My Son & His Son

I took this picture this past week with my iPhone, but unfortunately, as often happens with my phone shots, I didn't wait for the phone to focus and got a bit of blur. What happens for me with such an image is that I look for some way to make work as an image. Here, it was filters in PhotoShop to add a graininess and increase drama through contrast that I decided to use for the image. The element that I like the most with this shot is the emotional context!

Drawing Steps

Two images here to describe in a very simple visual context the method I have been using to produce work of late. The first image is of the initial drawing in India ink that I produce as a starting point for my work. This particular one is a bit different for me as I don't usually start with something as object-based as this drawing, but it is a direction I find myself heading toward. Perhaps more of a discussion around that in a later post. I do these with one of my "gorilla brushes", and it usually takes a fairly short amount of time and is very spontaneous.

http://chartliej.blogspot.com/2012/01/mind-ghosts.html
http://chartliej.blogspot.com/2012/11/recent-drawings.html  are other examples of this method in a more abstract manner.

http://chartliej.blogspot.com/2013/01/gorilla-brushes.html   is the "gorilla" brush description.

 The second stage of this process involves using a variety of media including Prismacolor® pencils, charcoal pencils & sticks, and pen & India ink. Here the details and the tonal values are added to the image.

Night Snow

Just realized that this is my 800th post!

Hey, I was taking the garbage out to the dumpster anyway, so grab the tripod and take some pictures of the snow, right? I guess I got turned around in the dark because I was a bit too far away from the camera for where I had the focus set, but now I want to go back out and play around with shutter speed and "tail-end" flash and such! "Hunny Bunny" looks at me like I'm from another planet when I make suggestions like that, so I probably will head to bed after I post these photos. Snowflakes of different sizes because they are various distances from the lens... I would say the sharpest focus ones are about ten feet. This snow is both fine and heavy and I never tire of seeing how the different kinds of snow look under a flash at night, they have much more depth than a starfield.

Valentine Manipulation

I "saw" a handprint in the large "ART"mural at the end of the hall in the art wing this morning, and envisioned a piece that would be Valentine's Day inspired. I loaded the image into Acorn, brightened the reds, pushed a few pixels around, and here's the before and after. Before first.

Furniture & Drawing

From the shot of my studio that I am posting today one might think that I have difficulty in focusing on a single task. That is true, I do. I think that there are many processes that we can manage and control simultaneously, and certainly conceptual work in the arts is no exception.

The working process for the table in the foreground that I started about a month ago, maybe two months now that I think about it a bit more, is similar to the sort of process I use or I allow to use me, in my drawings. The connection is that I conceive an idea, have an approximation of what I would like to see as the finished piece, and then let the work kind of bloom or blossom as I consider it. Working in wood from a plan is, to me, like drawing from a plan; an opportunity to develop and execute specific skills, but boring.

I may try one approach, adding a bit, or in the case of the table, removing a bit from the material I am working and then deciding if that is the direction to follow or if I should take a slightly different approach. More detailing, the "finicky" work, happens as the project moves forward, until I consider it finished. I have quite a lot of work stored that I have never finished, and I have some pieces that I started a decade ago and finished last year. I seldom ever lose interest in anything completely, and so throw very little away. I guess you could call me a "conservative".