Welcome to the Finlayson Family homepage.  This site is a personal glimpse into our curious family life.  I don't know what to tell you to expect each time you drop in for a visit.  I enjoy songwriting, photography, writing poetry and doodling.  I love funny stuff too so be prepared for a chuckle.  I guess you'll just have to take your chances on this site's content during your visits.  For now I submit for your cultural enlightenment a visit to the David B.Finlayson Memorial Foundations Gallery of Napkin Art.

Napkin Art Gallery

I guess you could say that I’ve been doodling since I was in diapers and I never stopped.  Sometimes children (sometimes grownups too) will come up to me in restaurants to watch.  They often ask how I learned to draw so well.  I always tell them that I just liked drawing as a kid and never lost my interest, I just got better at it down through the years. 

I didn’t start using sketchpads until recently.  Gina took up the hobby of collecting my drawings on paper napkins and placemats while we were still dating.   It was Gina’s bright idea to buy me a bunch of sketchpads after she’d had accumulated about ten years of napkin art. This I guess was more than a drawer full.   I wasn’t real sure that I would drag a pad around with me but thought I’d try to make her happy.  She once said that she was going to sell off the books once my art became recognized and valued among the New York art community.  She’s always had faith in me but is realistic enough to know this achievement most often comes posthumously.  Let’s hope and pray her patience and years of encouragement eventually pays off.

As it turned out, keeping my sketches together came in pretty handy.  To this day I go back through the books and find a lot of resource for my design business and various projects.  If you see me in a waiting room or in a restaurant, there’s an 80% chance that you’ll find me with a pen and sketchpad in hand.  There was a long period between sketches or should I say “blank pages” during the first two years of our daughter Katie’s existence.  During that time I had taken on the yoke of Father “the human-pack-animal.”  Carrying a sketchpad was just too much to keep up with when I was hauling around diapers, wipes, extra clothes, carriage, bassinet, and baby carrier.  I just gave up for a while.  When Katie was two and a half to three years old, I’d have to wrestler her for a chance to draw in my own book.  Many of the pages are filled with her doodling.  I am sure that in time her contribution to my sketchpads will be far more valuable than mine.  I am afraid that when the day comes to sell the books for millions of dollars, Gina will not be able to part with them because of Katie’s first endeavors of doodling recorded.  I personally believe that my brilliant child will one day grow up to be a renown-great-famous-person and the sketchpads will sell for millions more because of her early marks made upon those precious pages…ahhhh but I digress. 

I still backslide from time to time and doodle on napkins.  I enjoy the feel and texture of napkin art.   I like how the ink free-bleeds into napkins as well as the cool effects that different textured napkins can inspire and take a drawing.  Recently, during two different outings, I drew two images displayed on this page.  Gina got on to me for not having drawn Katie & Tree in a pad.  Usually the only reason for not having one is due to the impracticality of carrying Katie and a sketchpad too.  Gina asked that I at least scan and post the image on the Internet.  I was going to leave it on the table because of all the tea and ketchup stains.   The Space Kid is one that I decided not to leave on the table with the tip.  The Space Kid was drawn on a brown napkin and reminds me a little of Bill Waterson’s Calvin (Calvin & Hobbs).  Last Sunday night while taking the trash out I was surprised to have found my space kid drawing in the trash.   I couldn’t believe that Gina threw away one of my drawings, EGAD!  I guess that means the honeymoon is over. 

If perchance you didn’t come by way of my business site, check out www.finlaysonconcept.com  which will also link you to other personal and business ventures.