Trip to downtown Atlanta

Georgia Aquarium

[Mike Daikubara in Atlanta, GA] 
Last month I was able to attend a 5 day graphics design conference held in Atlanta. I love conferences - Such a great way to listen to stories, be inspired and to learn from professionals in various disciplines.
Another thing I love about conferences is the ability to travel to new places, and to slip in a sketch here and there.

To start off, here's a mandatory plane interior sketch to get warmed up :)

Delta Airlines

My hotel in Atlanta was in front of the Centennial Olympic park and I walked around that evening.
Here's the World of Coke building also in the park captured right before it got dark, and the top of the building after it got dark exposing the famous coke bottle shape.
The place was closed but every 10 seconds or so I kept on hearing the coke bottle being opened and poured into a glass. After an hour of listening to this, I had to get a drink of Coke even though I rarely drink Coke!

World of Coke - Exterior

Later in the week I was able to check out the inside and it was just really impressive!
It's unbelievable in how personal and emotional they can communicate their drinks since after the tour, I really wanted to drink coke! They also had a section where they had Coke a Cola products from all around the world - very impressive and also got to re-taste my favorite drink from Peru - Inca Kola!

World of Coke - All you can drink Coke products from around the world

Next to the Coke museum was an aquarium. I didn't know anything about this place but it was probably one of the best aquarium's I've ever been too! The building was so nicely layed out and since they were open until late at night (and with a discount) I was able to check it out.

Here's a really dark sketch but managed to somewhat capture the feeling of the place and the colors were later on added in the hotel room.

Georgia Aquarium

My hotel room on the 14th floor had an amazing view of the park and the skyscrapers of downtown Atlanta. It also happened to be the week of a large EDM (Electronic Dance Music) festival taking place in the park and every night until 11PM, my room got blasted with the low bass sound shaking my entire room.

 

Omni Hotel Room View

Also connected to my hotel was the CNN Center - The world headquarters of CNN. At lunch time I sat at the food court and sketched the impressive escalator that went right into the globe shape.

CNN Tower

My first solo sketching Trip to Puerto Rico

Back in December I found out that I needed to use up my 4 days of vacation at work that month or I would lose it - so of course I decided to use it!

Looking around for things to do, I asked my wife if she wanted to go somewhere. Since we recently got 2 kittens, we couldn't leave them alone so she decided to stick around.

Thus my first ever solo sketching trip!

I was super excited and looked everywhere for all possibilities but had a few criteria that was important to me. 

I wanted to be:

1. a warm place so I could sketch outside.
2. a place I can walk around everywhere and not have to drive.
3. a place where there's a direct flight from Boston.
4. a place that was pretty inexpensive to travel to.

 After lots of searching Puerto Rico rose to the top! specifically "Old San Juan".

If was also off season making everything cheap as well as having mile points saved up that I could use!

2 weeks later I was in Old San Juan sketching my first subject at the hotel:

 

In total I was able to do 35 sketches and had an amazing 4 days.

Here are a few scans from my sketchbook.

Excited by the trip, after coming home I started working on my 6th book.
To keep the book as raw as possible, I kept all the content as is but only rewrote my hand written letters to make it much more legible- Hope that helps readers want to read my text a little bit more :)

Now available through Amazon.

100th Hotel drawing in Las Vegas

[By Mike Daikubara in Las Vegas] 2 weeks ago I was in Las Vegas and it was the 5th year in a row I was there working in the trade show booth for my employer Symmons Industries.
Vegas is a strange place in many ways and definitely exhausting too - but what's been great about this annual trip is that my employer allows me to stay at different hotels every year so I can add a new room drawing to my collection!

So it turned out that this drawing of the Aria hotel marked my 100th drawing since I started measuring/capturing hotel rooms 10 years ago!

I'm glad I kept up with this little hobby which turned into an addiction of mine since what I learned and the feedback I've been getting from people has been excellent. I even had my employer purchase a few hundred copies of my Hotel book to give out to our potential customers which is a pretty nice feeling.

Also if you're also in Massachusetts, I have 40 of these drawings currently on display all of May at L'aroma Cafe in Newton so drop on by for a nice cup of coffee and some artwork ! :)

I also noticed I have enough drawings to start working on the 2nd edition of the Hotel book which I'll be starting to work on soon!

'Sketch NOW Think Later' Workshop: Booklet

For the past few months I've been preparing for my workshop 'Sketch NOW Think Later ' taking place in Manchester UK for the Urban sketchers Symposium this summer.

The basis of this workshop actually goes back to about 10 years ago when I started carrying a stack of index cards and a pen (+an emergency pencil) at all times and would jot down anything I found relevant at the moment. This could be anything from what I saw that I wanted to research later, design ideas for work/personal projects and sketching ideas.

This workshop is actually made up of all these notes that was on sketching tools, techniques and mindsets that I find fascinating and important to me as an Urban Sketcher. Those thoughts over the years has not changed very much which turned into the core basis of this workshop: To be able to sketch more, with limited time and just have fun!

If you share this same thought, I hope to see you in this workshop!
The workshop booklet shown is currently being printed and will be distributed to everyone that signs up to my workshop :)

Index cards that I always carry with me

Trying to lay out the cards in logical order (while being disturbed by my 2 cats)

A few note cards in details

Sample thumbnail pages of the booklet

Oculus & Titanosaurs in NYC

[By Mike Daikubara in New York City] Attending a Brand Strategy conference in NYC last week, I was also able to slip in some time to see 2 things I really wanted to see in the city: Oculus and Titanosaurs.
Oculus is the new train station build in the ground Zero which had partially opened its door to the public and was just stunning. It seemed to have been a much debated structure requiring lots of time and money to build but I was purely impressed by this elegant structure surrounded by really large buildings near by.

 

Inside:

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Many of you might already know this but during this trip I learned that you could partially take a panoramic photo on the iphone - meaning you don't have to do a full 180 degrees and can stop it at any time. Addicted to this new technique, I ended up taking a few sketch selfies looking up.

Here's a breakfast scene sitting inside the court area at my hotel. Really cold but had to get this wall display in the hotel:

Times square area. Another cold day - it would be perfect day to be inside a fuzzy costume:

 

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On my last day in the city I headed to the Museum of Natural history to see the worlds largest dinosaur - it's so large and so new that they don't have a real name for it yet but called it the Titanosaurs for the group it fit under.

This was a really challenging sketch to do with tons of people, a dark setting, and no where to stand to get a full view of this dinosaur.  This is the view I had. I had to swing my head 180 to get the entire head to capture this creature!

Using the Panoramic photo setting, I was finally able to get the entire dinosaur. Looking around many people were doing the same thing!

 

It's 122 feet (37M) long! So long it couldn't fit into the room!

 

 

I had fun capturing 2 more dinosaurs before catching my train ride back home to Boston.

I can't eat until I finish Sketching

[Boston] Last year out of surprise, I was invited by a seafood restaurant called B&G Oysters to come sketch their weekly changing coursed meals called Shellabration. It was a great feeling to do a sketch for their social media pages in exchange for great food each week.

This year I was once again invited and will be spending the 7 weeks sketching these amazing seafood feasts and regional specialties from across the world!

I go to the restaurant straight after work so I'm quite tired and very hungry. I think I do one of my best and fastest sketches under these conditions since I can't eat until I finish.
I'm also under great pressure to finish fast since my wife can't eat until I finish too. But she's learned a little trick to 'snack' little pieces that aren't seen in my sketch tough :)



Week 2 was Sicilian Fritto Misto - the large crispy fish was really tasty!
This year they even created a postcard for the event using one of my sketches from last year.


There are 5 more weeks remaining of this event. If you're ever in town,check it out!