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“You better be nice to me,” I used to tell Winston. “When you’re dead I’ll be the only one who can listen to you.”   “I’m going to haunt your ass in the bathroom,” Winston said with a cigarette raspy belly laugh. “While you’re sitting on the toilet.”   Winston and I waited tables at the Four Seasons together. He was 62, I was 30. Winston was, in short, deeply loved by perfect strangers on the regular. Guests would return to his tables over and over until they were nearly family. By the time he told me he would haunt my...

  When I was 8 years old, I had a dream that I died. I was on the swing behind my childhood home. As I kicked higher on that swing, a man came out onto the back porch. He was waving a gun. Jolted by fear I leapt off my swing to flee. He shot me in the chest before I hit the ground. My omniscient self watched as I exploded upwards into the air-  arms outstretched like wings. Instead of crumpling to the ground, I flew joyously skyward, through the branches of two big oak trees that still reside in my...

The Austin Coloring Books have a new look and feel, just in time for the holiday season! Our second edition are digitally re-drawn and edited versions of your favorite images. They are printed on acid free 80 lb stock which is great for all dry media... and looks beautiful with most wet media too! (We still recommend inserting buffer pages into your book if you color with marker). First edition books are 50% off until they're gone... (and heads up, they are going fast!) Second edition books aren't in the web-store... YET. They will be posted soon for all to order. In the meantime Austin...

This Friday at Art for the People Gallery, Jeremiah Hurta and I will be showing our "Collaboration" piece for their Scene Builders Exhibition. The founder of the funky South 1st gallery, introduced me to Jeremiah two years ago because our illustrative style was so similar. We have a surprising amount of things in common: Both of us took classes at the University of Texas. We have taught art. We love crystals (although Jeremiah knows quite a bit more than I do), we love to doodle, fusion styles of music, and micron pens. More often than not, we prefer to sit down with a pen and see what comes forth from the...

  How do you feel about murals colored by the community rather than an artist? Cool? Cop out? Both? Jason and I just took a staycation in Austin, and one of the things I got around to doing: Interactive Coloring at Hope Outdoor Gallery.  Over the years Hope has become less and less a forum for serious street artists, moving more towards interested tourists tagging their names. One artist I ran into told me (with a noted tone of disdain), I could expect my work to be painted on within the hour.  I will say when I left, I watched people out...