Gathering walnuts at lunch

Today I spent my lunch break gathering walnuts. Time to make more ink!

Skitter-Clack and Tilda

I just found this drawing that Erin originally gave to me a few months ago. It is a drawing of two characters from the Mice and Mystics board game.

Clubhouse drawing commission

Here's another drawing I just finished (I might be modifying it slightly if my customer spots anything she thinks needs to change.)  It's 10 x 13 on Bristol paper.  A lady I know asked me to draw a clubhouse that was built by her brothers in the 1960s, next to her family's greenhouse.  It was a challenge because the only references were three small, grainy photos, but here is the result:

 Here's a detail.  The stone wall is my favorite part.

Black walnut ink house portrait

Just finished today during my lunch break. This is black walnut ink on paper, 8 x 11.25 inches.

Black walnut ink house portrait

and a closeup:

Black walnut ink house portrait - detail

House portrait in progress

I will finish this over the next few days--there is a deadline!

Watermelon hippo

I did this more than a month ago and forgot to post a photo.

Watermelon with teeth

I carved this at the request of my daughters' art teacher as a centerpiece for the school art show.

Plein air painting on lunch break

This is the result of several sessions of painting over at E. P. Sawyer Park during lunch. It is acrylic on panel, 10 x 16 inches.

Lunch break plein air painting

This was my second day working on this during my lunch break. Had to work fast! Using acrylics.

Shawna Khalily

Last weekend I went with my family to the Mighty Kindness Hootenany down by the Ohio River.  There was a huge crowd, and it was a fine day, and there were lots of tents.  One of the people set up was an acquaintance of mine, Shawna Khalily.  I first met her a few years ago and was immediately struck by her work; it's pretty engrossing.  She creates hand-colored woodcut prints.  I photographed her with the poster she made for the event we were at:

You can't see the richness of the texture, detail, and color in this photo of her work, but you can see it better in her online gallery if you click on her name in the paragraph above.

Echo Trail landscape - acrylic on panel

Last Friday I painted near Floyds Fork, just off Echo Trail.  It was a beautiful day to be out.  The landscape there is very nice; I will definitely go back for more.

This is acrylic on panel, 16 x 20 inches.  Most of it was painted on site, but then I finished it when I got home with some modifications and “polishing up.”  I cannot remember the last time I completed a painting all in one day.

My neck was sunburned by the time I went home.  It was foolish of me not to bring sun block, but fortunately I was wearing long sleeves and had a ball cap, so it could have been worse.

I joked elsewhere about seeing plenty of wildlife "...and most of it had eight legs and run up my pants."  However, apart from spiders and bumble bees and lots of birds chirping, I didn't encounter much.

in progress

completed

"You Are Allowed to Eat A Burger For Breakfast If You've Been Up All Night Fighting Crime"

 I was visiting friends last weekend when I saw this piece of art hanging in their house.  I learned that their teenage daughter, Anna, created it--a combination of hand drawn work, photography, and digital manipulation.  Besides the obvious subject matter, it is also a depiction of her and her father.  Anna kindly forwarded the digital file to me to post on my blogs.  It's not the first time I've been impressed by her work.  I am envious of her creativity.

Plein air walnut ink

This is my first time out to draw on my lunch break since the leaves were still green last year.  The busy autumn and long, cold winter had kept me in, but today it was sunny and in the upper 60s, so I decided I had to get out.

Unfortunately, it was also very windy.  After my tackle box blew over and my plastic ink tray blew away, I had to keep things closed and keep one hand on my supplies while I drew with the other.

I found a suitable group of trees as a subject over at E. P. Sawyer Park and sketched for a half hour or so using a bamboo pen and metal nib dip pen.  I think it's a decent start and I'll see how it looks after I spend a little more time filling it out at home.

Tree mural

This is a mural I recently spent a couple of days on.

Sycamores by the creek - acrylic on panel

Acrylic on panel. I finished this last night.

Pen and ink house portrait, black and white, 6 x 9 inches

I finished this drawing a couple of weeks ago, and just forgot to post about it.  This was a very nice house to draw; it has so many qualities that lend itself to a nice black and white drawing, such as contrasts in the trim, nice proportions, surrounding foliage, and a hedge-lined brick sidewalk receding dramatically to the front door.

Walnut ink house portrait

This is one I finished a couple of weeks ago. It's 11 x 15 inches, walnut ink on Bristol board.

A little sketch

A porch

7 x 10" House portrait, pen & ink

I particularly liked the angles of the eves on this house.

House portrait 8 x 10"

with two detail shots

House portrait, 8 x 10 inch

This is another drawing I finished the night before last (full image and a detail). About half way through I started feeling like I was on slightly shaky ground, but it all came together and now I am very happy with it.

2-point perspective

I spent quite a bit of time on the preparatory work on this because I made a significant change to the viewing angle.  The reference photos were from a lower vantage point. Fortunately, the task was made easier by the fact that the house's proportions are somewhat uniform.  I am pleased with how it's coming along, and I'm very glad to get past the pencil stage on this house and two others I'm working on right now. I can start inking!

House Portrait; preparatory work

Sketches and penciling in...

Twin house portraits

I finished the second of this pair a couple of days ago.

Pen and Ink House Portrait, 7 x 9 inches

I completed this one late last night. It’s smaller than the last one: 7 x 9 inches.  It was done with a combination of black Pigma Micron pens and sumi ink.

The commission calls for two  originals of the same house, so I am starting a duplicate drawing today.

Detail:

Black Walnut Ink House Portrait, 11 x 15 inches

This is on Bristol paper. I chose not to use any washes on this one; it's all cross-hatching.  I couldn't get the scan to go dark enough to pick up the shading on the sidewalk and pavement--you can barely see it, but it's a little darker on the actual drawing.

A couple of detail shots:

School Donor Recognition Wall Art (Mixed Media)

I posted work-in-progress photos of this project here over the summer, and finished it in August. However, it wasn’t until recently that I had a decent chance to get some photos of the finished product.

Late last spring I was commissioned to create artwork to honor donors to a school fundraising campaign.  The school wanted something similar to a tile mosaic piece they had seen pictures of online for a school in another state, depicting a stylized facsimile of the building’s façade with donor names in the windows.  They wanted the finished piece to be around 30 x 40 inches, and it would hang in the school lobby.

I considered attempting to duplicate the sample with a polymer clay mosaic, with lettering embossed in the clay tiles. However, after experimentation, I realized that I just didn’t have the means to emboss scores of names without going through an incredibly slow and mistake-filled process and, besides, I am very inexperienced in working with polymer clay.

So I finally decided to create a textured building exterior using acrylic gel mediums (I didn’t have much experience with various fancy gels, either, but I at least knew my way around acrylic paints and matte/gloss mediums.)

I was still puzzled how I was going to do the names, but I somehow stumbled onto acrylic transfers.  I had never heard of acrylic transfers before, but after a test I decided it might work well for the task.

I worked on panel, and used wood scraps and molding to imitate architectural details.  The stone texture was put on with Golden coarse pumice gel sealed with extra gel medium for durability; the plants are painted polymer clay; and the names are acrylic transferred photocopies.

Considering both size and complexity, this is probably the largest commission I have done and the most technically sophisticated project I have attempted.  I am pretty happy with the results, and the people at the school were, too.

I was very impressed with the Golden gel mediums I used, by the way.  Cool stuff, fun to work with.

Pen & Ink house portrait, with detail

Here is another house portrait done with black walnut ink.  Unfortunately, I didn't have a chance to scan the drawing, and instead used my sub-par little camera. The detail shot turned out better because you can make out the texture of the line work.

This drawing is 11 x 15 inches on Bristol paper.

More pumpkin art

Emancipation Proclamation pumpkin art

Another sculpted pumpkin

I had a hard time with his teeth; his fangs just didn't work out.

Necromancing with the stars

Sent from my Motorola Smartphone on the Now Network from Sprint!

Jack-o'-Lantern Spectacular

Here is another pumpkin I drew and carved. I am eager to see it lighted.

Third pumpkin drawing, last week

Pen and Ink House Portrait, 11 x 15"

...finished a few days ago, delivered today.