Just a scrap of paper turned into something more...

I'm a paper freak...I love touching paper and from my fingertips I can imagine what I can make with it, what kind of marks I'll make, what kind of medium will flow best on it...I will go through the art store and fondle the paper surfaces...not only am I a visual artist, I'm tactile, and I love making textures...this blue bit is on a ragged piece of printmaking paper that a fellow artist gave to me, and I loved the shape of it as is, and without hesitation I turned it blue and then as I watched the watercolor puddle and flow, I saw the shapes that I wanted to bring out, and saw the parts to leave alone...

Fun stuff...

Then there are the small pieces within the larger work that I find so pretty because of the beautiful mess I've made...


Another piece...an old favorite...

And this one, I used the junkiest paper, painted a white acrylic surface with lots of rough brush strokes, and then scribbled water soluble graphitint on it, and then made it wet and splashed, squished, made bubbles, and splashed some more...playing with texture...

Wintery exhibition...

I thought I'd do a little winter exhibition...it's not quite knee deep snow out there, but it's working on it...this is a little bit of this, a little bit of that...we've all experienced a sunny winter day that is so bright it hurts, and then those dark nights with the wind blowing through the eaves and making the windows rattle...winter is such an emotional season, so closed up and concentrated...beautiful and brutal...as much as I dislike the cold and dealing with the potential disasters, it's a fascinating time of year...and each piece reflects something of that...

Sometimes I have to say WOW!

I finished this one this week. Ain't she a beauty? I'm so in love with this one right now, I stop to look at it every now and then and love it some more...mixed media, watercolor, water soluble graphitint, and acrylic washes with graphite and various colored pencil treatments...I haven't settled on a name just yet...I keep waffling between Beethoven's Fifth and the Fifth Dimension's Age of Aquarius...a weird combination...maybe I'll just call it The Fifth...

Ongoing work

On occasion, I make presents, something special for a person, and this one I made...

Making art sometimes requires making a mess...

Well, this isn't too messy really, just some waterlogged sketchbook paper over scribbles of water-soluble colored pencils, dry colored pencil scratches, and woodless color shavings mashed around with a chopstick of all things... This one is entitled Haze, from a day spent on my sunny porch, September 14, 2008,












Here's some close ups of the mess...












Experimentation and "OOPS" accidents...

Random marks equal lighthearted fun...

Patience goes a long way...

(let it dry a little bit before diving in again!)

Have no fear of failure.

Don't be timid.

Be prepared to get messy!

Autumn ideas

These are a progression of drawings, 2005, 2006, 2007, and 2008...on the first two I went through a phase in which I played around with creating panels on one sheet, taping out borders, making a mess drawing over everything and then pulling off the tape to see what I got...sometimes I had a little trouble with the tape...tape and I don't always get along...so now I just stick with the outside border...all four are autumn inspired drawings...reaction to the changing season, the wind and the rain rather than the autumn leaves, which is what everyone thinks about first...up here on our hilltop acre, the elements of autumn often rage at night and have a more intense quality about them that can be harsh...sometimes nightmarish...the 2008 drawing entitled Heffalumps and Woozles is straight out of Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day!

Study of mist and mountain

Here's a study that I enjoyed making a few weeks back...a sort of Chinese misty mountain thing going on...once again this is done with woodless water-soluble colored pencils, and lots of play with water and using the pencil sharpener to shred color into the water to create thick layers that are just as crusty as any acrylic paint...

Once again...I have way too much fun...

The details below are just as pretty up close...

New work

Nocturne, October 9, 2008
color pencil, pencil, and watercolor on Stonehenge paper, 8 x 8 inches

I love green...can't you tell?









River of Fallen Stars, October 4, 2008, colored pencil, pencil, and watercolor on Stonehenge paper, 8 x 8 inches

A smaller version of the big one that was sold this summer...

Drawing from Nature

The drawing is "I Want More Out of Life", September 26, 2008, pencil...lots of heavy 9B black, smudges (accidental and on purpose), a smattering of hard leads carved in to model the blacks...the push and pull of layers, opposing forces, order and chaos...

The two photos are studies that I've made from the things I found around the yard, the dried grass coiled and laid on the weathered wood of the porch floor, the evening light raking across it, the strong verticals of the wood grain, and then the classic beauty of a snail shell...shapes and lines that catch my eye and wind up repeated in my drawings and paintings...

Inspiration all around!

Photographic accidents

This is a very crappy photograph of one of my recent drawings, I loved the paper and the way the graphite covered it, it's soft and fuzzy, but this is not an ideal photo of it...lighting a graphite drawing is always challenging because of the reflective nature of the medium, and scanning it hasn't been easy either, the paper took some abuse while I worked it, so the scanner catches all of that and makes it look worse...maybe someday I'll snap a good shot of it...

but I loved the glare so much when I had the overhead light on, I had to get it...well, just because...

Why not?