Art makes me happy. I get euphoric when I paint draw and create a lot. These last several days when I’ve been out and about painting and working in my studio I’ve been happy, high and elated. I never felt teh need for outisde substances to alter my mood and perception of reality.

For all I’ve written here about how frustrating college was for me, how I screwed around for much of my time, I’ll point out a few classes where I was ecstatic to be taking them. First off my figure drawing class in summer of 1996 had a fantastic professor who really inspired me. I grew in leaps and bounds in that class. The same professor taught monotype/printing that same summer. I made a ton of work.* My 3^rd year I took a printmaking class that focused on woodcuts, lino cuts and lithography. I loved every minute of that class. I’m still a huge fan of printmaking and wish I had the equipment for it.

The major difference in these classes was that the professors LOVED what they were teaching. Sikora clearly loved printmaking and figure drawing. The man exuded love for art. When I think to the kind of teacher I want to be I hear his eurotrash accent in my ear describing how to draw a breast. It was his idea that I stole to play instrumental music in the studio. I had several other professors who motivated me but Sikora was amazing to me.

Continue reading →

Upcoming stuff!

The ZINE (top Secret Project!) will be available for sale as of 9/1/2010. We’ve got some great stuff going into it and 6 great contributors. See the post at ArtJournaling.Ning.com I’m very excited. The money for this round is going to support the site as well as to help put a roof on the studio building of one our members.

I’ll be UStreaming every Monday at 6pm EST from my studio. This is exciting for me as I get to showcase my art and bookbinding.

I’m selling my art on Artfire now. Currently I have some hand paintings from the Twitter hand experiment up and some cloud studies. You can see them here.

My drawing class will go live September 6^st. I’m going to start to sell spots starting a little later this week, you can learn more here and purchase spots from there. Cost is $35 per spot and the class will last Until the End of October. 8 weeks of intense drawing instruction and ideas on how to mix it up with mixed media materials. It’s going to be great.

I'm really really excited for all the great stuff going on this fall. This fall will be simply amazing!

One of my goals this summer was to get past my “I only work in a sketchbook” syndrome. For so long sketchbooks and art journals have been the only place where I’ve had room to work that I’ve become entrenched in them and by entrenched I mean in a rut. When it came to working on loose paper I simply, didn’t.*

I avoided it. It’s almost as if my inner critic was whispering into my ear, “You aren’t worth working on loose sheets, or board or canvas. Those are for people who will SELL their work. Your work will sit in the studio gathering dust.”

So I gave myself excuses, no time, might as well just do a piece in the journal, that would make a good next image in the journal. Etcetera. How frustratingly boring.

So I built the pochade box with the intent of going to the beach and painting some little beach paintings. For a month after building it, it sat unused like a trophy of my DIY skills, gathering dust. The a week or so ago I packed it up, tossed my tubes of paint in the bottom, threw a bottle of water into my bag and headed to the beach. I painted these images.

Then I had my epiphany on my front porch while getting my mail and I taped several small 5×7 inch sheets to my little boards and decided to paint the rolling boiling sky as the clouds moved through.

I’ve painted more in the last few days than I have in the past 5 years, hell 10 years. Working on these little sheets of paper, throw away little sketches, has liberated me. I feel for the first time in 15 years free to create, loosely exploring a subject I enjoy (light, color, darkness) in small vignettes of seductive opposition and texture.

I love me some texture. Clouds are full of it, light on top of dark, dark behind bright. Wisps of light here and there dot the darker storm clouds and this transfixes me.

The colors that fill they sky amazing me, bright yellow in the morning sun and warm oranges in the setting sun along with bright pinks of the evening sky are reflected in the clouds.

I’m in love with it all.

Continue reading →

In years past I used to get up early on my days off to go to the beach and spend some much needed alone time painting. Dane Street beach is amazing in the early morning light. As the tide heads out into Salem harbor it leaves behind a pattern in the sand that is just too cool. I would walk out with the tide for hundreds of feet and only be in water to my ankles. The cold Atlantic ocean chilling my feet. Shrimp and litle crabs rushing away from me as they cruise in the shallow water.

Most Saturday or Sunday mornings there would be 2 or 3 women doing yoga in the shallow water. The early AM light would silloette their poses into simple black with a golden glow. Arms and legs dripping water.

Anyway, it's a great quiet place to go and paint in the early AM. Maybe tomorrow I'll make it in time to watch the women do yoga and walk out into the bay. I've missed the chance today.

Eveline of evelinetimeless a friend and fellow art journaler has been practicing sketching. She took cues from me and started in. She's followed along with the facebook face experiment and the twitter Hand Experiment. She's definately creating a style all her own and I'm totally digging it. Check out this video of her sketches, check out her unique and wonderful style. Great stuff!

So my inner critic has been harping on me about the sky studies I've been doing. I am in love with doing those and the face experiment paintings. Love love love them. There is something about staring at the sky and painting nothing but it. I love the sky. Love the colors in it, the bright oranges, bright pinks, intense yellows, deep purples and shades of blue. It’s amazing to me.

I got the mail when the sky was setting and the front of my house faces due west. I stepped outside to the most amazing orange and pink glow I’ve ever seen. I vowed that I’d start painting the sky as it set and rose. It took me awhile but I’ve started.

I’ve been posting some of the images to flickr. But I decided to post the little skyscapes to my Artfire account. They each measure about 5×7 inches and are on either Fabriano Artistico 140lb watercolor paper or Stonehenge 140lb 100% cotton printmaking paper. I’m putting them up for $15 each and $5 shipping. I’ll combine shipping on multiple purchases. (These would look fantastic matted and framed 3 to a group.)

As I listed them my inner critic said, “Don’t do it! They’ll never sell. They are just studies. It’s junk.” I figured eff him, I’m putting them up and I’ll let people decide what they like, not my critic.

You can find my artfire studio here and the art section here. Go have a look and tell me what you think.

This last week has been a trial for me and I can't go into it much here but the DayJob has been giving me fits. I haven't done much art. The posts I've been pecking out here have been the most of what I've done. Not to say that writting is nothing but it's not the same as picking up a pencil or brush.

I've not been sleeping well. I go throguh times like these where I simply can't sleep. I try everything, and I do mean everything to sleep. I cut caffeine out. I cut HFCS out. I eat earilier in the day. I try not to nap. I take benedryl to knock me out. I try other assorted things to burn off the excess energy. And it doesn't go away.

It gets to be a terrible cycle. Eventually I give up on the no naps rule and sleep because I can. then I can't sleep at night. Then I take benedryl and my dreams wake me up. Or the slightest noise wakes me.

Eventually It gets to be friday and I've gone through a cycle of crappy days at work where I'm dead tired, can't focus and get less done than I would like and I can't get stuff done at home because I can't think because I'm so tired.

And now all I want is to sleep. Hopefully without the impending doom of going to work I can get a decent nuight of sleep. Also please note it's not 90 degrees with 60% humidity tonight.

SketchCrawl in Modena #6
Originally uploaded by freekhand

Love this. There is a gearhead meet up in Danver's a couple times a month and I never know about in advance but always drive by and wish I had my camera

MelonTime
Originally uploaded by jimbradshaw

Love Jimbradshaw's work. Dense little pages full of little characters. Great stuff.

I wrote in my previous post abut my late night walks across campus. These used to freak out my friends and roommates. I used to hear things like, "Aren't you afraid of being attacked?" "Raped." "Mugged" Fill in the blanks I heard it all.

At 1 and 2 am on campus I never saw another person walking. Never.

More importantly I was never afraid. UMaine was a big campus, around a mile square, an well lit in most areas. There was something divine about walking it when there was no one else around, no cars and near silence. Just me and the hum of street lights.

My 2nd year my friend and I took Painting 201 together across campus from our campus housing. The studio was in a chemistry building near my old dorm. One night one of the painting students found a woman in the bushes outisde the building raped and beatten. I slowed my late night walks, though the incident occured at dusk. For several weeks I remember feeling pent up, easily aggravated and hyperactive.

In the end a friend of mine and I put vodka in waterbottles walked campus together and got drunk. Giggling in the fresh snow, we made snow angels and wandered to a friends place. We ended up getting a friend to take us skedding* across campus. That night I met up with a guy with a completely tricked out hot rod, with full black leather seats, front and back, and a super cool purple and silver paint job. He was dating a friend ofa friend of a friend. The guy with the hot rod ended up taking people skedding. I distinctly remember giggling hilariously as I slid back and forth around the back seat and bouncing off my friends.

I never lived in fear, that came later, with age and moving to the city. City life fills me with fear and anxiety in such a way that life in the woods does not. It's interesting, when I first moved here I dind't feel fear. I continued much of my same behavior. My friend Sarah and I used to wander Boston late at night, blue and pink haired idiots.** We'd wander her and there, to the park, ride the T. Sometimes in silence and sometimes having intense conversations about art and life. Many of my friends thought I was dating Sarah, but she's like a sibling to me, a little sister I never had. Today we don't see each other often enough and I miss her, and our conversations. But those memories of our fearless walks of Boston and Cambridge warm my heart.

Continue reading →