Jason Das

I’ll be doing a large urban sketch painting as part of the...

Fri, 17 May 2013 00:24:00 -0400

I’ll be doing a large urban sketch painting as part of the Kingston Avenue Festival on Saturday, May 18. Drop by for a visit!

A collaboration between me and Tom Motley from the excellent...

Wed, 01 May 2013 18:26:16 -0400

A collaboration between me and Tom Motley from the excellent (and now regularly scheduled!) Brooklyn DrawJam. Tom drew the lady’s face. And I drew the spacebaby outracing a spacescorpion that you see when you unfold the page. (These foldouts are an excellent extension of exquisite corpse. I thank Tom for introducing me to them.)

The recently departed Janos Starker playing the third movement...

Mon, 29 Apr 2013 22:32:00 -0400

The recently departed Janos Starker playing the third movement of Kodály’s Sonata for solo cello. Sure, he was a character and had quite a life, but mostly this is as good as music gets.

(If you have time, or if you feel irresponsible starting with the third movement, check out the first and second movements beforehand. )

Jazz & Technology Forum at Ace Hotel NYC on April 27

Wed, 24 Apr 2013 15:37:00 -0400

I’m honored to be participating in the Jazz & Technology forum this weekend. The evening performances and presentations are open to the public and I hope you can come check it out!

(I have no idea what I’ll be working on yet. But I’m sure it will be really cool.)

Drink and Draw day at Launchpad

Sun, 21 Apr 2013 19:01:07 -0400

Drink and Draw day at Launchpad

Wednesday

Wed, 20 Mar 2013 16:56:33 -0400

Wednesday

What I liked at the 2013 Armory Show

Sat, 09 Mar 2013 12:27:00 -0500

I usually ignore the Armory show. It’s expensive and pretentious and a big part of the art-might-as-well-be-the-stock-market side of things. They publish stuff like this with a straight face in their little daily newspaper:

But inspired by a few press reviews and Ranjit Bhatnagar’s Instagram coverage, I decided to go this year. There is a lot of good art! Much more than you’re likely to encounter in a day wandering the galleries.

I only had time for Pier 94 (“Contemporary”), so I missed whatever treasures were on Pier 92 (“Modern”, meaning old). If you go, you probably need 4-5 hours if you really like to look at stuff. I did not have that long, but I missed a lot.

Three things of extra special note:

1. Duke Riley has a piece where you can make your own wax rubbing print of his image, on pre-signed and numbered sheets. It’s pretty great (like pretty much everything Duke Riley does).

2. James Capper was hanging around his wonderful destruction machines and I pressured him into giving a demo even though he was clearly exhausted from lifting the heavy things. I took a video:

3. Hiroshige Fukuhara was there drawing on the wall next to his framed pieces. It was really nice to see this in person!

Here’s a giant list of all the artists whose work I liked. It’s surely a fickle list—dependent on my mood, how much of a hurry I was in, what I noticed and failed to notice, etc. There was work there from artists I otherwise like, but if I didn’t like anything I saw of theirs at the Armory, they’re not here. Likewise, I might hate everything else by someone I do list, but I enjoyed seeing their work at this show. And many of these folks had multiple pieces in the show and I may not have liked them all. Or maybe I did! And some of these people are so famous it’s silly to list them at all (does anyone not like Alice Neel or Gordon Parks?). Is this list better than nothing at all?

Artists are listed in the order they ended up out in my text doc. I often resumed note-taking at random points in the middle of the list, so these are unlikely to be in any helpful order.

They all link to a Google image search of the name plus “armory 2013”; kind of a crapshoot as to how that works out.

Oh also the furniture was nice, in the various sitting areas. Good job whoever did that.

Delighted! I love it!

Fri, 01 Mar 2013 17:52:04 -0500

Delighted! I love it!

has like a dashboard

Tue, 26 Feb 2013 15:37:19 -0500

has like a dashboard

Best thing to come out of #nounproject #hackshackers #iconathon...

Sat, 23 Feb 2013 16:10:39 -0500

Best thing to come out of #nounproject #hackshackers #iconathon #stackopancakes

Just one, I guess.

Tue, 29 Jan 2013 20:24:08 -0500

Just one, I guess.

Jer Thorp at Hacks/Hackers NYC

Thu, 24 Jan 2013 23:19:00 -0500

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

Mon, 21 Jan 2013 02:56:00 -0500

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 (view larger, if you like):

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!

Sun, 30 Dec 2012 17:59:00 -0500

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:

Homies

Sat, 15 Dec 2012 15:26:10 -0500

Homies

Sat, 15 Dec 2012 15:25:01 -0500

Homies

Cactus House

Wed, 12 Dec 2012 14:44:00 -0500

Cactus House

Blind Contour “Thriller”

Tue, 04 Dec 2012 17:24:06 -0500

Blind Contour “Thriller”

I’m DJing in public for the first time in many years...

Mon, 05 Nov 2012 22:50:00 -0500

I’m DJing in public for the first time in many years tomorrow night! Also, organizing and throwing this party with some seriously awesome food. And Mitt Romney better not win.

Photo

Fri, 19 Oct 2012 21:32:35 -0400