Taiwan (九份) study

A street scene from the mountain town of Jiu Fen, this was a large (for me) study from a few months ago.  I'm pretty happy with it - I think a lot of things kind of came together the right way...surprisingly!  Watercolor with a bit of gouache where things got out of control.  A lot of wet into wet, and wet into damp.

I was using my new big squirrel hair mop brush for the first time and it was terrifying and exhilerating.  Neat brush - you can load a ton of pigment in it for large area washes, but at the same time the tip holds a really nice point for details.  I figure this is a good brush for broad yet sufficiently detailed/controlled strokes in the initial phase of a painting..maybe a little further too...Must do more of this sort of thing...

Bela Lugosi is Dead

Fantastic song, and a great cover of it by this band (excellent live clip here).  This version of the song was the jumping off point for these paintings.

A few years back I got to participate in a group show curated by a friend of mine.  The theme kind of revolved around hot rods and pin up gals and that sort of thing, and as I thought Nouvelle Vague's take on it was evocative, I kind of ran with it.   After dithering forever, I came up with this:

..I actually was fairly pleased with how it turned out, but ultimately I decided it felt too literal for the genre, so I redid it.  Here is a final rough:

I've always liked the graphic poster look, and gouache of course lends itself very well to it.  I was in such a rush to redo it that I never did photograph the final.  Happily though, it ended up selling.

some abstract thumbnails

...that is to say, they started off as abstract shapes; they eventually resolved themselves into these.  In real life, these are only maybe an inch or two tall, sometimes less.

Something I've been struggling with is taking such thumbnails (takes little time, little commitment, surprising results - oh so fun to do!) and expanding them a larger size and making them 'finished' art.  A big part of it is that I need to get more comfortable with using much more paint and bigger brushes, which means kind of getting over the fear of 'wasting' such beautiful large (and not cheap) papers.  Not to mention, unlike oils, watercolor and gouache are a bit less flexible than say oils and require a more planning (though I am discovering they are actually more forgiving than one might think, using reductive methods, etc.) But also, part of me feels like the thumbnails say all I need them to say, or that I can not convince myself that the image is worth' the extra size.  Sigh...it's a constant struggle. 

Onward and downwards!

das Geschenk

Another little painting that sat in a stack mostly finished for a long time.  I think I had just been reading Lovecraft or some such thing.  I rediscovered it this weekend when I sorted through almost all of my art (got rid of a bunch, including sketchbooks - whew!) I made a couple more touches here and there and now call it done.

Though looking at it again, the red eyes are a bit cliche aren't they?

painting from a little while back

...this was based on a sketch I did at an Edward Gorey-themed costume workshop some years back which I just came across again going through old art.  Kinda like it, though I'm thinking it needs something else...hmmm...first of all the portrait in the upper left probably needed to be much bigger...doh!  why didn't I see that back then?  Oh well...I suppose I could always redo it?  Fix some other things while I'm at it?

sketchbook preview

I'm participating in the Sketchbook Project this year (last year a group of friends, my wife, and I had planned to submit a group book, but ultimately we couldn't quite get it together.  I think there was disappointment for some, relief for others...not naming names!)

I saw a lot of really clever, charming and creative sketchbook submissions from the last travelling exhibit, but I felt doing the same would stress me out too much (in other words, I'm too lazy, haha!)  Instead, I wanted it to reflect the sort of thing that normally shows up in my sketchbooks.  Here are a couple of the pages:

Like my much of my normal sketchbook work, these are drawn from direct observation (these are from the California Academy of Sciences where there was an excellent skull exhibition) with brush pen, kind of recklessly, so if I make mistakes (usually), there's no going back.  The pages are toned with water color and then further enhanced (defaced?) with more washes and thick gouache.

Anyhow, it's a traveling exhibit, with submissions from really all sorts of people (the ones from kids are the best!) from all over the world, and it's really kind of neat!  Check it out if it comes to a town near you, and look for my book if so inclined.  I think sketchbooks are also available to view online.

sf botanical gardens

Not terrible, considering I wasn't completely prepared with my usual set up, and there were swarms of kids buzzing around the area at the time.  Need to work on cropping...