Remington

These are a few horse sketches I did from Remington paintings when I was figuring out the composition for Our Schizophrenic Present. I was trying to find the most expressive horse faces from the book I have on him. My painting was originally intended to be several horses coming out of the rose spiral, but I was having difficulty fitting them into the format. When I started playing with the idea of just the horse head/skull, it synced visually. I'll share more on the process for that painting soon, but for now the purple horses:

New Year's Smorgasbord

Happy New Year!  Following suit to last year, I got caught up in all the craziness of the end of the semester and neglected my blog.  In my defense, not having Internet in your place of residence does not help such matters.  However, dear readers, I will now hopefully rectify myself with a big whopping post full of new exciting things! 

 

 Suggested Reading:

Over my break from school I have been experimenting quite a bit with media that I had never felt comfortable with until recently: ink and gouache.  I had started to ease into it with my work for the Advocate with the help of some nice Bristol paper, some choice pens, and Photoshop, but I decided to be a little braver with it during my time off. 

At the beginning of break I was perusing Goodwill and found some interesting Life Nature Library books from the 1960s.  These were filled with some great animal photographs as well as some amazingly brash captions that can only be found in an age prior to sensitivity.  As you would expect, these appealed to my curiosity and dark sense of humor.  With a barrage of tantalizing subject matter to translate, I began working feverishly in my sketchbook.

Posted here are the results of my explorations.  I started by trying to render things in simple black and white, and then moved on to ink washes and the infiltration of painting with white gouache.  With the serendipitous effect of some bleeding red ink, I started to crave some color, which I appeased by investing in some brown inks and breaking out the neglected watercolor set from a couple of summers ago.  Also thrown into the mix where a few layers of colored pencil, which performed wonderfully on top of the dried ink and gouache. 

And there you have it:  the beginning of a new love affair.  What is most enticing about ink, gouache, and watercolor is that you can let them dry up and then reanimate them later with water.  This is immensely useful for time and money’s sake.  I’m hoping to keep up this momentum and utilize these techniques this semester in my work for the Advocate.  It’s been a really refreshing advancement so far.  Thanks for reading,

- Blake

P.S. Further inspiration that drove me to this madness: Aaron Horkey, Frankenstein – Mary Shelley, From Hell – Alan Moore/Eddie Campbell, V for Vendetta – Alan Moore/David Lloyd, MAUS – Art Speigelman, Stitches – David Small, John Carpenter’s The Thing, and the Will Eisner documentary Profession: Cartoonist. 

head piles

drawing exercise: head piles:

I'm the hero of this story, I don't need to be saved.

Croc worm

This creature reared its ugly head in my sketchbook last week.

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Back to School

This past week I started class at Metropolitan State College of Denver for K-12 teaching licensure.  I'm taking two art studio classes, Sculpture I and Jewelry Design and Metalsmithing.  In Sculpture I our first project (as well as the other two for the semester) is primarily in wood, specifically 2x4's for project one.  Here is a page of studies for my idea, a large relief type sculpture about 2' tall by 3' wide. 

Frank Auerbach

This is another Lucian Freud sketchbook study, this time from his 1975/76 painting Frank Auerbach.  Dori got me a Taschen book on Freud for my birthday so there might be quite a few more posts like this.

A minor

August has been rushing by with a cruel gusto!  Displayed are some items from my sketchbook, some I've been meaning to share for quite some time.  I've also been working on my beetle painting, which is almost finished so I hope to share that soon.  The day job at DIA is tiring and time consuming, but I'm still trying to enrich my bus rides and breaks with drawing and reading, as well as food and sleep when necessary. Time is just stretched thin and is about to get thinner as I start school for teaching certification next week.  These are trying but exciting times.  I'm ready for my favorite season of autumn, which will be upon us soon.

Yellow Trolley

I went out this morning to enjoy some summer weather and to paint this trolley car down by the Platte River.  It actually still runs on a route by the Aquarium, the Children's Museum, and REI.    

Here's a cell phone shot of a smaller sketch with the car in the background:

The large one was actually done on watercolor paper taped to a board.  I just sat and worked until it pulled away to take folks up and down the river.

First Tries

 Howdy, howdy, howdy!

Above are my first attempts at watercolor painting on location. I recently acquired what I like to refer to as my "Musser Kit."  This consists of a few portable water brush pens (though I only bought one to begin with) and a small plastic water color palette with a few choice pigments, plastic bags for secure backpacking, a few well used paper towels, and of course, my current sketchbook.  I've also seen a lot of similar equipment used on the Urban Sketchers blog I've been visiting quite frequently lately, so I've been itching to have a go at it.
Proud of my in and out attack at Meininger's art supplies, I sprung for only the essentials to begin with.  The PreRaphealite palette of Indian Yellow, Alizirin Crimson and Ultramarine in small tubes of Grumbacher were the only pigments I allowed to start.  It presented some challenges in mixing a bright green so prominent in the summer grass and leaves, but otherwise I love the richness and warmth these three colors make in addition to being beautifully vibrant and transparent.  I might make things easier by adding a bit of green gouache for the desired color and a nice bit of opacity.  It'll just be nice to have more color on this blog and in my sketchbook, not to mention painting more often and on the go.  More soon, cheers!

DIA III, II, I

More, more, more!     (remember you can click one to see it bigger)

I really liked how the portrait of the woman in the middle picture turned out.  I've also been experimenting working over ball point pen in Sharpie for some bold brush like strokes.  Soon:  Colors!

Blarque

 Blarque rremp jermph nraggle.

Addendum July 8th:

Colored him with some watercolors I got today for color sketching: