Four years ago I was drugged up and getting some dental work done by one of those dentists that asks a bunch of questions while he has his hand in your mouth. Immediately afterwards I made this quirky little watercolor painting with the hopes of capturing that familiar perspective we all experience during a typical dental visit.

Last year I visited a new dentist in the neighborhood and came across this painting in their waiting room:

I asked my dentist about the piece and they said it was a gift from one of their patients. What cracks me up about the two paintings is that they are so similar but have such different intentions. I was trying to capture this twisted experience, but my piece seems cute compared to the other piece… which was intended to be cute!

edit: My friend Heather sent me this great video:

Shortly after installing my UC Davis diorama in an un-occupied Employment Guide bin, I scattering mini-OWS protestors in news bins around SF. I’m still playing with the various ways that these empty newspaper racks can be re-used as playful forms of free speech. I also love the idea of spreading a little discourse in the middle of the biggest shopping day of the year.

For anyone curious, the dolls used are High School The Musical characters (I’ve been told).

I’m stoked about the new bike shop on 7th and Market in Downtown SF. With all of the cyclists I pass on my way to work, it seems like the perfect shop to open a business. I had a nasty (and stupid) pothole accident last weekend which left my front wheel with quite a wobble, but the service guys at Huckleberry Bicycles fixed it up nicely. I highly recommend checking their shop out if you get the chance.

update #3: Finished!!! 24 pages in 24 hours, I hope to post them online soon-ish.

update #2 : You can see the #instahero photos online (without an Instagram account) here http://web.stagram.com/search/instahero/

update #1 : Today’s app experiment is pretty weird… I’m spending the next 24 hours drawing an entire comic book about super heroes, BUT I NEED YOUR HELP! It’s been 5 years since I’ve done a super-hero comic and I’m all out of ideas, so I’m super-hero ideas from Instagram! To help with this project, post a picture (or brief description) of you and your super-power and tag it #instahero as soon as possible. Super strong? Super small? Able to talk to fish? Post a pic and tag it and I’ll try to work it into my comic. Thanks for helping and please spread the word!

On Saturday September 24th I’ll be participating in the 24 Hour Comic Book Day challenge at Mission Comics in San Francisco. This will be my 6th 24hr comic! Looking back at some of my previous comics I realize that the one I had the most fun making was Robots Don’t Know Anything About Twitter, a comic created with the help of friends on Twitter. To this day, it’s still one of my favorite projects I’ve ever worked on.

I’m giving some serious thought to doing another crowd sourced comic for this year’s event, but I don’t yet know exactly how… 24HCBD is all about embracing spontaneity, so I haven’t decided what I’ll be making tomorrow, just that I’ll probably reach out through the typical social media channels and see what I can come up with. You’ll probably be able to follow the action via @docpop on Twitter and Instagram.

So please stay tuned starting at around 11am for some sort of announcement and details on how we can create a comic book together. I’m still feeling under the weather, but the goal is still to write and draw a 24 page book entirely within a 24hr period. I’ll probably just do pen (and brush) and ink, without any color, but who knows. I did really enjoy the year I did a watercolored 24hr book.

one note: The official national 24 Hour Comic Book Day is October 1st, which just doesn’t work for us San Franciscans, so we are doing our event a week early.

My chats with Peter S. Conrad are becoming the highlights of my yearly visit to the SF ZineFest. Each year Peter has a new comic book that plays around with the comic book format. Last year I blogged about his wonderfully detailed cassette-tape comic, and this year I had a chance to talk with him about the newest issue of his Attempted Not Known comic, which plays around with the idea of a lottery-ticket comic.

Here’s Peter showing off the denim-pen-case he bought from my table last year.

I’ll be performing my chip and app music tonight at Hearts Across the Pacific, a fundraiser for Northern Japan disaster relief. It sounds like it’s going to be a ton of fun with eclectic music and art for sale. Aside from performing, I’ve also donated what’s left of my “Everyday Tokusatsu” paintings as well as some pieces from Mike Hales and Omar Gonzales. Sad Ultraman, shown at the top of this post, will hopefully sell for hella bucks.

Event and food begin at 4pm, my music set starts at 6:30. Suggested donations start at $10. The event will be at Cyclone Warehouse at 1842 Illinois St (near 3rd and Cesar Chavez), SF, CA 94124.

What I’m trying to do is allow buyers the chance to do is to directly contribute to The Red Cross and skip the whole eBay/paypal cut. This is doubly awesome if a buyer works at company that matches charitable contributions. So please take a look at the pieces below, and email me with any questions.

“Ultraman and the broken leg”
by Doctor Popular
watercolor, ink, and coffee of a thin sheet of wood vainer
6″ X 7 3/4″
$200

“Drunken Power Rangers”
by Doctor Popular
watercolor, ink, and coffee of a thin sheet of wood vainer
11″ X 8 1/2″
$175

“Sick Minizilla”
by Doctor Popular
watercolor, ink, and coffee of a thin sheet of wood vainer
6″ X 7 3/4″
sold

“Justice”
by Omar Gonzales
watercolor, ink, on thin brown paper
11″ X 8 1/2″
$100

“tokusatsu coffee break”
by Mike Hales
watercolor, ink, on watercolor paper
5″ X 5 3/4″
$60

I’ll be painting this Sunday morning from 10-noon at Summit and would love to have some other folks drawing “Everyday Tokusatu” paintings too. Tokusatsu is the popular genre of live action sci-fi shows, like Godzilla and Mighty Morphing Power Rangers. After the pieces are finished, I’ll probably put them up on eBay and donate all proceeds to the Red Cross. Here is one of the pieces I made last week that has already been bought:

I’ll have nice watercolor paper and some supplies, but you are free to bring your own. We will even have a theme that will get announced Sunday morning, I’m not going to say what it is yet, but trust me.

We are still working out the details, but all art will either be sold online or in a local gallery. So please come and draw a painting for charity with me in the morning. It’ll be fun!