Rockville, MD

Location: Rockville, Maryland, USA
Visited: January 2012

A friend invited me to this amazing 12-hour life drawing session at VisArts in Rockville, MD. There were six models, but I only got one of their cards. That's all right. I don't usually include my own art in my gluebooks, but since this was actually a drawing event, it seemed appropriate. This is one of my 5-minute sketches that turned out looking more human than alien (unlike most of the others). Looks like the white sketchpad paper against the yellowish journal page caused the scanner to freak out a bit and over-expose the former. Oh well. In the middle of the day my friend and I had lunch at Lebanese Taverna, which is absolutely delicious. I'm so spoiled living in a major metropolitan area: we have so much ethnic cuisine that we even have a chain of Lebanese places. Yum!

P.S. - A longer write-up and my better drawings from that day are here, but as all the models were nude, it's probably NSFW.

Washington, DC

Location: Washington, DC, USA
Visited: January 2012

I had expected the stuff from this particular night to take up more space on the page, but that's okay. This was from our journey into DC to see The Dreamscapes Project at the newly-opened Hamilton Live.

The Hamilton is quite lovely. The upstairs dinner portion is extremely posh, but the concert venue was comfortable with good sound and tasty (somewhat overpriced) vittles. Taylor Carson opened for TDP, and we liked him enough to purchase his CD. I also got a free hug later. He's a cutie.

TDP was, as always, excellent. They just keep raising the bar for themselves, and I am impressed anew every single time we see them play. They've been spreading out, musically, incorporating blues and Celtic and bluegrass and other styles into their set. At one point Keith (vocals), Gordon (drums), and Jeremy (bass) all shifted one to the right - and did one hell of a performance. I hadn't even know Keith and Gordon could play those instruments! Of course, I hadn't known Jeremy could play trumpet either, so I was just learning new TDP facts left and right.

They brought Ted from Ted Hovis and the Stolen Camaros up on stage for the last two songs. For a band already consisting of 12-string acoustic guitar, cello, electric bass, drums, and a whole range of percussion, I was pleasantly surprised at how much Ted's electric guitar added to the performance. He should join them again sometime. In short, it was an excellent night.