It's been a weird couple of years where social media became so toxic I'm just not online much. This place isn't like that so I have no excuse! So here's the CD cover for my new album "Junkyard Sam - OUTCAST", now available on Soundcloud & Spotify.
A foggy morning opens up to a burnt landscape. I wanted to paint a couple of different environments in one painting but still aim to be refined. I used fall colors and smaller lines.
When your own son calls you anonymous, you probably don’t exist. He likes to be funny on greeting cards. Hahaa! Usually my doodles are a one to two day thing. I continued adding to this one over a period of a couple weeks. Life has been a blur lately. It feels good to be able to post something again.
Two old trees.Illustration from Singer/songwriter Juha Tapios song Kaksi Puuta. Story of couple who are like two old trees. Both standing alone but sametime weave roots together. .
I had a rock tumbler as a child and really enjoyed it. When my youngest was a child we bought her one. She was eager to enjoy it too, but somewhere after starting on that path, we lost track and it everything inside turned into a solid mass. We tossed it and forgot about it. On a recent beach trip, I collected handfuls of rocks, as I am always likely to do, and, upon return, remembered how I loved my childhood rock tumbler. I immediately researched, ordered and eagerly anticipated its delivery. Of course, with Amazon Prime, that was only a couple day’s wait. As soon as I unboxed it I thought “what am I doing?” I have neither time, nor space for yet another hobby. I thought “what will I DO with a pile of polished, pretty rocks?” I would gather them in my hands and feel their silky smoothness. I would likely gather them in some beautiful glass bowl and…then what? I have toddler grand kids frequently at my home. They put small colorful things in their mouths and up their noses and feed them to the dogs regularly. And I don’t even have a single space to display a bog bowl of pretty rocks. So I quickly decided “I’m Returning the Rock Tumbler” and will, for NOW, stick to painting them when the mood strikes.
An exercise in observation - quick sketch. I was told that if I made a drawing a day for 365 days, that in a year, I might have a couple nice drawings.
I helped create the Island in the Sun can for Conshohocken Brewing Company a couple years back. They release it every year in the summer and I drew this up to celebrate the re-release this year!
Many years back, I watched that documentary ‘The Boy Whose Skin Fell Off’ about a fellow called Jonny Kennedy who lived with the skin condition EB. There’s a bit in that film where he talks about what he hopes his afterlife would be like and, for whatever reason, a couple of coffees as I was re-reading the Wikipedia article about it triggered an idea I had to scribble down...
This work is purposely incomplete. I will facilitate a group of people who will color in the black and white template as well as have the option of making their own art freehand. Individual and couple contributions will be combined to make our composite mural. People who participate in this event will thus listen and speak while creating artwork for the mural. For my part I will explain the latest research concerning the hormones involved in the physiology and neurology of falling in love and remaining in love
I try to do a couple of birds a week (obviously don't post them all). This is based on an on-line photo reference drawn with a "soft" Palomino Blackwing pencil and a 4B Koh-I-Noor Hardtmuth Progress woodless pencil. Hence the dark velvety black.
Completed my first commission of the year — inspired by my Dream Tree mural in Bristol, for a couple from the neighbourhood who walk by the mural nearly every day
It's an odd feeling to reexperience the old anger and frustration I thought I had overcome, but, in all reality, I've been letting it creep back in for a while now. There was a moment of fear, it's still in the back of my mind, I'm afraid to slip back into the mental place I was a couple of years back. I'd like to say I've finally realized that it's ok to be afraid, and even a bit frustrated, but it's a matter of how I handle those emotions and my own reactions that make the difference.
I’ve been doing ink doodles somewhat like this since the early 80s but I have to give a shout-out to Visoth Kakvei for greatly influencing my style the last couple of years.
