Stories, etc.

I first started really enjoying the process of drawing heads when I was in high school. Our art teacher, Mrs. Menninghaus, made us simply draw the head and some of the neck of a fellow classmate for an in-class exercise. I think I used a pencil in medium softness. I drew a girl named Keely. Keely Downes. I realized as I was drawing her that her upper lip had a protrusion that dipped down onto the middle part of her bottom lip. Getting that subtlety with the pencil made the mouth look so much more convincing. After Keely, some of my friends wanted me to draw them, and some of them came out looking pretty good. The Warner Bros. animator Chuck Jones once said the fastest way to lose a friend is to draw a picture of them. Luckily none of my friends have ever stopped talking to me because of a poor drawing I did of them. It's hard to draw some people from real life though, especially if they are your friends; I always feel the impulse to talk with them while they are sitting in front of...

Painting the Grand Canyon A cavernous hole that constitutes itself on this planet is known as the Grand Canyon. Each year many a caravan, including Mike Brady and his Brunch (minus the r, and plus an Alice) venture to this southwestern retreat to explore the crags and caves of the big GC.  In honor of the subject itself, I'll intersperse relevant sentences from the chapter "Grand Canyon", excerpted from  Our National Parks, a book written by Nelson Beecher Keyes in 1958, with some action shots from the watercolor painting I did there.  Main Supplies. I like tubes just as much as cakes. Couple bottles of water. Temperature was a pleasant 85 so didn't need too too much water to carry in there.   "In 1540 a large party of Spaniards, greedy for easy wealth, pressed up out of Mexico intent upon locating and seizing the seven mythical cities of Cibola, supposedly built of pure gold. While this was to prove a most disappointing and ...

A few summers back, I was with my mom at Schoodic Point in Downeast Maine. We were on a mission to do a watercolor painting en plein air. In honor of the recent mother's day, I decided to post a picture of this watercolor I did that day on our trip. Painting ocean or lake water with the medium watercolor can be tricky. You don't want to reveal too much with a solid line, but I always do feel like I need to indicate some darker tones so the paint reads as the texture of the water's surface. My method for painting the water was to use a rather pale wash of ultramarine blue, with a darker prussian blue added in the background to establish a more definite line for the horizon. Once the ultramarine dried, I overlaid a few more saturated layers on top. After that, I was able to use a small filbert paintbrush to add in some choppier, horizontal lines to show some perspective.

While I haven't been to Norway yet, I was interested in painting a watercolor of what a street, pathway, or alley would look like there. For this one, I abjectly admit to using a reference photo randomly selected from google search, something like "Norway alleyways", for this one. I used high key bluish-greys and a mildly saturated cadmium orange when making more noticeable composition parts on the left and right sides of the picture plane. 

"Ya heard?" watercolor still-life on cotton rag paper. 9x12 Here's the set-up for the watercolor still life above. Hardest part was painting the green dinosaur with the medium watercolor which can be oh so fluid. 

Single Light Source Still Life Sketch Using Prismacolor Colored Pencils

water color drum set poem

An array of figure studies  This one is from a lady model who took two ten minute poses. I drew both poses on the same page but went missing some limbs. Then I added some Mists of Avalon- background elements for the heck of it.  Male model, sketchy couple of anterior 10 minute quick studies.  Clothed model. Waitin' for a BART train.  Female model took at 20 minute lateral view pose. Drew her in with a yellow prismacolor then went back and added darker surroundings and some value on the figure.  Mannequin head with a bedsheet Posterior Female model, 10 minute study. Prismacolors. Ball point pen male posterior 15 minute study Clothed figure, 5 minute pose

This is the back of a 18-wheeler as seen from me, the driver, between Orono, ME and Bangor, ME along the beautiful stretch of interstate 95. I used a Nikon Cool-Pix. Didn't lay a finger on photoshop.

An alley near Wrigley Field in Chicago, Illinois

In August 2006, my brother and I drove from Maine to California. Once we got to California, we ran into this sign, so I took a reference photo and did a painting of it a few years later. When we were stopped to take the sign and explore the breakdown lane, I found an arrowhead beside a bush of dry desert grasses. The arrowhead was covered in a green limestone which had ridges evenly cut in 45-degree angles along the "grip ridge" of the arrowhead. Maybe it wasn't an arrowhead, but rather a blade for cutting things. I put it in my pocket and we traveled down that road you see to the left of the sign up there; we drove towards "Death Valley". I was wearing heavy denim, and it was hot as hell outside.

This is an alphabet of a language I made up. 

And Leap Out of the Water

Here are some shots of artwork I did based on photos I took and ideas I had while day-tripping to Point Reyes in October 2013: Here you can see that I initially put a little sky-wash in the background and made some horizon lines, too.  I am also making use of the masking out process to help the foreground grasses form. I wanted to see what kind patterns I could get to almost make the same upright blade action of the real grass that was there. Additionally, I used the masking tape to protect some of the finer lines I wanted to preserve along the side of the boat and the cabin. Things were getting a little out of control. The boat was dilapidated in real life. The body of the boat was challenging to paint because the boat itself was 'done up' in a chipping, old, white paint. It was also turning an orange-brown, like the color you see above.  This is a photo of the finished version. I messed with the grass in the front, darkened the cabin of the...