Sketches in Maroc

Here are a few sketches from my small travel sketchbook. Most of these drawings were done in Essaouira, where I spent a few days relaxing and gorging on bbq'd fish in this coastal village.



This is a watercolour sketch which, as often is the case with my trip to Morocco, is indebted to Delacroix. Note in the margins, I have notes written in pencil. Due to his social milieu and Romantic leanings, all of Delacroix's comments are tinged with the nobility of the people and all that jazz. Maybe because I am effectively from there, and a little more cynical- all my comments on the margins of my images are about how that guy wanted more money from me, this guy was a schister and it was interesting to see people in traditional garb with black latex gloves on.




I was looking for the typical music of the region, Gnouia which is fantastic, the hotel guy sent me here....Tauros, a upscale bar where there were people doing fire poi It was as crappy as this guy in the video, I was in hell. So I had to draw from another angle to avoid this misery.



Just a view of someone walking in the street.

Classic scenes from China either Real or Imagined.

These are a few pictures from Shanghai. The whole time we have been here, the country has not been any sense typical to ideas you may have about the country before you get here.

People have a great deal of personal freedom here and the culture is on the vanguard of modern art and technology.

So when I spied these images in Shanghai, anachronistic images of China- I had to photograph them, utterly typical photos to what western media portrays China to be: young men in oversized military uniforms and old men playing the flute like some bad CCTV (Chinese National Television)advert-Experience the mysteries of the orient- China, tourism destination 2008.

Cabbagetown Festival

The Cabbagetown Festival came and went. Basically, if you call rampant capitalism with very little to offer the consumer, then you would call this a festival. Don't get me wrong, people had a great time- just tables of crap for sale, everything all the junk someone keeps in their house (good) to dubious cooked sandwiches and this jerk selling a bike bell that he rang for 8 hours repeatedly (bad).


I just walked around with an old Yashica Twin Lens camera and took some shots, bumped into some friends and got annoyed at the "dragon drum" people as their drumming made the roof of my apartment vibrate in a menacing way, like it was seconds from collapsing Jericho styles.