I will draw for food

It's not unusual for me to vacation alone. It doesn't bother me one bit. In fact, I commonly become more social and speak with complete strangers. I will also find myself happy to be dining alone with a sketch book and pen and draw my surroundings as I wait for my meal. Don't misinterpret what I write, I love people and hanging out with friends and my loved one, but I am just as content being alone with my thoughts and some art supplies.Left: A local restaurant in West Chester, PA called Penn's Table. A stack of highchairs and a view outside.

Center: Drawn during my first visit to Madrid, Spain. I enjoyed my meal so much that I returned to eat for three more consecutive days. The food and service was so good that I didn't understand why I was the only customer there. I eventually found out they had only been open for three months.

Right: Drawn during a visit to Kansas City, MO. Wherever I visit I always try to find a good place for breakfast. I knew I couldn't go wrong with a restaurant named "Simply Breakfast."

Left: During a visit to Chicago, I fortunately discovered this great genuine diner that probably hasn't changed in decades. I got up so early that I had a lot of time to kill before the Art Museum opened. Therefore, I invested more time to create this drawing.

Right: Drawn on Madrid, Spain during my recent visit. I love the broken bread I had been snacking on as well as the salt and pepper tray drawn on the page. The taller bottles are for Olive Oil and Vinegar. The only salad dressing available in the majority of Spain.

Sketch Book Page

Introduced to Illustrator CS5 (and new laptop)

With mixed emotions, I invested in a new laptop, a Macbook Pro. I have grown up with PC computers, but because of my need to upgrade to Adobe CS5 I questioned whether or not both my Desktop and laptop would be able to handle the upgrade. Both systems being maxed out in RAM and processor speed, it was best to invest in a new system as well as convert to Macintosh computers. I have spent the better part of two weeks transferring files and learning the differences between the PC and Mac.

Along with learning the Macbook Pro, I have been playing around with the new Adobe CS5. So far, I have not seen too many changes in the formats of the programs I commonly use (Photoshop and Illustrator) that would off throw a regular user. Adobe has added a few more tricks and options, but nothing I see that will revolutionize the way professionals will work. I only hope students of Adobe CS5 will not get lost in the overwhelming clusters of filters and options.

My first project with CS5:

I spent the better part of a day creating an invitation for a Birthday party. My client is a huge fan of dragonflies and therefore requested the invitations be designed with dragonflies.

Despite knowing I could easily create these dragonflies in Illustrator from start to finish. Possibly even saved a little time, as well. I still preferred starting with a pencil and ink with a brush.

My ink drawings converted to vector shapes. I love the Live Trace feature in Illustrator. And Live Trace respected these ink drawings as well and did a very good job.

The finished design.