comics

Stradivari & his incompetent sons: Omolia Bonolia

stradivari and his incompetent son, amelia bedelia

Dr Sketchy – Sky Candy

I went to a Dr Sketchy cabaret life drawing thingy in Austin. This one was at the aerial dance studio Sky Candy. There were 4 models and at least one was always hangin’ from something. Awesome poses, definitely my favorite life drawing setting.

dr sketchy life drawing sky candy austindr sketchy life drawing sky candy austin

dr sketchy life drawing sky candy austindr sketchy life drawing sky candy austin

I got to know the Kuretake No. 13 fountain brush pen a little better. I’d never tried it in life drawing. I looooove it!!

dr sketchy life drawing sky candy austin

Umm…. later I found this in my sketchbook.

magneto professor x life drawing

Don’t ask. It wasn’t me.

Hide Glue Delight

For the graduation ceremony potluck today, I fed everyone hide glue:

hide glue delight

My aunt would make this for us when we were kids.

Here is Tschu Ho Lee, our Director Emeritus, enjoying a cube of hide glue delight.

tschu ho lee tries the hide glue

So that marks the end of my second full year at the Chicago School of Violin Making (I’ve got one more year to go).

Here’s the state of the cello:

mj kwan cello progress august 2015

And viola is almost done getting varnished:

mj kwan viola varnish

I’ll be posting from Austin for the next couple weeks. See ya!

Cello Plate Jointing

Hello hello, my long hiatus is [hopefully] over… I will try to return to my ritualistic weekly postings. If not with comics, then I will post with updates on my instruments and top secret things I’ve learned along the way.

I am building a cello now! Today I joined my maple plates. I’ll do a post on some of the ways you can and should check the joint before gluing. But for now, 2 excerpt from my notebook (featuring Becky & Fred at the thermostat):

0730 cello joint

cello plate jointing glue-up

0730 cello joint 3

Congratulations, it’s a….

congratulations, it's a violin!

This is the first time I got to hear some violin-like sounds come out of this wooden box that I’ve been working on for almost a year now. This is an Amati model, the second violin I started at school, but it got set-up first. Still got a few things to fix on it before I can really call it done. My first violin should be done in the next month, and my viola soon after.

I’ll do a proper photo shoot with the newborn soon.