Cellphone photos are fun and easy to exchange, but they just don't cut it when it's time to tip the bartender. Two Brooklyn-based animators, Philip J. Lockerby and Zartosht Soltani, have been making napkin sketches at the dimly lit bars they often frequent together after work. Tonight, the Crooked Tail Cafe, in the Gowanus section of Brooklyn, is hosting an opening for the exhibition of their napkin art.

Lockerby has worked as an animator for television and film, notably the Academy Award-nominated LesTriplettes de Bellevue, and is currently directing a documentary about the Manic Street Preachers, an alternative rock band from Wales. "For this show tonight," he says, "we're focusing on the bartenders, but generally we'll draw whomever is at the bar. Maybe we'll get a free drink or two out of this as well. When we give a bar napkin portrait away, most times we've made that person's evening. We're just doing what we love to do most, which is to draw."

Napkin art by Philip J. Lockerby (left and right) and Zartosht Soltani (center). Courtesy the artists.

Zartosht Soltani graduated from the Fine Arts at Azad University of Arts in Tehran. A year later he moved to New York, where he now creates cartoons, television commercials and broadcast design for FlickerLab, an animation studio that uses humor to sell products and concepts such as saving the whales. This fall, he'll be part of the 2009 Too Art For TV show, the annual exhibition that promotes animation art.

"We wanted to celebrate the good times we've had over the last couple of years bar hopping and bar sketching," says Lockerby. "Some people take photos to remember certain events, others write in their journals. My memories are sketched on various forms of paper products. I can remember where I was and who I was with for most sketches I've done, sometimes I can even hear the music that was playing at the time.

"Out with Zartosht the other night" Lockerby adds, "I realized that these days of drinking and drawing at Brooklyn bars may be nearing an end. It's like an invisible force, nudging you in a certain direction, the same one that brought me here, I feel, is now whisking me away to a new adventure."

Join the animators tonight for what promises to be an evening of fun and of spreading some more love among their friends and fellow artists. Crooked Tail Cafe, 272 3^rd Avenue (between Union and President), Brooklyn, NY. 718.852.1414. Click here for a map.

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