One of the things that comes with studying art is a whole lot of repetition. Drawing one figure after another, one portrait after another, various perspective exercises, still life setups to study value and color. A lot of that actually can develop into paying work, which is great, as you can keep learning while doing business. But along with other projects, it doesn’t leave a lot of time for stretching, for putting it all together and seeing what can really be done with it all. Continue reading
Along the Mountain Road
All summer long I’ve been developing this painting. It’s not every day I get a commission like this; generally a lot of what I do is very go-to-it. References are provided, I draw, I paint, it gets done. But now and then I get an extra-special treat. I get to pull a whole new scene out of nothing. I get someone who says, “Oh yes, I’d like a steam train coming out of a tunnel, surrounded by flowers and decorative trees.”
Months ago I was contacted by a friend of mine, who happens to run Mountain Road Nursery in Virginia. He had the idea for the train and the tunnel surrounded by flowers. That kind of thing, especially with a personal touch, has to be created from nothing, built from the ground up. He wanted a large oil painting, too. This had to be something special. Continue reading
Filed under commissions, Painting
Choose your own Adventure?
*feature image, drawing by Pierre-Paul Prud’hon
One of the most intimidating milestones that loomed before me when I chose to pursue art and illustration was “developing a style.” I have always been an observational artist; for over half my life I’ve been drawing and painting from photographs and the world around me. I never could quite figure out what my “style” was supposed to be when my main concern was always copying what I saw as authentically as possible.
The last several years changed that way of thinking tremendously. I had dabbled in trying to create my own scenes before, but had always given up due to lack of references and figure-drawing knowhow. Being an observational artist was a big handicap when approaching fantasy art. My first solution was to give up.
eBay Auctions Continued
Throughout September and October I’m going to continue to post a lovely selection of male and female charcoal figures, a few other charcoal drawings and a handful of still life paintings in oil all available on eBay. If you’re looking for original art at low prices, be sure to take a look!
Teatime
Ah, let’s all have a nice cup of tea, shall we?
Much better. I needed that. A little over a week ago, I got to thinking that I needed to renovate my website again. Now I’d only just done so in January, spending quite a lot of time making these nifty Flash mini-galleries. The website was slick and sophisticated and showed off a variety of my artwork, and provided a nice, neat contact form (which also took several days to work out.) With all that, why would I ever want to renovate again, no less so soon??
Filed under Networking
The Civil Air Patrol Painting “We Were There”
Every so often I receive an email asking me if prints are available of my Civil Air Patrol September 11th painting, We Were There. For anyone looking for the prints, the answer is YES.
Simply visit the painting’s page at Imagekind. You can choose your preferred size, paper or canvas, and even have it framed. If you would like a signed print, all you have to do is send me an email. I do add a small fee to cover shipping, but I can certainly order a print for you, sign it, and send it on. I never grow tired of getting those prints to the CAP members who have been looking for them.