Did I mention I bought the iPad Pro?! And the Pencil! I’ve had it for over a week, but after a busy Thanksgiving week in California I feel like I’ve barely put it through its paces. Tonight I attended a figure drawing session and spent the entire 2 hours sketching in Procreate. For the final, 25-minute pose, I decided to turn off my pesky left brain and paint with colors that weren’t necessarily there.

Just in case my niece and her friends can’t entertain themselves, I’ve been enlisted to draw some animals for a birthday party game.

Is it sad that I’ve gone into the Apple Store four times just to play with the iPad Pro and its heavily-backordered “Pencil” stylus? It’s frustrating that I can’t walk out the door with it. I mean, I could try, but I’d probably end up at the wrong end of an iTazer. The demo models don’t even have the drawing apps I want to use (like Procreate), but I can already tell that this hunk of tech is the next-generation Wacom Cintiq I’ve always wanted.

Off to Southern California in a couple days to see my pal and his gal, who are much cuter in real life, get hitched.

A fun side effect of my two New Jersey sketching sojourns is that my pen and ink work is now immortalized in the album liner notes of a folk band called Midland Uprising. If you purchase their new album Awake For Days, you will be forced to look at my hastily-formed drawing whilst learning new things about each of their catchy tracks. It took me a while to figure this out, but the splashes of color on the front cover are actually from my earlier sketch of musician Brian Yost as he performed with his other band Leaf Pile in Jersey City.