Learning to Draw I

 I've never considered myself very skilled at rendering images or drawing in any meaningful way.  I can sketch out a plan to put wood pieces together or something like that, but, especially compared to my peers in college drawing classes, I basically was very bad.  So I didn't draw for real for about sixteen years, give or take.

Then I got an idea to make big paintings of flowers and decided I needed to be able to draw to be able to paint.  Initially what I wanted to do is just really pile weird stuff onto canvas, using up some of my infinite stash of paper ephemera, and then paint something sweet and simple on top.

Anyway, drawing is hard.

I found my old newsprint pad and charcoal from school.  To save paper, I painted over the sketches with old house paint I had laying around and sketched again and again.  

Started out very rough using images from a 1970's houseplant book to work from.

oof...charcoal on newsprint

charcoal on newsprint

These were closer to the first idea flash I had when I decided to go down this road.  One thought I had was to make ceramic planters and use those in my paintings, then sell them beside the canvases.  I like tie-ins.

charcoal and pencil on painted newsprint
dried Yucca pods

first use of ink and brush on newsprint

Rattlesnake Master

 I kept working, trying to build up the very atrophied muscle in my brain that pushes my hand to make a line.  I liked the idea of being expressive, probably because then it wouldn't look as much like I didn't know what I was doing.

I had a large collection of dried pods and stuff I focused on first.

I made this one up.

Plantain and sweet clover

Started looking at pictures I took over the years for reference.

Antelope-horn Milkweed

Maybe going super zoomed-in would be a thing I wanted to do?  Worked for Georgia O'Keefe. 

This was the jumping off point of the rest of my year's art endeavors and a new series that will continue indefinitely. 

All this started in February 2020...

If you want to see more process shots of drawings, check out the archived stories under the Drawing collection on my Instagram.

Heads and Faces

Our winter had stretches of dreary, cold days (not that unusual) and I just couldn't bring myself to do much else besides make weird things out of clay.  I've been making tumblers, vases, and mugs, but I've had a hankering to get back to my sculptural roots lately.  So this year I'm focusing more on funny little characters...

He looks kind of big here, right?
(He's still new and wet.) 

He is not.

 I started to play around with oxides and stains to add color and highlight the gnarly textures these quick studies had.  Most of these are experiments and maybe I'm not done with them yet...but here are some more from that first little batch: 

More before pics.

Dunked in yellow salt glaze.

Manganese wash.

Rutile wash.

Mini Collage Number Seven

It's a Party Now, I Guess
1940s newpaper, painted book page, magazine cut outs
4 x 5 inches

My foster kittens have been getting bigger, therefore more destructive.  I found this random piece of newspaper in the middle of the floor one morning pulled loose from my pile of ephemera by rambunctious little creatures.

See pictures of the furry devils on Instagram!  Art, too!

Mini Collages

I'm going to start posting my collages because I want to share and this is a way for me to keep on with it.  Basically, these are exercises, like the ones from the last post, but mini.  I went on a tear and have almost depleted my 12 x 12 inventory of unused matboard, and can't buy more from a certain hobby chain for a big discount because they don't bundle them up anymore.  But I did make a ton of little 4 x 5 letters and such that didn't sell and I happen to still have them in storage, so I'm reusing!  It's my favorite!

See more of these, or groups of them, or them in process, on my Instagram feed, because it's FREE and FUN!

I will share these in the order in which they were made.

Number One:

Watchman
cutouts from magazines dated 1950-2011
painted 1960s book page

Stay tuned for more!  We'll see what they do to my larger work as I start back on bigger scale "canvases" (wood and such) and add lots more vinyl and paint to stuff.

Here's to 2016.  Let's do this.