Akiko’s dead blog - 1618-v1

What I saw in my rearview mirror - quickly sketched while driving, and painted at home.

I did this drawing from a sketch at the Hollywood for Ever cemetary.

I really liked the shadow and the piles of leaves and the drops of light rays in it. I attempted photoshop coloring from photos I took and from my memory of my impression at the site. I should be doing real painting at the site.

I’ve fallen behind on keeping up this blog. I am going to cheat a little here and update them on the dates that the works were produced. - so that it doesn’t look like I wasn’t doing anything for weeks.. -_-

All your favorite characters were on display at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. These are the real deal. More convincing than CG. Look at Yoda. Look at Mighty Joe Young.

Great concept art and illustation were also on display at the Lobby gallery.

The exhibit is over, but you can still get the info at
Academy site

Here’s a mass up-load of my “100 starts” painting pledge. In the past I’ve attempted similar pledges, but have failed and quit after a week or so by missing a day. This time, although I have in a way failed because I haven’t been painting every day as planned, I decided to keep going.

just in case people are wondering, these are excercises in painting objects of same color - everything in the set up is green. Enough with the greens.

I’m helping a friend with his flash based website.  I’ve been working on it all day.  I hate to admit that webdesign and scripting and computer stuff comes to me easier than creating an illustration or doing development work. That’s because the art of creating is more challenging, with endless possibilities. and it’s like competeing with your own self. You set your own bar. And the bar is always moving up.

well.. what ever.

I was taking a walk out tonigt and saw this huge moon. I think it was close to a full moon. This photo doesn’t do justice to what I saw - it was really huge. It also resonated with the round street lamps along side Orange Grove Blvd.

–According to spaceweather.com–

BIG FULL MOON: Tonight’s full moon is the closest and biggest of 2006. Why? The Moon’s orbit is lopsided: one side is 50,000 km closer to Earth than the other. The two sides are called, respectively, perigee, from Greek, meaning “close to Earth,” and apogee, meaning “far from Earth.” When the Moon turns full on Sept 7th, it will be on the close side at perigee, making it seem a bit wider than usual.

We went to see Pirates of the Caribbean” Dean Man’s Chest at the El Capitan Theater. I love the organ “Mighty Wurlitzer” and the performance. The organist played the themes song and it was so fitting.

They also had props and costumes on display.

The movie was a lot of fun although alittle overboard on the gags and CG. I was rather confused about the plots and legends.

A dinner at Mel’s completed our Labor day.