drawings of bottles and jars, my eyes were opened to the beautifully simple interplay between shapes and space.

Last night I played a show with my band, White Hassle. The show with went well. We played awesomely and the crowd seemed to enjoy it. Friends came despite the rain. I felt harried beforehand, though, because I had been busy all day. An illustration job I was to do for a local magazine was suddenly changed: New text was introduced that required new sketches and another day to finish. We changed horses midstream, so to speak. Or did we change streams? Either way, we’ll see today if I can make it across the stream (with or without the horses). The situation, however, demands that I “invoice” a “rush fee.”

Outside the club (click on image to expand)

Rain fell as I walked to the practice space before the show. There the band and I loaded our equipment and headed to the Knitting Factory on Leonard Street. As is usually the case when the band has a show, I had little time to focus on anything else. From the sound check to the guest list to drink tickets and the set list, my mind was occupied. Only when the last note was played, the applause had died down, and the groupies were done with us, did I finally have a moment’s peace. I dashed off a sketch of people milling about outside the club, and one inside of the dressing room.

Later I was able to liven up the sketches with Dr. Marten’s concentrated watercolors. These paints are more radiant than the ones I used in the sketches you saw yesterday, so the drawings end up being less nuanced. At 4 a.m., exhausted, I fell asleep.