It's Bonfire Time

Where to even start. The night before the 5/27 Portland game saw the watercolorist hanging out with Stu Holden, Alexi Lalas, and Rob Stone (!!!) at the SB Nation contributor meet up. One thing led to another and suddenly I'm cerebrating victory over Stu Holden in giant Jenga.

During the game the next day, due to the magic of technology, I made a quick update.

Because that was so much fun, I took it a step further and adjusted it for the 2-pole medium in time for playing Portland again in Open Cup play at Starfire. 

When it comes to the Timbers, the more bonfires, the better.

Ozzie. Our captain. Because he's the amazing honey badger and I love him.

Diving Red Bull is a Shooting Star

A little shooting stars style meme video following the Sounders vs New York Red Bulls game on March 19th. Divers, beware. 

I'm just a Sounder cat

When I'm tired of drawing people, I sometimes draw my cats. This one is based on my orange cat, Vincent, and what I imagine he'd look like wearing a very tiny Sounders jersey.

World Cup qualifiers

Who's on the roster for World Cup qualifiers? These guys! Congrats to Jordan Morris and Clint Dempsey on the call up from new coach Bruce Arena. Score some goals, guys.

The Bruin

Meet Will. He's our new bear in charge of scoring goals. When he play's soccer, he scores goals, and we go mental. He also seems to give good hugs.

Snowball for snow games

I love watching MLS. I love when there's drama. This match in Minnesota hosting Atlanta was violently snowy. They busted out the orange ball, and chaos ensued.

This was drawn live while watching the game from the comfort of my warm and tiny Seattle apartment.

It me

Every year I pick a specific outfit or kit for watching Sounders matches.  wear it to the games here at home and out to the pub for away games. This year, it's a dress covered in cats and my champions scarf. 

Deuce

In the first Watercolor Recap of 2017, it's the Deuce show! Clint Dempsey scores the first goal of the Sounders's season. Despite the loss on the road to Houston, it was good to see Clint back out there making an impact when we weren't sure he would return at all.

Posters by the People

My favorite things all in one place! Sounders! Seattle! Mario Brothers! Pizza and donuts!

I was invited by the team to design a poster for the Sounders' first home match of the year as part of the Posters by the People program. So exciting! These typically run as ongoing contests for submissions, but every year they pick a few matches to invite someone to feature.

This was designed completely on the iPad pro with Apple pencil, although at this point I'm wishing I had the bigger version.

How to watch

I'm changing up my contributions to Sounder at Heart this season. Instead of a regular cadence of game-specific hype posts pre-match, I'm going to be doing post-match "Watercolor Recaps" a few days after Sounders matches. In addition, I'll be providing general "how to watch" illustrations showing soccer fans out in the wild enjoying MLS in all the different ways that we do. Sometimes will reference the national channels that MLS can be found on, like (FS1 above, with dreamboat Rob Stone).

MLS on Unimas and UDN.

MLS on ESPN with Herc Gomez and Taylor Twellman.

Stars for all

It's a dream and it's a bit of a dance. A bit of a posture it's a bit of a stance. 

The champions earned their stars, and so did we. The Sounders Alliance Council and team announced this week that stars would be available on jerseys for women's and children's sizes as well as just the authentic men's sizes as in all previous years. This was a victory that showed you should always speak up.

What's behind the curtain

I'm working on another big projects. I'm super excited for this one because it combines two of my biggest loves in life and I never thought that this silly side project would lead to such cool things. Thanks for following along and helping me make my thing.

Yacht Con II

It's been so awesome to be involved with the Sounder at Heart team and they've been super supportive of my silly art fun. This is their second (now annual) live podcast event that will feature live panels of players and FO members, raffle prizes, an ascot demo, and a lot of friendship.

Superdraft 2017

Superdraft time! We picked up a few players that weren't there that day, but we're excited to see if they can contribute to the first team and S2 moving forward.

How to win MLS cup according to the Sounders (My shot)

Here is the poster that I put together with the 12 steps of the Sounders rollercoaster of a 2016 season. You may have noticed the words in italics under each previous post leading up to this one, and on the poster above. These are lyrics from the song My Shot from the Broadway musical Hamilton. It's a hype tune, get on it's level.