Some Sketches From Today. ~

Some Sketches from Today. ~

La cocaina no es buene para su salud

"Like a drug which is hard to put down, we drown our misery in metrics. We want to be seen and hide our pain behind a fake smile and a plastic world. A few likes to clench our thirst for attention. A few likes in order to remind us that we are actually worth something. We are observing the world through a square device while we slowly forget how to think, how to feel. How to be human. We are living in an attention economy and social media is addictive by design. "

I know it's kinda ironic to vent about the "attention economy" while contributing to it at the same time but I just needed to get this off my chest. Maybe I'm getting old.

Lemon Boy and me, we just gotta get along together I helped him plant his seeds And we'll mow the lawn in bad weather It's actually pretty easy being nice to a bitter boy like him So, I got myself a citrus friend

This image is inspired by "Lemon Boy", a song by @lemon.socks ! I saw so many interpretations of the songs out there and I always wondered, what this song actually mean to me.

While thinking about it for a while now, I always thought of two kids who grow up together. And as they grow older they might realize that their feelings for one another might not be just "friendship". It's a tale as old as time and yet something a lot of queer kids (including myself) have been through. And so , this image was born about Citrus Guy and Lemon Boy. Citrus Guy being a bit oblivious about his feelings towards Lemon Boy. And Lemon Boy who couldn't hold his feelings back no longer. Citrus Guy also had friends who didn't seem so supportive of queer people to begin with, which is why he tried his hardest to fit in and thus damage the relationship with Lemon boy first...again, tale as old as time.

The whole story also kind of reminded me of Troy Sivans "Blue Neighbourhood" videos. Just with a MUCH happier note.

(I'm finally done with this image after a month...god bless my patience...)

Words cannot really describe what I feel for this band. Nor can a drawing express those feelings. Everything I might going to say sound super cheesy but if their music and all the interviews thought me one thing, than it is that it's okay to be myself. I mean…they do it too, right…and sometimes we are cheesy. Sometimes we are touched by media and sometimes we might not find the right words. I want to try it anyway.

Let me start with a quote from Adventure Time actually, because this quote pretty much describes my love for music in General. "Music is powerful, man. It speaks to a primal pit in our brains. It makes anyone go up and get their knees going" When I first listened to Blur consciously , something truely magically happened. I saw Damon, as he slowly sink into their music, paired with Grahams ability to paint with sound. Alex who infused his Groovy cool bass sounds into the song and Dave who brings in memoriable rhythms. All of this rounded up makes Blur of who they were and who they currently are. Their timeless. It's inspirational…it's just purely Magic.

It's that exact feeling that I tried to translate into my illustraton. The whole drawing process made me a little emotional too. I never felt this way for an illustration really but I went through all sorts of emotions…Maybe that's what I get from their music. I was a bit conflicted. Because while listening to their music, I was able to feel their love to one another and it felt like something…intimate. Something I maybe shouldn't put in an image. Or should I? Am I capable to translate that love without projecting mine onto them? It is a quite vulnerable process after all. In the end however, I decided to just go for it. My pen will lead the way. If I learned one thing from Graham's interviews it's "If you're scared, do it scared!" (especially since I'm a fellow person who deals with a lot of anxiety) and if there is something I learned from listening to countless of Damons Interviews it's "Follow your heart. Be vulnerable. It's fine. Use this emotion and begin to dream. Your heart will know what is right!" And as cheesy as my love for Blur is (no pun intended), I always think back of how they talk about their musical heroes too. Recently I was listening to an Interview between Elton John and Damon and how he wrote that song about Elton John when he was younger. Or Graham how he described sitting in the room, learning all those Songs he is into (and both of them got a fantastic taste in music. I currently gonna do a deepdive into both of their influences , to get a better understanding of them as musicians…while having no musical knowledge myself lmao)

And so I decided "If they gush about their favorite musicians, I can do it too. Maybe not in a musical way (because I would suck at it) but in my artsy kind of way. In my own way. It might be embarassing for me and I'm quite shy about my feelings, but that's what art is sometimes."

It was also by far one of the longest things I worked on. I really kneed a month into this image and tried to capture every essence to the best of my ability. I think the most difficult part was to styilize the guys in a way that it still has this typical "Nabs" touch to it, but that it still look like them. …Okay, enough talking from my side, I hope you enjoy the image lol!

Don't mind me, I'm just an artist , being addicted to my ballpoint pen!

Wanting to share some WIPs for a current "mini" project. I was heavily inspired by this months theme "Harajuku", provided by "Character Design References"

This theme feels like a Homecoming, given that I basically grew up on Visual Kei Fashion and it's various subcultures. (which is also a very prominant Fashion style in Harajuku).

I took a lot of inspiration from the Bands I grew up with. Like Exist Trace, The GazettE, An Cafe. I also recently discovered Kiryu and after seeing Takemasa I had to design a outfit based on him, haha!

Are you listening to Visual Kei? If so, what is your favorite band? :)