UrbanSketchers: Jason Das

Jer Thorp at Hacks/Hackers NYC

Jason Das — Thu, 24 Jan 2013 20:16:00 +0000

I just got home from a presentation by artist and data-visualization-famous-person Jer Thorp. It was called "Algorithms, Art and Authorship" and was hosted by the NYC chapter of Hacks/Hackers. I liked it. I made this sketch of Jer doing his talk:

SketchCrawling 42nd Street

Jason Das — Mon, 21 Jan 2013 05:00:00 +0000

I met up with the NYC Urban Sketchers crew for Worldwide SketchCrawl 38 on Saturday. On my way, I sketched these folks:

I caught up with the group at the Port Authority Bus Terminal. This is one of the least appealing public spaces in town, though it was mercifully rather empty on this weekend afternoon.

I did get scolded by a policeman for sitting on the floor, but thankfully he did not enforce the "no drawing" rule:

We then camped out on the steps of the New Victory Theater for a bit. Here's the view down and to the East (scroll this one):

A few quick sketches of people in Times Square:

And finally, a very persistant prosthelytizer, who was very big on about original sin and wanted me to take his little pamphlet. It wasn't one of the fun comic book style ones, so I declined. While he was lecturing in my face, it was an excellent opportunity to do his portrait:

It was a great, if chilly, time!

If the fates will me to use pencil, I guess I'll use pencil!

Jason Das — Sun, 30 Dec 2012 14:47:00 +0000

It took a year or so, and a lot frustration, but I've come to accept that I don't know how to sketch with a pen anymore, at least not to my satisfaction. Pretty much anything decent I've done in recent memory has been with a pencil (and/or paint). I have no idea why this is so, but that's just the way it is for now, and I'll stop trying to make pens work for me. For now.

Here's a few recent pencil sketches for you all:

“The Where, the Why, and the How” at Powerhouse Arena

Jason Das — Thu, 11 Oct 2012 22:45:00 +0000

I've been meaning to go to events at powerHouse Arena for years now, and always forget to check the schedule. Tonight, I finally made it! The event was a release party for a book, The Where, the Why, and the How: 75 Artists Illustrate Wondrous Mysteries of Science. I was pretty excited about the concept, because I really like art and science as ways for us humans to understand our world (unlike religion or philosophy, neither of which I can relate to at all). Rather than bring along a friend, I brought my sketchbook.

I was uncharacteristically on time, so I had to wait around 15 or 20 minutes for the event to start. Meanwhile I had a glass of wine and was handed a balloon. I didn't tie my balloon to my bag well enough, so it got stuck up at the ceiling not long after. (Apologies to whoever has to get it down from there! I was worried that if I tied it on too well I'd have to bike home with it on there.)

I was seated pretty close up, so these sketches are of the presenters. One day it would be great to do a sketch that gets in super cool arena seating they have there.

I got the sense that more than a few of the 75+ contributors were in attendance, but only a lucky six got to present, three from the "art" side and three from the "science" side. None of them discussed their contributions to the book; instead they just gave a quick lightning-style talk about something interesting they'd worked on.

Josh Cochran was up first. He talked about the Nudes project he did with Mike Perry.

Then Meehan Crist talked about Traumatic Brain Injuries and how our understanding of them has changed and is still developing.

Then Matt Leines talked about how for years and years all of his drawings were versions of Hulk Hogan's mustache. He then gave us a slideshow of some of the more amusing pro wrestlers of the past 40 years.

Then Tim Requarth explained why most of us can't tickle ourselves without the aid of a time-delayed robot, though some schizophrenics can do so. (At the beginning of his segment, Tim asked how many scientists were in attendance Basically none were, unfortunately. I suspect he would have gotten a hearty response if he'd asked how many illustrators were there.)

Then Jennifer Daniel walked us through the process of developing charts and infographics for Bloomberg BusinessWeek.

Finally, Jessica Rothman told us about her work in non-human primate nutrition.

In conclusion, the artists dressed more interestingly, and the scientists dressed more sexily.

So, what's the book like? I don't know. I couldn't figure out where they were selling them or where the signing was happening. I think maybe you were supposed to wander around and find the contributors. Once you managed to find and buy a book. But I decided to skip all that and hurry home for the Biden/Ryan debate instead, and boy am I glad I did! That was some excellent television. I look forward to checking out the book another day.

Sketching with Tommy Kane, almost (2)

lapin — Tue, 18 Sep 2012 00:56:00 +0000

as veronica already mentioned here, or tommy kane there, we tried to have a meet up on the intrepid air and space museum in nyc, during my last trip last month. I can't believe we were at the same place at the same time without seeing each other, I so wanted to meet tommy, next time…
it was a very crowded day, and very hot to, and jason and I were looking for a piece of shadow on the deck of the aircraft carrier.
it's one of this magic places in nyc, I really love the skyline of manhattan from it, behind the blackbird or the f14 supertomcat that I already sketched 2 years ago.
but I can't get enough of the f14, and had to doodle it one more time:
a general view from the control tower:

and finally the concorde sitting next to veronica and jason:

blogged by lapin

A Highline Sketch for the Ackland Show

Jason Das — Thu, 13 Sep 2012 08:55:00 +0000

Regular readers of the Urban Sketchers blog will have noticed how popular The Highline is with sketchers in New York City. Indeed, it's popular with anyone with good taste in NYC, as it's a wonderful place.

I did this sketch there early in the summer as my contribution to the Ackland Museum Urban Sketching group show (still up til October 6!).

I've been using pencil a lot these past few months, after years of mostly avoiding the medium. I think this is one of the first of that recent trend in my work.

(This sketch is an interesting contrast to my Highline sketch from November 2009 ... that one is all about people, in the cold, with evening light and heavy brushstrokes.)

the high line with nyc sketchers!

lapin — Wed, 05 Sep 2012 13:16:00 +0000

I was lucky to sketch with some of the urban sketchers in nyc during my trip there last month.
we met on the high line in chelsea, which give a great view above the streets of manhattan's west side across a floating garden.

I love the advice that danielle gave me ;)

thanks veronica for making it happen!

by the way, it was great to meet greg for his birthday, cheers!

blogged by lapin

Make Music New York 2012

Jason Das — Thu, 21 Jun 2012 23:45:00 +0000

Make Music New York is an annual festival of live music, lots of it, all for free and in public places. I made it to a few events this evening. (Everything I went to this year was New Music/Classical, but there was lots of music of all genres all over the city.)

I was excited about Alvin Curran's Maritime Rites, a composition featuring 80 brass-band musicians in rowboats. Unfortunately, the music wasn't much good. I'm not sure if the performance was lacking or the composition itelf, but eighty people free improvising in row boats would have been just as good, possibly better. The best parts were the loudest parts. It was fun to draw, though.

I then headed downtown to meet my friend Chris for a performance of Frederic Rzewski's “Les Moutons de Panurge”. There was an ensemble performing, but audience participation is also encouraged. I encourage you to read about it at the above link; it's quite conceptually interesting and amusing.

We then took a long, sweltering walk over to Brooklyn to participate in John P. Hastings's “Hum 7 8 9” (scroll down to "humming" on that link). It basically involved humming along to the audible frequencies of an electrical power substation, and it was a quite a powerful way to spend a solstice sunset. When I hit the right frequency, my teeth started vibrating.

Brooklyn Café Yards

Jason Das — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 20:39:00 +0000

I meant to post the 'sNice one when I mentioned my exhibit there, but I forgot. So you get it now, along with its facing page.

Urban Sketch Acrylics by Jason Das at 'sNice Brooklyn

Jason Das — Sun, 15 Apr 2012 23:04:00 +0000

I have eight 18" x 24" urban sketch paintings up at the Brooklyn branch of 'sNice for the remainder of the month.

All were done this March "en plein air" and often en air trop froid. They are acrylic and water-soluble graphite (with a little bit of contractor crayon and Sumi ink in there, too). I did a bit of touching up back home, but mostly I was out there with fingerless gloves and a jar of water. Most were painted near my home in, Brooklyn, except one which is from Lafayette and Bond in Manhattan.

'sNice is located at the corner of 3rd Street and 5th Avenue in Park Slope. You should go look at them—and have a sandwich, too! (They look better in person. Also larger.)

Thing-a-Day: Mount Prospect Park, Dusk

Jason Das — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 17:36:00 +0000

Just the edge of warm enough to sketch without gloves.

I am drawing plants every day for the month of February as part of Thing-a-Day 2012. Some (like this one) may be urban sketches and worth cross-posting here. Others (such as the first three days) may not be ...

8th Ave and West 4th St, NYC

Jason Das — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 17:11:00 +0000

I stopped at 'sNice for a Cuban Panini after getting a haircut (finally!) this afternoon. Here's the view. Minus the cars, cause I just didn't have it in me.

People Just Keep on Riding the NYC Subway

Jason Das — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 18:18:00 +0000

I can finally get to my scanner after a few months of turmoil, so here's some subway sketches to start catching up. New Year's Eve is a pretty fun night to ride the trains, by the way--good service, and general conviviality. Just make sure to finish your travels before midnight and avoid the drunken nonsense in the wee hours.

Strange Megabus Stops

Jason Das — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 20:56:00 +0000

Megabus is generally good to me, but my bus to Boston last week did manage to break down in Harlem for nearly three hours. Of course, we didn't know how long we'd be stranded there, so we couldn't wander around much (or indeed, go back to the bus station and get on any of the next several busses which would have gotten to Boston sooner than our eventual replacement bus). Anyway, I made this sketch to help pass the time:

I was returning from Wellfleet on Cape Cod, and thought I'd try the newish direct Hyannis to New York Megabus (the alternative being Peter Pan bus with their obligatory hour layover in a shed by the highway outside Providence). Instead of having a terminus near the Hyannis Transportation Center, where my bus from Wellfleet arrived, Megabus uses the ferryboat terminal. So I had a nice wander in the October rain from bus to bus. And had enough time at the ferry terminal to make this sketch:

I just booked a Megabus trip to Atlantic City, and not only will it be via another bus line (Megabus is just reselling the seats?), the dropoff location is "various casinos"--and they don't mean the bus will stop at a bunch of various casinos, they mean that each bus goes to a different random casino. Strange, but not too dangerous a gamble, as they're all near enough to each other, and I'm sure at least our driver will know where s/he's going. And if not, hey, more chance I'll get another sketch out of it!

Two Days in Sintra

Jason Das — Mon, 05 Sep 2011 14:03:00 +0000

I extracated myself from Lisbon to spend a couple of days in Sintra. Less than an hour on the train, but a world away. It was worth going just to smell the mossy hillsides!

I followed the good advice to go midweek, as the tourists apparently smother the place on summer weekends. I arrived late at night and stumbled mapless with a heavy pack to Nice Way Sintra Palace, a paradise of a hostel. It's in an old mansion, with a lovely interior and yard, and the staff and owners were the best hosts one can imagine. You should go stay there.

The next morning, I walked up a lot of hills to the old Moorish castle, then made my way to Pena Palace. It's a wonderfully ridiculous place--a gratuitous and extravagant playground. I bet the grounds were better maintained back when the royals whiled their days away there, but all the exotic trees they planted are more mature now, and us rabble are allowed to visit. So maybe that's an OK tradeoff. Below is a view of the palace from Cruz Alta (a giant cross on a mountain top), and, deep in the woods, the Tanque dos Frades, which I assume was the reservoir used by the monastery that was up there before the palace.

On my way down the mountain, I picked up some groceries to cook for dinner, and sketched a twilight view near (I think?) Sabuga Fountain (where I filled up my water bottle, as seems to be the fashion). Lower on the page are some items from the communal table at the hostel that night, and finally, the Nice Way Palace hostel itself.

(Though I didn't sketch it--I was too busy exploring--my favorite place in Sintra was Quinta da Regaleira. It's the fantasy estate the eight-year-old me would have built.)

Lisbon After the Symposium

Jason Das — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 21:30:00 +0000

The day after the Symposium, I slept as late as I could. At some point I realized that I'd, uh, miscalculated some logistics, and hadn't booked enough nights at the hostel. Luckily, Paul Wang had booked a room with an extra bed, and graciously allowed me to invade. Thanks, Paul, you're a lifesaver! (Or at least a Jason-sleeping-on-a-parkbench-saver). I later left Paul a sketch/thank-you note, and he was good enough to paste it into his sketchbook. You can see it here (it's the sideways one).

After sorting out rooming arrangements, I stumbled out towards Adamastor to sketch the statue to fill in a blank spot that dared to invade one of my sketchbook pages. On the way I picked up a nutritious lunch of a peach and bag of Ruffles. Then I found this lovely corner and sketched it:

As the afternoon wore on into evening, I wandered the western border or Bairro Alto and eventually made it to Principe Real. I had the bizarre notion to try journaling (as so many sketchers I admire do) and managed the following page, which itemizes the art supplies I'd lost on the trip thus far, the aformentioned lunch, and some buildings viewable from the square:

(It turns out I hadn't really lost the Gelly Roll. I thought I brought two with me on the trip, but discovered when I got home that I'd only left with one.)

As I'm sitting there sketching, who should wander up but Isabel Fiadeiro! So nice to see her. After Isabel wandered off again, I bumped into Gérard Michel with several family members. A rotating cast of them allowed me to tag along for beer in the park (where I made the portrait of Gérard in my last post) and dinner. So lovely!

Gérard's nephew, Fabien Denoël, mentioned something about meeting up with Eduardo Bajzek the next morning to go sketching. I invited myself along, and spent a most wonderful day traipsing up to the castle and Alfama with the two of them and Gérard's daughter, Marie Michel. The big sketch below I did up in the castle district. (The two smaller ones were from subsequent days--a finial in Sintra, and a view of the castle from Campo dos Mártires da Pátria.)

I made a bunch of postcards when we stopped (for beer? coffee? both?) at Largo das Portas do Sol. Something nice for the folks back home. (I ended up doing 4 or 5 more later, which I don't have photos of.)

We later camped out in Alfama to do some sketching. While everyone else did the classic winding streets, I somehow found a gigantic flat parking lot and sketched from there. We met an extremely friendly orange cat. And eventually ended up at Miradouro da Graça at sunset:

The next day, after another late start, I finally made it to Bake the Difference, Lisbon's vegan bakery (which also has a pretty extensive savory lunch menu). The people there were charming and the food was excellent, especially the strawberry cheese muffin!

I had intended to check out the Feira da Ladra ("Thieves' Market"), but went up the wrong hill and discovered José Tomás de Sousa Martins instead. He was a 19th century doctor who helped the poor. He was poisoned to death by a jealous rival and is now a sort of secular saint. People light candles and leave flowers and marble tablets at the base of his statue to thank him for answering their prayers and ensuring the recovery of loved ones. Nearby, some exotic ducks live in a little castle:

Then I went to Sintra for a couple of days, but that's a seperate post.

Finally, here's a very quick sketch out of the airport bus window as we pulled away from the station:

This post is my final overwhelming dump of Lisbon sketches. There are those couple of pages from Sintra which I'll share soon.

Sketching the Symposium Sketchers

Jason Das — Tue, 16 Aug 2011 21:26:00 +0000

I'm not sure exactly how or why, but I ended up filling seven pages with headshots of fellow Lisbon Symposium attendees.

On a masochistic whim, I decided to do these all five or six to a page (screwing up was not an option!). And I committed to a limited tool set: a worn out (by the end of these very worn out) brown pen, a white gel pen (for highlights, and shockingly many corrections), and watercolor. But beyond that, I seem to have given myself a fair bit of latitude--some portraits are cartoony, others very realist. Some have nearly complete torsos, others barely have necks. Some are six times the size of others; this was generally determined by how close I was to the subject. But the format was restrictive enough that I was more than ready to quit these after the Symposium.

While numerous jokes were made about me sketching everyone at the symposium, I only got 40 people. And they were a very random 40. I grabbed these when I could--during sessions, in the auditorium, in the hallways. As long as I felt the subject wouldn't move too much, I went for it! Some of these people I didn't even meet, except to ask them to sign by their portrait. Others are people I know well. There are many folks I would have liked to include, but we just didn't happen to be in the right place at the right time. I think all but one got signed, though there are a couple that I suspect may have been signed by the wrong people. Hey, if they think it looks like them, and I can't find anyone who it looks more like, I'll take it.

The first portrait, of Alvaro, was done in the FBAUL courtyard on the morning of the first day as we gathered for orientation. The final portrait, of Omar, was done at 3:30am in Largo do Chiado following a night of post-Symposium celebration.

If you want to know who everyone is, I'm working on tagging these on flickr and facebook. Feel free to help me out with that; I may have trouble identifying a few of them, and I might have trouble making time.

Oh, and here's a couple of bonus portraits done post-symposium (and thus not limited to the brown pen six-pack approach). Here we have Gérard Michel after he introduced me to his wonderful family and bought me a beer:

And here's Eduardo Bajzek sketched on a table cloth. The photo shows me with the completed portrait of Eduardo, plus one of about 20 attempts at capturing Fabien Denoël's likeness, all of which were deemed unworthy.

During the Symposium

Jason Das — Thu, 11 Aug 2011 22:59:00 +0000

This post contains much of what I sketched during the Symposium itself, the main exceptions being the portraits of other sketchers (coming later) and the sketch of Rua Garret I donated to the silent auction (if you know who bought it, I'd love to know!).
And I'm also omitting the stuff I don't think is good enough to share--especially from Richard Câmara's excellent "Lining Over Color" session which really pushed me out of my element. I'll need to keep practicing to make something good of what I learned there.
I don't remember which day was which, and I don't always fill pages chronologically, so the order these stories are told may not match the order of history.
Here's a T.V. news crew outside of FBAUL. I believe this was the show that described itself being for old people and shut-ins, and requested we keep things simple so as to not confuse the audience:

The flowers were artificial ones decorating the tables at our correspondents dinner. The sketch at the bottom of folks milling around FBAUL was a quickie done with one of Nina Johansson's delicious and expertly selected fountain pens. Super Bok and Sagres are two very common Portuguese beers. I'm pretty sure they taste the same.
On the left you have me sketching with Nina's special pen, and on the right, me sketching at Adamastor:

Manuel San-Payo took us to Adamastor, which I misspelled in all my sketches and no one had the heart to correct me. The session was called "waterscapes", so of course I turned my back to the river and looked uphill. It got hot fast there... I was really burning up by the end of this one:

Here's a nice tourist couple (if they want to sign your sketch, you know they're nice!), the Adamastor sculpture by Júlio Vaz Júnior, and an upstanding young man enjoying a brew and smokes at Largo do Barao de Quintela.

We went to Largo do Barao de Quintela for Manuel João Ramos's "Urban Ethnography" session. He perversely picked a very pedestrian-unfriendly square for us to eke out some anthropological lessons! Anyway, I did find that charming youth and also these fire trucks:

The night scene is Kaffehaus again. There are probably more sketches from Kaffehaus than any other spot that wasn't on the official agenda.

Most of this page is from Luís Ança and Catarina França's "Pessoa's Village" session at Largo de São Carlos. The couple was at Kaffehaus and the roofline at the bottom is Largo do Camões:

Gérard Michel and Florian Afflerbach's perspective class was just tremendous. My take-home from this session was so similar to what Marc wrote that I'll liberally reproduce his words here: "Just to be reminded to actually place the horizon line, and that the vanishing point has to be on that horizon somewhere. Somehow I hadn't internalized that previously - kind of always just fudging where lines recede. It was great to see that these guys who can out-draw me consistently are actually using the measuring I've been too lazy to apply. The scales fall from your eyes when you see - it's not magic - they actually know what they're doing! They're not taking short cuts, but being disciplined about technique." Yep--exactly!

Anyway, I braved an off-center spherical perspective, because why not try to turn my hair gray with maximum efficiency? This may not look like much, but I assure you it was the most difficult thing I did in the Symposium!
These ladies were quite interested to learn about the spherical perspective as well. Photos like this almost make Urban Sketching seem glamorous!

This last spread gives you four overlapping, rushed, messy sketches, including a couple from the finale sketchcrawl:

Still to come--the portraits motherlode and my post-Symposium sketches from Lisbon and Sintra.

Lisbon Day One

Jason Das — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 21:01:00 +0000

It was a very long day, longer than 24 hours ... hooray for redeyes and jetlag and timezones!

First I took the subway to (another train to another train to) the airport:

Then I arrived in Lisbon and eventually found my way to the lovely Shiado Hostel. They accepted my bag, but wouldn't accept my person for several hours, so I went to Kaffeehaus, the Austrian café downstairs (and site of many sketches to come, from myself and others) to tank up on espresso and orange juice and fumble through this extraordinarily sleep deprived midday sketch:

Then who should happen along but fellow sketcher Pete Scully! Hullo, Pete. I followed him like a trusty puppy down to Belém, and I'm glad I did. First we visited the Jerónimos Monestary. Here's what it looks like, inside and out:

Then we crossed epic plazas to reach the riverbank, where I captured what might be the quintessential urban sketch, complete with an a police car, historic monuments, a river, an abandoned factory, a boat, tourists, and a splash of offensive late-20th century architecture:

At this point we experienced the first of our fierce Lisbon winds. Every evening they would come, and I nearly lost several sketches to the mighty air currents. This sailboat seemed to rather like the wind as it completed this rather classical view of the rather classical Belém tower:

That evening, Pete and I had dinner at an Italian restaurant in Bairro Alto. Here was my view over Pete's head:

He sketched his view, too.. And then we wandered around a bit, until Pete was pulled into sketch-hero pose to capture one of his dearly beloved fire hydrants:

Take a look at what he sketched.

Then I finally got to sleep, after about 36 hours awake. Next, the Symposium!

A Week in Mahone Bay, Nova Scotia

Jason Das — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 23:52:00 +0000

When you get invited to spend a week on a private island, you can't very well say no, can you? I'm glad I didn't! What a lovely trip, and what a magical part of the world. We were based on Big Gooseberry Island in Mahone Bay, Nova Scotia, Canada, but made trips to Chester, Lunenberg, and Big Tancook.

Like many trips, this one started at an airport...

On Big Gooseberry:

In Chester:

Heading out to Big Tancook:

...and back again:

Lunenberg is lovely, a real (historical) urban sketcher's paradise!

My host was quite into mushrooming:

July 12 Subway People

Jason Das — Tue, 12 Jul 2011 22:11:00 +0000

I think I may be getting better at drawing hair ...

Urs Seagram

Jason Das — Mon, 11 Jul 2011 19:45:00 +0000

I made it for the very last hour of the German Expressionism show at MoMA (it was great! sorry if you missed it!), and on my way home stumbled upon this terrifying situation outside the Seagram Building (a building which looks like nothing much, but was very innovative in looking like that). Apparently an immense misshapen metal bear teleported into the middle of a gigantic desk lamp. I found Urs Fisher's "Untitled Lamp/Bear" kind of horrifying in person, though it seems to look cute and plush in photos.

June 14 Subway Readers

Jason Das — Tue, 14 Jun 2011 19:52:00 +0000

June 13 Subway People

Jason Das — Mon, 13 Jun 2011 22:32:00 +0000

Jason Das's Subway Sketches on Metrocards for "Single Fare" Show in New York City

Jason Das — Mon, 14 Mar 2011 17:18:00 +0000

I'll have 16 pieces in “Single Fare 2: Please Swipe Again,” opening this Thursday at Sloan Fine Art on the Lower East Side in New York City. There will likely be hundreds of artists and thousands of pieces, all done on used Metrocards (our local transit farecards). All pieces in the show will be for sale for $100. I think it's a wonderful concept!

My contributions were all sketched in the subway last Friday night (March 11), with fountain pen (Lamy Safari fine point with Noodler's Old Manhattan ink) on gessoed Metrocards. Then I came home and painted them with acrylics.

I'll be at the opening reception, which is this Thursday, March 17th from 5pm to 9pm. Would be great to meet Urban Sketchers and fans of Urban Sketching there! The show is up til March 26.

Here's my 16 sketches, in the order I did them (to the best of my recollection). For any MTA nerds reading this, my route was: 3 train from Franklin Avenue to 96th Street, 2 Train from 96th Street to Times Square, E Train from Times Square to 23rd Street, pop upstairs for dinner, A Train from 14th Street to Jay Street Metrotech, N Train to 25th Street.