The program that I used to draw this concept work was Autodesk’s Sketchbook Pro 2010. The program runs really nice and it didn’t take long at all before I was drawing pretty comfortable with its key board short cuts. With a tablet sketchbook Pro is easy to switch from tool to tool with out touching the key board too much. Hold the space bar and you can move and scale the canvass. Hold B and move the tablet up or down and you can change your brush size. Use the blur tool and eraser, draw again on top of that, and you have complete control. There is a mirrroring capability in Sketchbook Pro that lets you see the progress as you draw perfectally symetrical elements in both X and Y axis that is amazing.
I almost didn’t enter this painting into the Bellevue University Art Show, bu it is a good thing that I did because it won 2nd place. This painting falls under the Social Anomaly series that I have been working on. This particular piece was painted in oil but texturized first with a heavy body acrylic. The areas that are built up in the painting rise up to a 1/4 inch from the substrate surface. Social Anomaly is an inter-personal piece like much of my other work. The idea here is of the pressures of social influences on the artist and their reaction to the artist’s need to create. Here we have the artist’s eyes flung to the viewer for help or guidance as he sit chained to his easel and canvass. The pressures of the blue collar working class cloud the background with an impending atmosphere of demand while the shadow of the working class bounds the bottom of the seated artist and closes the composition in a reflection of silhouettes from the top of the painting.
I am starting a series of painting that are going to relate to, or focus on, the windmills that populate the Iowa countryside. This particular windmill is a Dutch replica that is attached to a museum in Elk Horn Iowa. The style of this structure is a very charming and interesting. The reference shots that I used for this subject were taken at the foot of the structure looking up.
Social anomaly is the name of the artist shackled to social expectations. In this group of paintings I am working on, I will continue to explore this topic. The idea in Social Anomaly Struggling for Freedom is that they, the artist, are blanketed and shackled around the neck to conceal their identity, but every time they reach to unbuckle the binding their most vulnerable parts are exposed. The central figure is pulling her blanket down to cover her mid-section. Note the shadows on the ground. They are symbols of the figure’s social expectations and are a reoccurring theme in the Social Anomaly series. The central two figures, the female social anomaly and little boy, cast shadows of their social expectations as the suited spectator judges the situation. The shadow of the struggling social anomaly was left out of the image as he exposes himself to escape his bondage. This particular painting was painted with oil and used sketches for reference; not life. This explains the odd juxtaposition of objects in the painting. Click on the image in the gallery read about the development of this painting.
Yesterday I had a chance to visit with an old friend Billy Marples. We have worked on several projects together in the past. He gave me the grand tour of the “Genesis Art Studio” in Kimballton Iowa.
Photoshop actions can definitely save time when applying the same effects to an entire folder. Using the batch function with actions is a fun thing to watch and can also cause experimentation with images that may not have happened other wise. The action I recorded was very practical; it was to simply change the image size to 72px dpi and 700px width.
This still life was set up at Bellevue University as a graded assignment instructed by Mike Giron. The painting is an exercise in under-painting, a way of painting shapes instead of drawing them. No pencil, just wet paint, and a keen eye for shapes. After two sessions I brought the piece home painted a few unifying glazes across it and brought the colors together.
cow skull, bull horn, blanket, and sticks
