Saturday, March 22, 2008

Jack of All Trades, Master of None

So, I do some block printing, too. Lino-cut for now, but I am going to try my hand at wood-block printing this summer.

Of the pieces you see below, I've included the cut linoleum board for three of them to compare the finished art to the block itself. The best of my work occurs when I execute the cut with the fewest possible strokes.

Right now I'm in the middle of a couple of urban landscapes. One is new, the other is an attempt from a couple of summers ago that I think may be a salvagable failure.




Sunday, March 16, 2008

Ahhh.... more color



I just finished this today. I'm trying to to get reacquainted with watercolor, so I decided to do a lighthearted scene. Painting really is like language-learning. If you don't do it every day, you loose your skills.

More from Spring Studio




Maria and I went to Spring Studio again a couple of weeks ago. I've been holding off putting these up because I wanted to break up the black-and-white work with some color.

Blinded by color





So, I have a pretty bad sense of color, suffering from a mild form of color-blindness all my life. It used to be worse when I was young, so as I learned to draw as a kid, I avoided learning to paint, assuming I wouldn't be able to create color art that looked good.

The pieces directly above this post are some of my first attempts at watercolor since around 1990. Most of these were finished in early 2006.

Thursday, March 6, 2008

Mandalas and such






I've started drawing mandalas and tile designs in an 11 x 14 hardbound Classic sketchbook. The goal is to fill the book cover to cover. I'm a long way from that goal, but here are a few of the things in it so far.

With My Left Hand




A while back I started a sketchbook in which I was only going to draw with my left hand. Being right-handed, this proved very difficult. I stopped, but now I plan on getting back to it. These are the first two left-handed drawings from that sketchbook. More to come.

Wednesday, March 5, 2008

Graphite, baby!



(dimensions of "Damsel in Distress": 21.5" x 7.5")