Here is that WIP finished up! I am happy with the areas that are more loose - the hands and chest. At one point, I thought that I had lost the piece because I started to finish everything to the same level as the faces - it was going to be rather boring. I got rid of that rendering with thicker, more textural strokes. My boyfriend came home at just the right time for me to step back decide it was finished. Stopping at the right time is always a problem for me!
New sketchbook kicked off by a visit with art friends in Shreveport. The guys got together and their geek came out.
Work in progress - new drawing for the Girls series experimenting with double exposure. I took hundreds of photos during this shoot. Many are just a slight movement from one picture to the next. This whole series is very influenced by photographic effects and using them as an inspiration to depart from traditional observed reality. Now, I have to figure out how to finish the drawing.
Opening tonight: 100 Degrees summer group show at Wally Workman Gallery. If you’re in Austin, stop by the gallery tonight from 6-8pm! Several of The Girls series are there, including “Girl Reclining” and “Girl in Blue”. I have to say, they look fantastic framed and it’s great to see them hanging on the wall! The show will be up through August.
Another short story illustration for This Land Press. These two spots are for a story set in the late 1800s called Summons to Tulsa by Louise Farmer Smith. The hero is a young school teacher who learns of the death of his relative, and through the story we find out what this death means for him. These illustrations will be laid out the same (very large) page together, with the house as the header and the portrait cropped off the bottom of the page. I tried a new technique: combining the ballpoint pen drawing I have been doing in my sketchbook with ink washes, which I scanned in separately, then combining and coloring the two in photoshop. Thanks to the Art Director at This Land for some great advice on the pieces!
Another of the girls series. This one is almost just an under drawing, but there is something that I very much like about it at this stage.
Sketchbook pages - Tom on the way to Dallas, and 2 days later on the return home.
Digital illustration for a short story called ”Tom Mix” by Jim Crowley. The story is only a paragraph and is fairly abstract, about a boy’s family visiting a cowboy museum. It reminded me of a snapshot, so I created a snapshot for the illustration, framed by a lasso border like the one on Tom Mix trading cards. I tried to hint at the subtext between family members which is just below the surface in the story.
A portrait commission. Done in pastel, 16” x 20” Happy Birthday lovely lady!
A few little still life paintings done this afternoon, 8” x 10”. Getting back into oil painting mode after so much pastel work!
