State of Flux

How to Draw with a Hockey Stick

        Today, I had to find a long stick to use in my drawing.  The longest and sturdiest thing I had at hand was a full-sized novelty hockey stick.  I used masking tape to attach a graphite stick, turning up the music, and went to town.

This thing's a collectors item.  Must be careful.

"I Don't Care About That"   Graphite on paper.

All this noise is disturbing someone's nap.

Crayons for Grown Ups and Beyond Drawing

     It's our slow season at work and I find myself with some time on my hands.  Time to do some soul-searching, work on personal projects, experiment, and even play.  Sometimes, it's when your playing around when you stumble on to something.  I'm not saying this is one of those times, but I'm not ruling it out either.  I was working from a prompt and decided to pull out my box of oil pastels or, as I like to call them, "crayons for grown-ups."  Following the prompt, I made my first marks with my eyes closed.  I responded to those first marks with many more inspired by the music I had playing.

"God of Wonders"   Oil pastel on paper.

      Then, I photographed the drawing and put the image onto my computer and put it through a stained glass Photoshop Elements filter.  This is the result.

    Why not take it a step further?  I used the cookie cutter tool to cut out bird shapes and add them to a photo of trees in the front yard I had just taken.  A bit of tweaking and a filter or so later, this is what I ended up with and it all started with a scribbly drawing! 

     This is just to give you an idea of where you can take your drawings (or where your drawings can take you.)  This is only the beginning!

Drawing/Painting and Double Exposures

"Break Me Down"   Black Gesso on paper.

This is what happens when I photograph two different areas of the painting and make a double exposure. 

     The one plus side of having time off is having more time for art.  I'm still working on loosening up and exploring drawing beyond rendering and realism.  Another thing I'd like to explore is finding new ways to combine drawing and photography.  The idea came to me the other day to use high contrast drawings and do double exposures.  I think it has some potential.  What do you think?

I'm thinking about adding a blog roll.  If you want to be included, leave a comment below.

Happy New Year! and Automatic Drawing

"Lovers' Wreck"   Fluid acrylic on paper.   2014

     Happy belated New Year, everyone!  It's been a while... on this blog anyway.  I got an account on Tumblr towards the end of last year for my daily drawings and have been trying to figure out what this blog should be.  I usually like for things have a sense of unity, but, at least for now, I'm going to experiment and let things evolve. 

     I feel like I'm still at that point in my career when I'm trying to nail down a certain signature style.  It's been quite frustrating most of the time, but I hear it's part of the process.  Also, apparently, you have to experiment and produce A LOT of work before you get to the really good stuff.  So, like I said, I've been posting drawings to Tumblr everyday.  I've been working on an exercise called "100 Faces" from the book Drawing Lab by Carla Sonheim where you draw, well, one hundred faces.  I've been doing the first batch in graphite pencil, a media I really need to improve in (can't you tell?)  I've been working in pen and marker so long and it's time to loosen up.

    Speaking of loosening up, I finally bought this drawing book I've had my eye on and just finished the chapter about automatic drawing.  (Google it.)  The workshop exercise it suggests involves taping a large piece of paper to the wall and going at it with a paint brush (which would make it painting, wouldn't it?) like a fencer with a foil.  So, I thought I should try it...