Scotty Zabielski Sessioning at the Skathedral

I was really stoked on drawing this one.  I'd seen a couple photos online of this place, but never thought I'd get to draw it.  They call it the Skathedral, an abandoned church turned into a skatepark.  I added my favorite Joseph Campbell quote at the bottom:
"People say what what we're seeking in the meaning of life, I don't think that's what we're really seeking.  I think what we're seeking is the experience of being alive." 

 I'm pretty stoked on this one, it's one of my favorite drawings Ive done.

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Scotty Zabielski Drawings

Scotty Zabielski is an old school freestyler who I didn't actually know back in the day.  He ordered a series of drawing from me, riding pics of him. This topside no-footed can-can, for me, brings back memories of sessioning backyard ramps in the 80's and 90's.  Good times.

Here's another shot of Scotty with a footplant on the ramp.

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Sonja Axelrod Drawing

This drawing scared me.  My scribble style works best when I'm drawing photos with really hard shadows.  Well shot photos, especially portraits of people are much harder.  Sonja is a friend of my old school freestyle friend Alma Jo Barrera, and saw the pics I did for her.  She wanted a drawing of her for her husband as an anniversary gift.  Sonja loves her kid, her dogs, tattoos and weightlifting.  I drew her on a simple background with an oak tree in the background, which is a symbol of strength and persistence to me.  I was worried when I sent it out, but she liked it.  Happy Anniversary.

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Karina Petroni Duck Dive Drawing

I had been wanting to try a surfing drawing, and I wanted to draw a good looking woman.  With those two things in mind, I immediately thought of Karina Petroni, a pro surfer that I gave a couple of rides to in my taxi in Huntington Beach years ago.  I couldn't find a surfing photo of her that would really work with my scribble style, but I loved this duck dive shot.  For all you non-surfers out there, a duck dive is when a surfer dives under an incoming wave (like a duck does) while paddling out.  I drew this one on one of my "backing sheets," as I call them.  Since I work with Sharpie markers, I always put a sheet of paper under the one I'm drawing so the markers don't bleed through to the fresh sheets underneath.  I also test markers to see how fresh they are and if that's the color I need at the time on the edge of my backing sheets,  So the pages end up framed in black and little blobs of different colors.  I think they look pretty cool, so I keep these backing sheets to draw on later.

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Ryan Brennan Free Diving Drawing

Here's a drawing I did of Barspinner Ryan Brennan free diving a place called The Blue Hole.  A mid school BMX jumping legend, Ryan now runs a very successful trick team, but has been getting into free diving over the past year or two, which makes for some great pics on Facebook.  The top says,
 "There's another world... one breath away." 

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One More Prince Story

As I said before, I never was a total Prince fan.  His music provided the soundtrack for many high school memories, Purple Rain etched itself into those years.  But over the years, and he kept re-inventing himself, continually producing new music, fighting his record label, and keeping it all fresh, I gained more and more respect for him.  I was thinking about doing a Prince drawing, but I had a slew of other drawings lined up to do, so I was hesitating.  Then I woke up at 4am a couple days ago, started working on that drawing, and had this deep sense that I needed to pound it out in a single day.  So I did.  I went back to it today, and touched it up here and there, adding several more song titles (thanks for the help on those Sonja A., Maurice M., and Mike S.) and put some purple raindrops in it.  That's the finished drawing above.

When I wrote the big post about Prince the other day, I left out one story.  Several years ago, working as a taxi driver in Orange County (CA), I wandered by Fashion Island Mall in Newport Beach about bar close time.  An attractive woman in her 40's flagged me down.  She was the stereotypical Newport Beach cougar; great legs, saline enhanced bustline, Botox infused lips, and a college age guy in tow.  They got in, and she told me where they were headed, a little known part of Bayside, close to the entrance of Balboa Island.  She started kissing the guy, and at that exact moment, the sounds of The Foo Fighters covering Prince's hyper-erotic song "Darling Nikki" oozed out of the speakers.  It was literally like I was in a music video for the song, watching the story happen live.  Darling Nikki was luring her prey into her lair for the night.  As we pulled up in her driveway a few minutes later, the song was just ending.  She handed the guy some money to pay me, and strutted up towards her front door, keys already in hand.  She'd obviously done this before.  The young guy got out, leaned in the passenger window to pay me, and said, "Oh God, what am I in for?"  I replied, "You heard the song that was playing, right?"  He nodded.  "Have fun," I said as he ran to catch up with her.  OOooooooooooooh Nikki!

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A Robin and an Owl

This drawing request came from Paula, a friend I met in the late '80's or early '90's.  She wanted this as a gift for a friend, and that friend turned out to be 70's skateboard legend, Robin Logan.  Robin was from the Logan family that started Logan Earth Ski skateboards, and in the original photo, she's doing a kickflip variation.  I'm not sure what they called that trick then, because the word "kickflip" comes from Rodney Mullen in the late 70's, I think.  The owl has a personal meaning for her, which I won't go into.  Since Robin had her arms spread, I thought it made sense for the owl to have its wings spread as well.  I was given free reign on this one, and I ended up giving the owl some jewelry or decoration.  That's just where the feeling led me.  I'm always worried when I send these drawings out, because I never know how they'll be received.  But both Paula and Robin said they liked it, so I'm stoked. 

Randy and Ryder Lawrence

I first met Randy Lawrence in about '88 or '89, when he left his desert home and migrated to Huntington Beach, California.  We rode together at the HB Pier on the weekends, and were roommates at one point.  I was working at Unreel Productions at the time, and Randy was a bike shop mechanic.  My bike rattled and shook so much, that Randy used to tune it at night when I was asleep, just because the noise it made bugged the heck out of him and the other roommates.  We headed off in different directions in the 90's, and I split time between furniture moving and the TV business.  Randy wound up wrenching for pro motocross racers, including Jeremy McGrath during his Supercross champion years. 

These days Randy trains young motocross riders, and has a son, Ryder, is a wunderkind on two wheels.  The photo I used in the drawing above is from a couple years ago.  Ryder is doing a wall ride while Randy is launching a big fakie wall ride in the background.  There's a lot of fathers and sons (and daughters) riding BMX together these days, but few at the level these two do.  At the Old School BMX Jam at Woodward West a few weeks ago, Randy and Ryder did side by side backflips into the foam pit.  Not only can Ryder do that, but check out this video clip of him on a Mega Ramp, at age 7.  That's a 50 foot jump, folks.  Keep an eye on this kid.  Rydas Gotta Ride!

A Dementor Trying To Steal Your Dreams

In addition to doing a lot of drawing lately, I've been working on a writing project.  I started listening to several interviews with different writers while I was drawing.  I kept coming back to shows and interviews with J.K. Rowling, mostly because her story is so amazing.  There's one clip on You Tube where she talks about her depression while writing the first book, and how the Dementors in a later book were pretty much "depression personified."  Since that is an issue I've dealt with throughout my life, I thought doing a drawing of a dementor would be cathartic.  It was.  When I thought about the drawing, I asked myself what does depression really do?  One of the big things is that it robs us of our dreams.  So I drew my take on a dementor trying to suck the life out of dreams.  It's not the best drawing I've done, but I did it for myself, and it's a constant reminder of what can happen when I get down.  Sharpies on paper, 18" X 24".