Multi-coloured cold coffee drinkers

With the relative warmth of early spring these people look so incredibly bundled...especially if you consider that they were indoors. Again, with the Faber-Castell markers. But the paper is too rough so you can just feel the nib of the marker being needlessly destroyed by the paper's tooth. I know, use a different sketchbook, but whatever it was there.

Hey! a great review in NOW magazine for my current Loop show. You can read it, NOW Thanks to everyone who has supported me with getting this show ready, and opening on time. Thanks for the support from my Sarah and our baby sitting Grandma/Meme team and the copious amounts of Coffee from Jet Fuel and Rooster.

Simple Drawing with the iPad

I have not yet really got a handle on drawing with the iPad 2, or at least, have not really looked at all the options with the program Brushes....it is ok, but a little too non intuitive. Like the iPhone, one button is cool but not as practical as having a few more buttons so that you don't have to constantly go into your menus....what is this, Windows?

Anyways, was drawing these two women and this little kid while they were having a coffee and everyone was debating the merits and pitfalls of Champix.

By the way, the colours looked nothing like this on tablet, still trying to figure out what happened.

Click here if you would like to see a few of David Hockney's paintings using the iPad and the Brushes application. But honestly, his 'conventional' paintings and water colours are much better.

Alan Chan, Jan 14th 2012.

After a late night and a cold walk, we stopped at this place on Prince street cafe for a coffee.

Collective Memory II

Collective Memory was a show I had in 2006, images of my personal and work spaces were mirrored with my family's penchant for collecting and saving items of dubious beauty.

Starting in February, I will be building a new installation, at the Jet Fuel. This will be using the "stuff' that has always sat in the basement at the family home and constitutes a life. This idea stems from a series of conversations I have had over the past few years with Daniel Garber, who with his site, culturalmining.com has an interest in aspects of cultural and its language. We have been exchanging ideas ever since I started to take papers, bills and flyers from our basement and posting them to the wall at Jet Fuel. He catches all the subtle nuances of the visual elements and printing quirks of these old documents. Daniel Garber ladies and gentlemen, a real gem.

The large obstacles are how to re-create something that lives on shelves in a basement while being visually interesting and faithful to these objects, how they came to be together and what they mean to those who stored them rather than threw them out.

So, it is an exercise in limiting your ego and letting the wonder of a commodore 64, AFX race tracks and about 3000 other interesting things play off each other.

Collective Memory II, at the Jet Fuel (519 Parliament ST) for the month of February, please come check it out if you are not claustrophobic.

Please check out Daniel's site, culturalmining.com

Coffee line up at Melriches

Coffee Drinkers in Vancouver maybe

This was drawn in either the end of June or early July when I came back to Toronto, not sure. What I am sure of was I was really up close to be looking at the inside of this guy's coffee cup, jeesh that is personal.

Coffee, June 24, 2007

Another day spent milling about in coffee shops in Vancouver.