Thursday, September 1, 2011

Depression Glass Fruit Vase

 

I painted this oddly green still life in July and I am rather proud to say that this was my first attempt at watercolors since... pretty much childhood. I was actually on point with color accuracy. You can see how the camera struggled with the darks. Still though... the scan washed that accuracy out. I cannot restore the lost subtlety. And who knows what the colors will appear like on the screens, but so be it. I will need to learn to scan in a way that better emulates room lighting.

I am finally becoming interested in the surface treatment and materials, colorfast pigments and archival quality paper. The ease and glitz of digital art, as was once to my great annoyance predicted by James Miller, the head of VCU Communication Arts Department, has left a gaping whole in my self esteem as an artist. Because there is simply nothing there to hold. But now there is such a sense of meditative... balance, of return to self, in working with actual physicality of materials.

So used to thinking of materialism in negative terms, one forgets that it is symbolism that is the issue, while the material is mere reality, naked and direct, assuring one's being. There is much more to say on the matter. Now I feel that I have only cracked the door toward proper painting and its psychology. I wonder if massage therapy has taught me something about form I could not quite articulate before... and am now expressing in a sort of baby-babble...

Oh yes... I cheated. There is some gouache in the drapery.
 

Inkwash Sketches

 A Castle in Czech Republic
Nadya Semirenko (Monastyrskaya) as a vagabond teenager circa 1999

Thursday, June 9, 2011

End of a Sketchbook

Waqar Khan (over wings)

Justin Faria (over coffee)

Merry Go Round


There is a sort of reckless abandon in the growth, struggle and force of organic forms that is entirely absent in much of human-made structures. Perhaps it is achievement of transcendence of the timidity of human geometric thought that takes a drawing to a realm beyond linguistic comfort - closer to the directness of music.

In approaching man-created subjects then (such as this carousel horsey), perhaps the focus should be (once the structure of the drawing is establisged or even before that) on the natural, accidental, organic elements still: rust and play of light on the surface.

It is a dangerous habit - putting of drawings till later. I have been intending to come paint this tree in the neighborhood where I work, marveling at it every time I passed it by. Did this quick sketch at lunch break once, and two days later the majestic tree was cut down. It's mulch now.

Monday, May 2, 2011

The Pond

Saturday, April 16, 2011

Sunday, April 10, 2011

Dino and Mammal Sketch Event Results:

Sketches from the Natural History Museum in DC with newly-formed Diceratops Sketch Collective. The Museum is a goldmine of forms to investigate - from archeology and geology to botany. And drawing with friends (which seems to have been our default state all throughout art school, no matter what else was going on - a lecture or a party) is a luxury now. I do hope more sketches will come on a monthly basis from this group.

It's turtles all the way...

A quick impression of infinite regress...

Thursday, January 13, 2011

Lovey-Dovey Vibes

I did this little comic last month for a couple that wanted to celebrate their relationship, which I thought was very sweet. Story and storyboard by Martina Lawingova