Days 67, 98, 69: Sketchbook Catchup

 

Untitled (2007)
postcard sunset view, doodled in my sketchbook for fun and played with in Paint Shop Pro.

 

Feet (2007) Pencil sketch

 

Study of my son (2007) Pencil sketch

There, we're all caught up. it's all quickie art, sketch book harvesting, but I wanted to get caught up, even if nobody reads this. Personal commitment and all that.

If you are trying to figure out your style, or where your style is going, draw. Draw what you see. Cartoon it, or draw from life. The first one up there is a cartoon sunset. the feet and the boy are drawn from life, but the boy is still a little stylized, a little not-true, just enough to be real at first glance.

That's my blather for the day.

days 47 and 48: Sketchbook

 

Ink study of baby (2007) ink on sketch paper, no pencils.

 

Girl's face (2007) inked and colored sketch of a girl's face

Two small drawings from my sketchbook.

PSA: weekends I think I'll be posting both days at once, so I can spend time away from the computer.

day 46: studies

(2007) colored pencil on paper.

Two small figure studies of my younger son.

Day 45: Salamander

Salamander (2007) Colored character study. Pen, colored pencil. Scanned, cleaned and filtered for a watercolor effect.


This is a character study for the illustrations I'm doing for a children's story I'm writing. I'm still deciding on the format - graphic novel, picture book, or novel with incidental illos. I suppose it depnds on how much of the story I want to paint, and how much to write.

Day 17: Doubletake

 

Doubletake (1987) Study for serigraph. 9x12. Gouache and pencil on paper.

I may still have one of the serigraphs around here. This was the study for a series of 50 three-color, poster-sized serigraphs I did as my final project in my favorite design course in college, and my prof got the progressive set. The stencil film was hand cut, and I had to resize and manually do color seperations (black, red, silver) from my study. I did it the old-fashioned way, using a grid and a photocopy of the 9x12 design. I wish I still had the butcher paper I drew the seperations on, for cutting the films, but I cut through them to cut the films more accurately.

I'd love to do it again - and I mean the whole old-fashioned, hand-cut stencils, messy, dirty, unrefined silkscreening technique. I did another run of a different size with photo-sensitive stencil medium and I don't like it as much, it feels like cheating. If I'm going to do that, I might as well just print the things out on a printer, or send it off to a printing service. Serigraphy, for me,is about the process and getting my hands dirty.

It's now the oldest one here. It's twenty years old.

Note: yes, this one is late. I spent all of yesterday making tortillas and prepping dinner. I think I'm happiest when I'm getting my hands dirty. I'll do today's in a few minutes.

Day 11: Kiss:Heart

Kiss:Heart, 1999. Digitally manipulated and retouched photobooth picture. Originally intended to be a study for a painting.

I feel a little squicked about this one. On the one hand, it's really an iconic, almost perfect image. On the other, that's me and my ex in the original. It's very hard to be objective about its artistic value when all I see is a bad breakup (even if I was very much in love with the guy at one time). It's not as if you can tell who those people are in the picture, anyway.

Don't make good art with relationship overtones, unless you want to feel faintly dirty about it for the rest of your life. I may do the painting, just to work out the feelings I have about this piece. It's a good piece, even if I wouldn't hang it in my house.

Day Eight: Study for August Hunt

 

Study for August Hunt (2004) 11 by 14 inches. Pencil on paper. Same-size plan for an illumination in the style of the Tres Riches Heurs.

I planned this as a gift for a friend, whose birthday is in August. The background is planned to be similar to the background in the August month illumination in the Tres Riches Heurs, except later in the same day or week - the grain is stacked, the reapers are gone. The foreground is a portrait of the owner of the finished piece and her horse, with her dogs running beside.