Jetpens selected me as one of their August Favorites! Go check out my work and the work of other artists. I'm pretty excited to be on their blog. I buy my ultra fine line Uni-ball Signo DX and Bit pens from them, since I can't get them anywhere around here.
When I was a kid my Dad had a big 1976 Ford F250. The thing was huge and green. When I had an ear infection (age 7) and had a really high fever my mother threw me into the passenger's seat and drove it to the doctor's office, though she couldn't reach the pedals and shifting was nearly impossible. When I got a little older my father redid the body on it and painted it with a gorgeous shade of bright metal fleck limey green.
At some point around this time my Dad bought a dump truck that did not run. It just needed a little work. He didn't pay much for it and it sat at the end of our driveway and near the bushes where our rabbits were penned. We used it as a giant rugged jungle gym. The back of the truck was a club house and it's rugged body couldn't be hurt with our shoes and hands. We spent hours and hours climbing up it. the best thing about that truck was that the roof and hood had thick metal so you could actual launch yourself over the top of it and climb up over the top of it.
The bus that picked me up from grades K- 7 was a big old bus. A large rounded snout, dark green seats with hardly any cushioning, and a floor so grimey that anything it touched turned black. It didn't have any of these safety features new buses have, no instead, we bounced around on it's shockless carriage.
Those early interactions with those old trucks have cemented in my head that trucks should have big fat noses, big round head lights, and side mirrors you can do chin ups on. I love me some big round head lights. When I day dream of vehicles I think of trucks like these with character.
Do I forsee a series of truck drawings in my future?
I wanted togive you a little look into how I created my large sized town hall image. I was asked to make a poster with a drop box for my coworkers to put questions in for a special meeting at work. My idea was to create an image of a town hall. My other idea was to create an image of a group of people inside an old style town hall. Given the time frame (1 day turn over) for creation, I went with the simple idea instead.
I spent some time looking through google images for "town hall" then remembered I shot a pic of Salem's Old Town Hall a few weeks ago. It turned out THAT was the image I had in my head. (That or the town office from my youth.) I quickly roughed out my idea in light blue ink and then finalized the idea in black ink. I jotted down some ideas for the image in words around the edges of the sketch.
Below you'll see the large sized version transfered from my mind to a large 4 foot high by 2.5 foot wide piece of standard corrugated box cardboard. To rough in the image I used a 0.5mm HB mechanical pencil. Then to fill it out I used my E+M clutch pencil with creatacolor 4B graphite pencil. I finalized the location of all the elements of the image and then started to add areas of shadow. I darkened these areas and gently filled in the rest with a light coat of graphite. 
I started to layer in white house paint. Scrubbing it in with my brush gave me the blended and mottled gray effect. Sure the Salem Old Town Hall is brick but no one said I couldn't make it creepier with a black and white effect. 
I used a clean brush to add put white to the windows and trim. 
I then cut the image out of the cardboard. I added some definition with creatacolor's version of a conte crayon also in my E+M lead holder. I made a small sign that says town hall that is stuck to the image. The sign is 3d and adds some weirdness to the already wonky lines of the building.
Overall I'm pretty happy with how this came out. I was given the assignment just before I left work on Wednesday, thought about it for about an hour last night and then completed the image over teh course of the morning at work.
Now I want to do a whole haunted village for the front lawn…. Hmm how soon is too soon to get ready for Halloween?
Quentin Blake is one of my favorite authors. You know his work if you've ever read any of Roald Dahl's books.
Love him.
I've not done this in a few weeks. I've been feeling a little off my photo game. I've been looking for new inspiration. So here you go.
There is a certain amount of beauty locked into decay, trapped with it is always a large amount of sadness. As I travel around the area where I grew up I’m able to see the struggles of keeping things standing. One of these days i’m going to need to travel with my camera or a pochade.
Last year the Beehive Collective raised $10,000 to repair and renovate the park overlooking the Bad Little Falls in Machias, Maine. The Bad Little Falls park is one of my favorite spots in Machias and sadly the kickstarter campaign ended before I could give. They repaired the guard rails, a dancefloor and installed 2 gazebos where bands can play. One day a year the park is lit up and is lively. I’m happy to see that the Beehive was able to save one of my favorite places in DownEast Maine.
I’ve been fascinated with buildings that are crumbling. Sad to see them start to cave in and be destroyed. Nature takes her toll on the construction of man. The barn I grew up with, my father had a concrete floor poured in before I was aware of such things. Growing up we swung on ropes from one side to the other, lifted ourselves far too high above the cement floor with block and tackle attached to our belts, and built forts in bales of hay.
It’s been close to 20 years since the barn has been used for anything useful. A thick mat of wild grapes grows before the door, which was last accessed 5 years or so ago. It remains locked both with a chain and padlock but through mother nature’s frost cement is heaved in such a way that the doors will no longer open more than a few inches.
My happy memories of this place beg me to see it repaired but my brain tells me that this barn will eventually return to the earth as so many other buildings in the area have gone before.
I bought my ukelele back in 1999. I purchased the cheapest uke I could find at the local music shop, Ted Coles in Salem, MA. Ted Coles is no longer in business and there is no wonder why. I had the worst customer service I’ve ever encountered in there, and never went back. The ukelele cost about $35, with no case and no instructions. I managed to find a VERY beat up case on eBay for about $5 and a bunch of instructional books at Borders. I love how beat up the case is, but I think it’s time I paint it and make it 100% mine.
The uke has served my horrible playing skills well. It sounds about as good as I play, which is to say, pretty horrible. I have no rhythm and I’m tone deaf but I enjoy plucking away at its strings and generally enjoying the sounds the uke makes.
I’ve had it stored at my parent’s place for the last 5 years or so, why I don’t know. It always seemed to miss being packed with me as I came home. Now it’s here with me and I hope to draw it a few times, and play it a lot.
I’ve been thinking a little more on the whole haters gonna hate concept. I think it is borne of fear and a been there done that attitude. After all we’ve spent much of our lives being told that if it has been done before there is no reason to revisit it.
What if we all took that attitude?
Nothing would be tried again and we’d stagnate.
Just because something didn’t work for one artist doesn’t mean it won’t work for another. Time and place can make all the difference in success.
My chipin was 106% funded in 48 hours. That’s some wild support. Would that have happened for everyone? I don’t know. I’m sure that my results can be replicated by anyone with drive and ambition.
You must be willing to succeed.
You must also be willing to fail.
The difference in the two poles is what you do to make them happen.
A friend recently contacted me about creating a couple of trading card portraits as a gift for his daughter. After a little discussion and finding out who he wanted me to draw, I accepted the challenge. The real challenge for this commission was to have a realistic image that still retained my style. Keeping my style was the hard part. I tend to shy away from photo-realism because I can't put my mark on the image and it falls flat for me.
It was also important to get a good idea of where the light and shadow fell on the faces and the general shape of the face itself. I started off with a few simple sketches done with the sharpie brush markers.
With realistic faces the important part is to get the eyes right. So I studied them. I did detailed sketches of the eyes, making notes of where I was off. Being self critical was very important in this stage. One I started to work on the card sizes errors would lead to doing the job over again.
I started the cards with a light HB pencil sketch made with a mechanical pencil. This gives me a guide of where I want my ink to go. This lets me move an eye to the right or left if needed and move the nose closer to the eyes and to shrink the mouth.
I then blocked in my first layer of ink with a 0.18 Uniball Signo Bit. it's light-fast and waterproof ink is a perfect first layer. I allowed this ink to dry for a full 3 hours before I used a kneaded eraser to remove in the pencil line. While I find the Signo ink to dry quickly I was taking no chance of ruining the pieces.
After the pencil was removed I went into the image with a 0.28 Uniball Signo DX black ink pen. Again, it's light-fast and waterproof ink is a nice deep black shade that let me build up my layers of ink precisely and easily.
At this point the image is almost completely finished. I used the 0.38 Uniball Signo DX to add the darkest areas.
Before adding the watercolor I sat on the finished image for 24 hours. I wanted to be happy with every aspect of the image before I finished it with watercolor. Since these are a pair if images to be gifted to the same person I wanted to be sure they matched. Doing a little research into my subjects showed they were both architects who used a lot of steel and concrete in their work. I mixed a large puddle of Holbein watercolors, far more than I'd ever need to finish these images, in a shade of blue grey midway between slate and concrete. The color complements the images well. After allowing the images to dry completely I cut them from the parent sheet.
The final step will be to place each card into a trading card sleeve and carefully construct a presentation sleeve out of cardboard.
If you are interested in having me create a custom trading card sized portrait for you, please see this page or consider buying into my chipin campaign here. I'd be happy to work with you to create a treasured momento.
