I’ve just finished up a pair of sketchbooks, and I’ve posted them on my sketchbooks gallery on my website. These books are roughly from 2005 to present, and I felt very good wrapping them up. I am now moved into my new handmade book, and the paper is so much better than these Moleskines. I love the form of the Moleskines, but the paper is just crap. Watercolor fights to be absorbed, and ultimately fails. That is why there is such a lack of color in these books.
LINK: Jon Keegan’s Sketchbook Gallery

Living in the Prospect Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn, one of the biggest issues hanging over our community is the specter of Bruce Ratner’s planned “Atlantic Yards” development. By dangling the prospect of a glitzy new Frank Gehry-designed stadium (to be occupied by Ratner’s own New Jersey Nets), the pro-stadium minions have largely succeeded at convincing Brooklynites that it will be nothing but good for the community, and everyone should rally behind it. However, the stadium is just a small part of the whole plan, and this brings me to why you are seeing a post about this on invisibleman.
As a resident who will directly feel the impact of the development surrounding my home, I haven’t felt that I have seen an accurate portrayal of the sheer scale of this project, in the context of the existing neighborhood. Enter Google Earth.
I have been majorly geeking out over this amazing program for a few weeks now (as has my brother) , since they released a beta of the Mac version. One of the things you can do is place image overlays on top of the satellite imagery (like the PDF I used), and then draw polygons to extrude your own 3D buildings, knowing their heights (requires the use of the ‘Plus’ version, which is now available for both Mac and PC).
So I set up a placemark that will allow people to see this proposed development, to approximate scale (using the developers’ own figures), in context with the existing buildings. Also, make sure you check the “Buildings” checkbox below the viewer to see the heights of the existing buildings in grey.
So if you haven’t downloaded Google Earth yet you can do so here (both PC and Mac): DOWNLOAD GOOGLE EARTH.
Once you have that set up, you can download my Atlantic Yards placemark below…NOTE: if you click on the following link and get a garble of letters, just go back and right-click (control-click on the Mac) on the link, and save the file to your Desktop, then just double-click on the downloaded file.
DOWNLOAD THE ATLANTIC YARDS PLACEMARK

i am taking a class called drawing methods. the assignment was to “have an idea. start the idea. forget the idea. change the idea. alter the idea.” um. ok.
this started out as pencil drawing, then i scanned it and vectored it in illustrator, then printed it out and used pencil on the printout – responding to and drawing on the shapes… it was fun. i am thinking of silkscreening the first guy in on the second line. i like him. he is little billy and the giraffe…
ps i tried the custom photoshop brush thing with little billy and yes i agree – its pretty cool.

Making custom photoshop brushes has become habit forming.

Here’s some sketches and color studies done in my awesome new sketchbook which Keegan constructed for me. The paper is not too thin, yet takes pencil, ink and watercolor really well.

This picture really had my attention for some time. I guess it was the blue man made shape against the green bush. But truly it’s all about getting a burger or two at a fair price.

Fast food joints are a major excitement for me when I go to shoot. This picture is a simple landscape bush surrounding an Arbys in eastern Pennsylvania.

it’s been too long since i have posted. here is my latest sketchbook and a detail of the cover art. it is so satisfying making a case bound book. hopefully i’ll have some of what’s inside it to share next.
ps i agree w keegan on the moma/pixar show. it’s amazing to see such fun, innovative works created with gouache and colored pastel!
also – please consider submitting a book or print to my 2″ show…