Mar 30, 2009

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Earth Hour Experience

It was rather refreshing to turn off all the lights and appliances (except some essentials) and sit in the living room with a few candles and the dynamo LED lamp. I didn’t step outside to see if anybody else was participating around us, we simple set to enjoy the hour.

Our little chihuahua dog had what could have been a puzzled face as he saw us turn everything off and go dark pretty much, however he soon found comfort next to me (after I sat down) and a few minutes later he was snoring away.

Prior to the appointed hour I was reading the comments left in various websites about this event, some wondered if doing this would make any type of impact, if it was just a waste of time and some thought it would be too much of an inconvenience.

Personally I think that anything we do can impact our environment, our surroundings either on a positive or negative way, we all have a choices to make, as simple as disposing of  a candy wrapper on the street or a garbage receptacle or by reducing the usage of electricity for one hour.

In our personal experience it felt like being around the fire on a camping trip, a time to reflect about our current lives, that which we take for granted, and our dependence on modern technology… it was so quiet and peaceful!

It was too dark to use watercolors, instead I did this quick sketch of the table that was in front of me  (micron/moleskin).

earthhour_sketch2

Kitaro – Matsuri

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Mar 27, 2009

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Earth Hour 2009

Just in case you have not heard, the WWF (World Wildlife Fund) is urging people of all ages, nationalities and background to turn off their lights for one hour on March 28th 2009 8:30PM (your local time), their goal for 2009 is for one billion people to participate.

3259590137_3560ac298e

http://www.earthhour.org/home/

Maybe ill try to do some art during that time using a dynamo LED lamp I got for Christmas, we shall see.

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Mar 11, 2009

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Finally Tombow Mono 100 Pencils

Well life has been pretty busy lately at work so the little time available has been spent doing something else other than sketching for distraction, you ever heard of that game… World of Warcraft? lol

Seriously, I have been trying to locate the Tombow Mono 100 pencils locally and as you read in the previous post, while I did find them one had to purchase the whole set and only one grade. Well, I encountered someone online that lives in Japan that was able to purchase specific grades, so I got a few for my wife and I… they arrived yesterday.

They look very nice!  so far I have only used the H grade on my perpetual quest to sketch my long hair chihuhua dog, if he would only stop moving 😉

Hope everything is going well for you outhere. Remember SketchCrawl #22 is just around the corner so hope to see you at the forums and/or around San Francisco next month.

mono100pencils

Thank you for your visit.

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Mar 4, 2009

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WonderCon 2009 and Kinokuniya San Francisco

This past weekend I had the opportunity to attend WonderCon 2009 and after that I took a quick trip to the Kinokuniya Store in San Francisco, CA.

Saturday was practically a 12hr day for me, from getting up at 7am to getting back home at 7pm, and a lot of fun and discovery in between.

I purchased a ticket in advance, so that saved me from standing in one of two lines inside of the Moscone Center. There was however a very long line outside that wrapped around the block on the way in. Good thing it wasn’t raining at that time.

What was it like? it was great, initially I didn’t see great costumes but as the day progressed I got to see some really cool stuff, like this transformer below.

From SFRichardT @ Flickr.

Another cool thing to watch was our good old friend R2D2 (a couple of droids actually) yeah they attract the attention of everybody old and young.

From veggierebel @ Flickr

The following site contains more info about these droids, www.artoo-detoo.net – now there is another way to be creative.

Mark Hamill

From bonniegrrl @ Flickr

Carrie Fisher
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However I didn’t get a chance to see Sergio Aragonés, when I visited his booth he was not there. I recall I purchased a couple issues of the comic GROO (which I found yesterday along with my old incomplete collection of Thor – from 1984 – amazing that so many years have passed and I still have them)

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As you can see this was one busy day! I also had a chance to attend a few panels / presentations and visit Enrico and his  friends (in two separate booths).

Below is a copy of Mia by Enrico and a copy of Rose and Isabel comic by Ted Mathot – read both comics non-stop in one sitting, and now I want to know what happens next.

I have been following Ted’s blog for a while and just recently started to read some of his old posts. There is quite a lot of information there to learn from  (thank you for taking the time to share).

mia_rose_isabel

Lastly, I managed to take a quick trip to the Kinokuniya store in San Francisco, with the only mission of finding those pencils (I was also out of time, so it had to be a quick visit).

I found both brands I was looking for but for the Tombow Mono 100, you have to purchase the whole box and they didn’t have the grade I wanted,  so I just purchased (Mitsubishi Hi-uni) pencils, two for my wife and two for me… to try them out (2B and 5B).

unipencils

That was one busy Saturday!

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