Venice Beach

In between visiting animation studios and college friends Tyler & I have been exploring some of the different areas around LA.  We spent MLK day at Venice Beach where it was a beautiful sunny afternoon to walk up and down the boardwalk.  You could look down one side of the boardwalk all the way to the Santa Monica Pier and see the coastline and the mountains wrap around the ocean.  It was pretty crowded, but all the better for people watching.  And boy were there some interesting people to watch!  

There were people surfing, skateboarding, swerving their bikes in and out of the crowd, street performers, and vendors selling all sorts of crazy stuff.  My favorite thing about Venice is all of the brightly colored architecture and the candy colored signs and typography.  It seems like the colors are brighter there in the sun!

For lunch we shared this giant cup of fresh fruit and bought some french fries on the boardwalk.  Tyler & I like to think of ourselves as pineapple connoisseurs, as we frequently buy whole pineapples from Costco and eat it straight off the cutting board.  We decided that pineapple tastes better the closer you are to Hawaii! 

I took alot of pictures in Venice.  And they're so colorful that they'll be great inspiration for some new collages when I get back to all of my art materials in Ohio.  Maybe I'll do an entire California series.  Sometimes it's difficult to stay motivated to make new work, especially during wintertime when you're surrounded by shades of gray.  This trip has been like an art jumpstart!