Washington DC in Fall

This past weekend, Chris and I took a trip to visit my grandma and my aunt in Washington DC/Virginia. We had a wonderful time catching up with family! They are about 2 weeks ahead of New York in fall, and it's so beautiful there.

The treetops are beginning to rust, with some trees blooming in bright gold and red, while the rest of the forest stays the bright green of summer.

I realized how starved for trees we are here in New York after seeing how immense the forests are in Virginia. It feels like they go on forever.

Fall is one of my favorite times of year. You feel like you have to enjoy each warm day like it's your last, and join the trees one last time on parade before winter.

Gay Marriage In New York!

Today was the first day for gay marriage in the state of New York, and I went down to the City Clerk's office in Lower Manhattan to draw the event. Here are a few drawings from the day, but to read and see more, visit my gay rights illustration site:

A Picture For 1000 Voices

Gay Pride Seattle

More from my trip with Dalvero to the West Coast! Our first three days were in Seattle, which happened to coincide with Seattle's gay pride parade! I was very excited to be able to do a reportage of the parade, especially after the gay marriage bill passed back home in New York (yay!), and I wasn't going to be there to celebrate.

The Rainbow Flag was atop The Space Needle for the second year in a row, as a response to a fund-raising effort by the Seattle gay community for local causes and an overwhelming outcry when the Space Needle announced it would not be displaying the flag this year. As I waited for the parade, I sat next to a sweet lesbian woman and her preteen daughter (who pointed out every mostly nude person that walked by to her mother). It was cute seeing a family that had made Pride (nudity and all) a family tradition.

The parade began, as New York's parade does, with the sputtering engines of the Dykes on Bikes. The crowd erupted in a roar of cheers as they circled around, studded leather jackets flying in the wind (among other things).

The Dykes were followed by a troop of drag queens in sky-high platform heels and gothic black dresses. The crowd itself was no less diverse, with it's share of...everything, shouting and cheering as the parade marched down the street.

Soon after was the familiar explosion of muscley male gyration, rainbow flags, and even more drag queens.

Some new additions from Seattle were the completely nude, painted rollerbladers and bike riders and another, more "free-wheeling" Dyke on a Bike.

But just as with the New York parade, for every muscle-Daddy in assless chaps and a leather g-string, there is a sweet moment between two people that are just happy to be out holding hands with the person they love.

What I love about Pride parades, is that it brings out all facets of the gay community, and makes them visible.

You can see everyone from young gay boys, who may be out for the first time...

...to an older lesbian couple who have been together, and watching the parade for 20 years.

So congratulations to New York on making a huge step towards equality, and good luck to Seattle's gay community! Here's hoping you're next!

West Coast Travels!

I just returned from an amazing trip with Dalvero Academy to Seattle and San Francisco. I hadn't been to either place while being old enough to remember, so it was exciting for me to get to go to not just one, but TWO brand new places.

As I wind down...here are a few drawings I made at a nature preserve that was just a 30 minute walk from our hotel in Berkeley. It was a beautiful place. Every time you turned around, there was another beautiful impressionist landscape waiting for you. It made for a very slow, but very nice, walk.

It was mainly a bird preserve, so there were seagulls, sparrows, geese, swallows, and crows twittering and flying all around me as I was drawing. I found a rocky beach as well, with glittering water lapping up on the shore, and birds diving in to catch fish.

"Milking the Rhino"

This is a drawing I made while watching a documentary called "Milking the Rhino" which discussed the ways in which conservation of wildlife has intersected and butted up against industry for local people.

Going to Africa to reportage is at the very top of my "bucket list", so this was a really fascinating thing for me to watch. The idea of "marketing" the wilderness, such as in National Parks, has always felt like somewhat of a double-edged sword. Obviously it's better to have them protected than open to poaching and complete destruction. But turning nature (and the people of rural Africa) into a commodity is unsettling as well, and often has the result of making it feel like a theme park. I can't pretend to know where the happy medium is, but it was interesting to see many different sides of the issue presented. I highly recommend it! (Plus it's on NetFlix instant watch!)

Breathing: Part 2!

So! Here is the finished animation from the earlier post for an animation about using your own energy to create and change the world around you.



Hopefully it helps you slow down and breathe for a few seconds, which is something I often have a very hard time doing!

Kitties!

So after last post, I feel like I need to re-establish myself as a cat person. These are some drawings I did of my two kitties back in Colorado...and since I won't see them for a few months, this is my ode to them!

This is Stormy:

She's the older of the two, I think she's about 18 now, and is surprisingly hard to draw because she's just a tiny wisp of fluff. She's very quiet, has a tiny head, and weighs about a much as a kleenex.

And this is Athena:

She's only about....6? I can't remember. She's a lot more substantial (although still pretty tiny), but at the time I drew these around Christmas, she had recently been shaved into a fashionable and not-at-all-ridiculous lion haircut.

UPDATE!!!!: The cats' PR Rep (my mom) has released the following statement: "I am writing this response on behalf of the two afformentioned kitties. Stormy wanted to assure you that she weighs as much as two wet tissues (she has been working out). Athena is highly insulted and wants everyone to know that most of her hair has grown back and now she looks like the ferocious tiger that she is."