here’s an acrylic painting on canvas that i did recently. i caked on the paint, gives the process more of an oil-paint feel.

so… i started to take a knitting class here at the (local) fairmount art center… which is actually through this neat store (rosies yarn cellar) and i am finding it hard to do anything else but knit…SO, tonight i took the night off from knitting to do work, and somehow ended up scanning in my first (ever) knitted project… and do something with it. (i am now on my second… which is a hat. stay tuned…) fast forward 2 hours. has anyone else out there “live traced” their knitting??? also, i highly recommend making your own custom brushes in illustrator. its fun. i made some calligraphic ones for this drawing…
PS i have to link to this. its too fun not too. oh the joy of bookbinding! 🙂

that’s alot of barb! i’m in the process of moving (my apartment and my studio)… so i havent been able to do much recently, but i was just perusing my files from the workshop i took in june and i definitely want to start using the techniques i learned. oy – where did the summer go???

This past Saturday was “Hands on New York Day” with the volunteer organization New York Cares. Along with the Manhattan Young Democrats and my girlfriend Kristina we had fun painting murals at the Bronx Leadership Academy. Someone had lightly sketched out the Moby Dick image and we came along and painted it in. New York Cares provides volunteer support to schools and parks in the five boroughs and is a worthy group to help out with.

The Village Voice is having a giveaway for this Gibson Les Paul guitar. Gracing the surface of this guitar is the 3 headed Siren girl who I’ve been illustrating for the Voice for the last 6 years. This drawing was actually from the first year of the Siren Music Festival. Feel free to enter to win the guitar here.

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

Some of the greats which came to my attention last year – starting with 3 great albums:

Matisyahu: Live at Stubb’s– This hasidic reggae/dancehall artist from Crown Heights is no novelty act. This live album showcases his powerful backing band and a rapid-fire yet soulful voice.
Oranger: New Comes and Goes– Strong 4th album from this Californian outfit … Radio Wave has been one of my favorite songs of this past year.
Dungen: Ta Det Lugnt– Swedish Psych/Folk/Rock which sounds like it was pryed from an early seventies time capsule. Brother J and I caught them at the Bowery Ballroom and they were damn impressive.

Orson’s Shadow– A play showing at the Barrow St. Theater in Greenwich Village. A great true story about the dueling egos of Orson Wells and Lawrence Olivier.
Good Night Good Luck– David Strathairn puts in an incredible performance in this important film.
Cloud Atlas– As Keegan and Kerry could attest – an engrossing, genre-jumping novel.
Superman The Movie– My favorite rediscovered movie of the past year.

New York Magazine has published a holiday shopping map of Brooklyn’s Fifth Avenue carefully compiled and playfully penned by MY invisibile woman, Corrie Pikul. The map is accompanied with wonderful illustrations by Steve Murray. Although his website does not reveal much (or even confirm that it’s the same guy) it appears that this Steve Murray contributes to a illustration and design blog very similar to our own. Check out the shopping then check out the sites. If you do end up buying gifts in the stores mentioned, please say you saw the piece in NY Magazine. Then maybe they’ll give Corrie some free stuff!

I work down at the World Financial Center. I walk past Ground Zero on the way to the office. It’s a pretty antiseptic desolate stretch of concrete on the south side of the pit.
Each day throngs of tourists pour through there taking their pictures in front of…nothing. I understand why they come to see it. But they come and walk through this corridor desperate for some scratch of tribute, some artifact of sympathy. There’s almost nothing there. A few keychain lanyards, a few old photos duct taped to the wall, and scattered about…some crappy high school poetry. And this is what the tourists deem picture worthy.
To be clear, I am not poking fun at the grieving teen who may write said poetry. I am just commenting on the absurdity of taking a picture of it. The good news is that the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation just announced plans to open a “Tribute Visitor’s Center” next to the firehouse on Liberty Street. I think this will go a long way in giving these people something worth seeing.