Jay-Z x Michael Buble

Been sitting on this remix for a little while now. I originally did the instrumental by cutting together a few Michael Buble tracks in a 007 vein as a gift for a friend who wanted 'Dr Evil theme music' (!!!). Ended up laying the Jay verses down because she didn't like the plain instrumental.

Got a few other acapellas in the pipeline that hopefully will make it out the vomit tract, but til then, enjoy (the now not so) young Hov -

Jay-Z feat Michael Buble - What more can I say (remix)

15/60 challenge

After the Dr Sketchy's afternoon I realized how much I enjoy sketching figures. As a poor man's substitute for having a model in my living room in the middle of the afternoon I decided to quick sketch off a photo reference and see how it went. I then got n.t. to send me a photo of her choice and I tried the same thing again. Two sketches from photo reference, both done in about 15 minutes. Hence the 15/60 challenge.

(Setting myself a few too many challenges this year: 15/60, Shirt52, and I haven't even started on a New Year's resolution to write ten songs by June, and have filmed a music video for one of those...)

No Vacancy - March 2010

Tonight's creative endeavours took place at No Vacancy, where the first time I tried to get into their drop in life drawing class, they lived up to their name. Tonight I finally got in and experimented with charcoal and indian ink. Definitely more indian ink for me after this.

Quatrains of Rumi

Nicolette has been posting up poetry and so far, each piece has been perfect for me in someway. Her latest selection comes from Rumi, a 13th Century Persian poet.

Below are her selected quatrains and my attempt at translating them into Vietnamese.

A night full of talking that hurts,
my worst held-back secrets: Everything
has to do with loving and not loving.
This night will pass.
Then we have work to do.

Một đêm đầy tâm sự đau đớn,
Những bí mật xấu nhất ta đã dằn lại: Mọi chuyện
Đèo là chuyện yêu va không yêu.
Đêm nay sẽ qua.
Rồi ta có việc để làm.


After being with me one whole night,
you ask how I live when you're not here.

Badly, frantically, like a fish trying to breathe
dry sand. You weep and say,
But you choose that.

Sau một đêm suốt bên anh,
Em hỏi anh sống thế nào khi vắn em.

Bối rối cuống cuồng như cá gắn thở
cát khô. Em khóc và nói,
Nhưng anh chọn vậy.

Shirt52 project - week 3 with V Dentata @ Dr Sketchy's

Didn't think I'd be pumping out T-shirts so soon, but a unique opportunity arose at Dr Sketchy's life drawing on Sunday (see the life drawing post) and they were asking audience members to draw T-shirts inspired by the V Dentatas (the models for the afternoon). Guess who volunteered?

V Dentata @ Dr Sketchy's life drawing class

Dr Sketchy's is a great concept for a life-drawing class - they usually hire performers from burlesque or other subculture backgrounds as their models, creating interesting textures and challenging subject material. Dave and I both attended Sunday's session and you can see our results below (Dave's on the left, n.t on the right).

Dave: My style is very influenced by early 90s comic book art (thanks Jim Lee!)
n.t: I'm not sure what my style is but we're going again!

life (model) drawing

This year, I'm trying to be a bit more creative. Two things are certainly on the cards - life drawing and painting. I've been to three life/model drawing sessions now. The first session was a hen's event and featured a very young model, the second session featured a trapeze artist, and the third was true life drawing with a classically curvy and dreamy model. It's been a steep learning curve and I was exhausted by the end of today's session. Drawing is hard work.

Below is a snapshot of my progress.