Wednesday, January 30, 2013

Stolen artwork -- recovered!

One of the owners of The Comfy Cow called me today to say that a lady had called him to say she had my drawing that was stolen last February. He gave me her name and phone number.
This evening I called her, and then went to her apartment near the river in New Albany.  She gave me my drawing, in great shape and undamaged except for some stains on the backing board of the frame.
She told me that up until the middle of last summer, there had been some teens, eighteen or nineteen years old, living in the apartment behind hers (She didn't say so, but I think she meant it was a boyfriend/girlfriend).  Last June they had a big fight, and the place was trashed.
The landlord told this lady that he would knock off some of her rent in return for her going over to this apartment to clean it out. She found my drawing on the wall there, liked it, and hung it up in her apartment.
Then, yesterday, she and her roommate were watching "Antiques Road Show" and saw them discussing artwork appraisal.  They looked at my drawing on their wall and wondered if it was worth anything.  My name is on the drawing, so they Googled me and found my web site, on which I have the drawing listed as stolen with a request to contact The Comfy Cow with information.
So she called The Comfy Cow.
I am very grateful to her and to the owners of The Comfy Cow; I never expected to get the drawing back, especially now that a year has passed.

Saturday, January 26, 2013

Rough sketch, bed and breakfast

I've been commissioned to do a small pen and ink drawing of a local bed and breakfast. The land used to be a horse farm, many years ago, and a couple of Kentucky Derby winners were raised there.  That's why the owner asked to me to include a horse.

I've spent some time this week trying to figure out a layout.  This is the one I came up with last night, and I think it might work.  I decided to take a slightly more stylized approach to the drawing, shorten the yard to the horse and house were closer together, and keep an open mind in deciding on shading in the road and the yard.  This won't be much more than 6 x 9 inches, so playing up clarity and contrast will be important.

I sent a scan of this sketch to the owner to see how she likes it. If it will work, I'll start on the drawing shortly.

I also need to keep planning the next phase of the mural work I'm doing.  The next part will be a tree, and I've decided to include some macaws.  I'm kind of looking forward to working on that, but getting the planning work done is tough.  I'm off right now to do some selecting from the macaw reference photos I got courtesy of the image library at wetcanvas.com and the kind contributors there.

Monday, January 7, 2013

Mural section - completed

 Last night I finished this first section of the wall. This is an art & craft area of a children's play room.  The next section will feature a large tree.

Thursday, January 3, 2013

Mural progress

I worked on the mural for a few more hours last night. The Crayola box is pretty much done; I am pleased with it.