MJ's SKETCHBOOK

For the animal connection portrait No 18, I decided to draw Mike Tyson with a pigeon (based on a portrait by photographer Paul Mobley), which I believe is his favorite animal. He actually had a show on Animal Planet about pigeons called Taking on Tyson. He’s an interesting man. I hope to get a chance to see his show Mike Tyson Undisputed Truth at some point. I first heard about it on the Joe Rogan Experience Podcast and it sounds interesting. It’s just him talking about his life. I’m sure there are a lot of valuable lessons to take from him.

I’m also fascinated by his face tattoo. It’s bold and unique. After doing a bit of research on it, I found out that it’s inspired by Māori tribal tattoos called Tā moko. Not that he planned on it, apparently his tattoo artist convince him to get this design as opposed to a bunch of heart in his face. Good thing he listened to the artist!

Apr 20

think… love… choose… live

This time I decided to experiment with labels and stuck them on the pages. They almost act as posters and prevent the ink from the Sharpies to go through to the other pages. I was inspired by the popular “obey” poster.

Apr 18

It’s been a little while since I took the time to doodle in my Walls Notebook because I couldn’t think of something interesting to draw (even though I should just start instead of waiting for inspiration). However a recent tweet from Pharrell (shown below) sparked this idea for i am other. It’s an interesting project with a neat manifesto

Apr 08

the opposite of fear is love

I heard Tom Campbell say “The opposite of fear is love” during an interview, and it inspired me to create this little piece. Every decisions that we make are based either on fear or love: Fear being the most negative state (creating negative outcomes) and Love being the most positive state (creating positive outcomes). As more and more people choose the take the red pill and live their life based on Love, all of the world’s problems will slowly disappear.

There’s a really neat explanation of what it means to live your life based on fear and love in the book Power by Rhonda Byrne. I stumbled on a the audio intro to the book and it was rather interesting. I might add it to my list of readings.

Apr 05

hold on to your freedom

This one was inspired by Banksy’s balloon girl street art. I had George Michael’s song Freedom in my heard on a loop as I was drawing this : “Freedom! I won’t let you down. I will not give you up...”

How often do we voluntarily give away our freedom? Do we even realize it? What are we giving our freedom away for? Is it really worth it?

Apr 02

no man can get rich himself unless he enriches others

This is a quote from Earl Nightingale’s “Strangest Secret” speech that I try to keep in mind and apply regularly. The way I see it, the word “rich” means more than accumulating wealth. I think it also means accumulating wisdom, happiness, ideas, skills and knowledge.

TGIM sketchnote 10

I’m not going to lie, after listening to this week’s TGIM my first thought was : ” This year, I’m getting to Phenomenal with ET”. It’s that motivating! Although I think ET’s already at the door of Phenomenal, changing the lives of so many people. I have A LOT of catching up to do so I’m going to go back, review all the videos and all the sketchnotes and make sure I got everything covered before he posts the videos for the second quarter.

Mar 28

somedays you have to create your own sunshine

This quote inspired me to doodle a little something on my Walls Notebook, somewhat inspired by Banksy. I used a cutout silhouette of a person painting the sunshine.

I like this quote. The way I see it, is it’s all about taking responsibility for your own happiness and not always expect your environment or people around you to take care of that for you, because at the end of the day you decided if you’re going to be happy or not, right?

Mar 26

TGIM sketchnote 9

This week’s TGIM gave me a “aha” moment, especially when I heard ET say “You’re attracted to greatness because it’s in you”. It makes sense. I guess you’re always attracted to things that speak to you and they speak to you because there’s most likely something in common between you and that great person you admire. That’s good to know :)

I get the impression I’m in various stages depending on the areas of my life when I look at the definitions of average, good, great and phenomenal people. In my case, some projects are in the dream state, some are on paper, some are in the works. It’s a nice follow up to last week’s TGIM.

Mar 19

TGIM sketchnote 8

This week’s TGIM is all about becoming who you’re meant to be though actions : Getting out of your comfort zone and doing things better, working harder, stop being average. It’s easy to be average. It’s hard to get to Good and then Great. I can only imagine how much harder it is to become Phenomenal. I bet that the rewards are probably proportional to the effort you put in : Action Reaction.

I think everyone starts at Average and some decide to take the next step and become Good, Great and Phenomenal. One a scale of Average to Phenomenal, where do you think you are? I think I’m at the end of average and the beginning of good. I started a couple things, but there’s a lot more to do. Working on this sketchnote brought new projects ideas for me to start at some point (hopefully this year). I wanna see how far I can take this as well.

Mar 16

ANIMAL CONNECTIONS 017 : Tippi and the ostrich

Today I learned about Tippi Degré, a woman who, as a child, spent her childhood in Namibia among wild animals and tribespeople. Her parents were wildlife photographers and they produces amazing photographs of their child befriending an elephant, a leopard, lion cubs, an ostrich and more. She’s basically a real life Mowgli. One of my favorite from the series of photos I saw is the one where she’s siting on a ostrich. This is my version of it. What an amazing experience to have as a child.

Mar 12

TGIM sketchnote 7

This week’s TGIM is a continuation of the previous week’s. Once you realize and accept the fact that you matter, you can activate your own potential. There are three main points to keep in mind:

1. Turn on the power : activate yourself

Activate your potential the same way you activate a credit card to be able to use it, or you turn on a computer to make use of it as well. If you don’t turn on the power, you can never figure out all the wonderful things you can do with it. It’s just a pretty box. The same goes for every human being. You can remained switched off and just follow the minimum standards of living or you can turn yourself on and be all that you can be.

2. Discover your unique talents

Next you have to figure out what you are working with. What’s in you. What you’re good at and comes to you naturally. It’s discovering your talent. But it’s important to not confuse talent with skills. “Talent you have naturally. Skill is only developed by hours and hours and hours of beating on your craft.” (Will Smith). In my case I know I have a certain talents when it comes to drawing, but I still have to work on it and keep developing it, in order to get to the Phenomenal level.

3. Your experiences make you valuable

Another thing to realize is that you are unique not only because of your talents, but also because of your own life experiences. So there’s not need to worry about competition because they can never be exactly like you, even if they copy you. Where you come from, where you went to school, where you work, your family conditions, your financial condition, all of that create a combination that is unique to you so you’ll always be able to relate to a unique group of people. I know there are a lot of illustrators out there, but how many have an engineering and interior design background? Probably not as much. And The more you list your unique set of experience, the more you realize that you can use that to your advantage and there’s no way anyone could be the same, even a clone because they will never have the same set of experiences.

Mar 09

If I was a real graffiti artist, I would probably be the type to create art pieces that get people to look inwards or inspire them. Very often when I meet new people, I automatically asking “what do you do?”. I guess it’s the standard question we’ve been programmed to ask. But what I really want to ask is “who are you?”. Strangely it’s often a difficult question to answer and many don’t seem to have an answer it either … how strange is that?

Mar 04

TGIM sketchnote 6

This week’s TGIM has a slightly different tone than the usual videos. There’s is one central important message :

Whoever you are and wherever you are: know that you matter, no matter what.

I truly believe this. There’s nothing more disheartening than to hear about people committing suicide because they didn’t think that anyone would care or because they thought they were insignificant. They don’t realize that the world will never be as good as it could have been because they left too soon, without sharing their own unique gift with the rest of the world.

People matter not only to other individuals, but to animals and our planet. So even if you’re born in the most horrible situation you can make a difference. What’s important is that you are here. Then all you have to do is do you, the best you can and positively affect people around you.

We fail to realize that something as simple as a smile, a hug or a “thank you” can brighten someone’s day. You’ll never know how a gesture as simple as this can turn things around in someone’s life. Still, when you pay attention to what you do, and how people react to it, you can sometimes get a glimpse of how you can positively affect someone’s life and that’s proof that you matter.

Mar 03

the human mind is like a parachute…

This time for my Walls Notebook, I decided adopt the graffiti style. I’ve always liked the font style of some graffiti artists and how they can turn words into works of art. This is my fist attempt in this notebook.