No More Time and Late Evening Walk

Finished both Late Evening Walk and No More Time this evening. I'm shooting to finish up two more drawings and complete one last painting for the show this weekend. I figure the rest of the week before the hang date will be framing and installing hanging wire. I'm looking forward to being finished with the work for the show. Of course, as soon as the work is delivered I will come home to work in my studio on the next body of work. I find it keeps me balanced to just keep working. I find that taking even a week off throws my work out of whack.

Left To Your Own Devices

Finished Left To Your Own Devices, pen & ink and marker this evening. I spent the afternoon at a coffee house I know with nice big tables. The music was a bit loud, so I was cranking my iPod since working with my own soundtrack is a must when I do art. The coffee house was moderately busy, but I noticed that crowds would pour in shifts around 3pm. To my knowledge no one paid me any mind, but of course I was pretty absorbed in my work. I can see why people go to coffee houses to work on things. There's a nice energy and it's also a pleasant change of pace.

This drawing is based off of a photo I took in Chinatown - San Francisco. There will be a pencil drawing as well. To work out the perspective I had to draw the scene in pencil first, I then proceeded to trace it in ink. I find that the pencil doesn't always erase to my liking and gets the markers dirty. I also like the fact it gives me and opportunity to contrast the medias with the same subject.

A Bad Day to Hang Laundry

I just finished A Bad Day to Hang Laundry.  I feel the painting really fits the mood of what the next body of work will be.  It's a small painting 12x24 inches, but it packs a punch.  I'm planning on performing a lot of small works for my upcoming show in September at the Lanning Gallery in Sedona, AZ.


This painting is the beginning of a large series of connected works that work together as well as individually.  I like to think of a body of work like a musical album.  The songs can be sold as singles, but together tell a story or establish a  definite mood.  The working title of the next show is Escape Plan.  I'm going to focus in on gritty portraits of individuals in different urban environments that are either attempting or desire to escape their environs, predicaments, other people or themselves.  

Above is the original sketch for A Bad Day to Hang Laundry and it's companion piece that I haven't named yet.  I guess it would be BDHL 2, but I'm not sure if I want to go 1,2,3, etc with this series.  The theme for this series is a tale of a boy and a girl who walk down the same streets, go to the same bookstores, restaurants, parks, and other places; yet they never meet.  I guess star crossed lovers that are perfect for each other if only they could meet.  I can hear Morrissey crooning now, if it were made into a short film. I guess a little bit of the inspiration for the series is the fact that my wife and I went to the same high school, but didn't meet each other until the second semester of our freshman year in college.


I'm not sure how the series will play out.  I'm just going to sketch, paint and repeat until I feel the series is done.

Crowds 2

Finished the second drawing of the series.  I plan to have a series of twelve works in this vein. I have always loved Pause and Could've.  The absolute focus on the characters without buildings and the background figures slipping into atmospheric abstraction. I think it would be fun to have an entire show of just these works.


I'm really enjoying the fact than rather than just working with ready-made photos this time I'm working with tons of character snap shots and putting it all together with 

Portland Here We Come!!

Alicia asked our friends if Andrea and Shawn if they were up for another visit this Summer and they are.  Happy, Happy, Joy, Joy!!  I can't wait to take on Mt. Hood again Mountain Biking with Shawn.  I also can't wait to ride around Portland again.  I think that I'm going to see if Shawn is up for spending a day on the bike just riding around the city with me to take source photos for my paintings.  If he's not maybe I can borrow a bike from him to do it.  I love the scale of Portland and the atmosphere.  It's the only West Coast city that matches my cityscapes within my work.  I think I need to plan a week in Chicago or New York to shoot photos as well.  I've been threatening to and just haven't, but I really need to.

About tonight's offering.  Here's the painting that was leaning against the wall from Saturday's post.  I'm quickly working in the paint and roughing out the areas.  Tomorrow evening I will work in some details with my fine brushes and ink pens.  Probably end the evening with some glazes.  I think I'm going to actually apply some varnish tonight when it's dry enough before I go to bed.  I like to apply the varnish as I go.  This is based on two photos I took of Andrea, Shawn, Alicia and I walking the streets of Baltimore, Maryland when they lived there (the figures in the foreground are left to right Alicia, Andrea, and Shawn).  It was so frickin cold since they were having a Noreaster that year.  That was the title for the first version of this painting.  I just really loved the composition and had some ideas as I was painting that version.  I tend to follow the sage advice of my mentor David Sklar, which was to stay the course on a piece and paint different versions with the ideas you come up with while painting it.