After trying to coordinate our schedulees for almost a year "The Smook" [reddot in links] and I finally managed to get it together and
sketch at the zoo today. Lots of Fun, Heres some of sketches, hope to post some more soon .







Since last we met Mike got himself a real fancy pants camera,,here he is in ACTION!


At one point as we were heading on up to the Ostrich section I started telling Mike about how Johnny Cash almost got killed
by an Ostrich who attacked him and he had to fight him off. We got closer and saw 4 baby ostriches on a hill and as we walked closer to take pictures, ol Papa Ostrich crested the hill and came charging at us and stood angry and flapping and rearing when he hit the rock wall. I stepped back and Mike kept taking pictures and I think both of us were surprised how close we were. The seperating stone wasn't all that high.
Well someone yelled at us and as it turned out we had stumbled behind restricted lines which explained our good view.











Hopoefully it won't be so long before our next sketching out as its always nice to sketch and catch up with the Smook
and I also left my coffe mugg in his car

And what I happened to be listening to as I loaded up this entry...

My wife, Alison is a chef and recipe developer and this month a book
she co-wrote hit the shelves. Way to go honey!
I can't say it was a tough job being the guinea pig for tastings in this book
Actually during one tasting party we had with friends i got restless
with interval between cocktails and ended up concocting a couple myself.
One of them made it into the book and even snagged a coveted color
photo. Not to take the thunder from my honey but heck it is my blog
so heres a photo of the "FIzzmopolitan"

I had a nice surprise a couple of days ago when I found out artist Franc Reyes had a book out.
I haven't seen Franc in years. He worked at the same studio I did when i was a animation greenhorne and we were designers
on the same show. I loved Franc's bankground designs and he introduced me to lots of work of a couple of artists I still love, Frank Brangwyn and Sorolla. I remember one time he generously brought in some old Phillipine comic books with early work of Alfred Alcala that I still have photocopies of that were just beautiful. These really cool sciencefiction and fantasy stories which were for me ,some of the best work of his. We used to talk about old illustrators something i always enjoy. Frank is a fabulous painter and I remember going to a group show he was in and seeing his paintings for the first time, wonderful.
Watching Franc work at that time is a great memory for me and seeing glimpses of some of his work over the years since he moved away from Toronto is a real treat.
you can see some of it here too.
http://arikstudio.web.aplus.net/

I happened to be digging through some old stuff and I came across some old oil painting life studies,
good fun and something I haven't managed to squeeze in the time for lately