More sketches. I think this was on the train from Berlin to Amsterdam in the summer of 2011. A few more are on my blog… http://nycsubsketch.blogspot.com/2013/04/a-little-bit-of-berlin.html

Catching up on scanning sketches while I get some bigger things done in the background. This is a sketch from 2011 that I never scanned. I have a few more on my sketchblog http://nycsubsketch.blogspot.com

Finishing things up, here are a few sketches from my trip last year.

The first one is a page of quick sketches from the Marunouchi Building in Tokyo, the second is a portrait of my best friend in Tokyo, Shohei and the third is a page from Seoul, South Korea.

So today’s the big day. MoCCAFest! I’ll be at table A28. See you there!

Starting to set up for MoCCAfest

There’s actually not a lot in this sketchbook because it starts close to when I left Japan and returned to NYC. However, it is not the end because I still end up in Japan at least once a year and I have one more sketchbook from my trip last year.

This was from the plane to Narita from Fukuoka.

Ugh, tomorrow will be the start of a busy weekend…MoCCA here I come!

This sketchbook starts out in 2010 and from this point on, things started to slow down for me as far as art goes. The reason was because I was diagnosed with cancer in March of that year. Of course, I recovered healthwise, otherwise I wouldn’t be here typing this but not sure I would say that my ambitions as an artist have fully recovered.

Anyway, while I was sick I couldn’t really do much because the chemo made me too weak to even venture outside. When I had the energy I would sometimes go to the local arcade (shopping area) and just hang out. One of the things that I would think about during these trips was “Obachan/Obaachan”. In Japan, middle-aged and elderly woman are a force to reckon with and I watched them with fascination since they were the basically the only people hanging around the arcade near my apartment. Huge hats, every manner of UV-blocking clothing and apparati, traveling in packs…I always wondered when was the day that one decided to become an “obachan”.

This drawing was not from the arcade, but it reminded me of my “obachan watching” days. I hope that doesn’t sound too creepy…

In the summer of 2009, I went back to NYC for vacation, so most of my fifth sketchbook had sketches from the NYC subway. The other half continued on from my time in Kyushu.

This is from Hakata Station, which was the central station for Fukuoka and the station that I always came into from Tosu. This is a ramen stand that I saw across the platform while waiting for a train and it seemed pretty apropos since it Hakata/Fukuoka is pretty famous for its ramen. 

On to sketchbook no. 4. At this point, I had moved to Kyushu and lived in Tosu, Saga Prefecture but spent most of my free time in Fukuoka City. As you can see, I continued trying to work on the technique that was featured in the last post. I like this just because of it’s simplicity. I’m a real fan of “economy of line”.

This is from my third sketchbook while in Japan. I was still in Osaka at the time, but I wanted to try a watercolor sketchbook to experiment with a new technique. This was likely drawn while on the Senboku Line.