I have been lucky enough to have the opportunity to paint a design on a rather large gorilla! I am so excited to do this. It's taking an age but getting there slowly. When he's all done he will be going on show at Paignton Zoo.
Samuel Beckett (1906–1989)
On a late-night walk near Dublin harbor, Beckett found himself standing on the end of a pier in the midst of a winter storm. Amid the howling wind and churning water, he suddenly realized that the “dark he had struggled to keep under” in his life—and in his writing, which had until then failed to find an audience or meet his own aspirations—should, in fact, be the source of his creative inspiration.
“I shall always be depressed,” Beckett concluded, “but what comforts me is the realization that I can now accept this dark side as the commanding side of my personality. In accepting it, I will make it work for me.”
- From Daily Rituals: How Artists Work by Mason Currey
#dailyrituals #inktober #samuelbeckett @masoncurrey
I thought I would play with crayons this morning. The bird with the cute hairdo is a Livingstone’s turaco from the family Musophagidae. Found in the subtropical lowlands of southeastern Africa. This bird’s plumage is the color of spring. Crayola crayons on toned tan sketch paper.
A silly watercolor sketch, I know, but there's a lot tied to this little thing. There are so many bittersweet feelings lately. I tend to avoid putting a numerical value to time, I don't like the count-down aspect to things, especially knowing how obsessive I can be with that. It allows me to live in some semblance of ignorance (they say ignorance is pure bliss). There's a lot of tip-toeing around what I want to say and what I'm afraid to say, or even what I'd love to explore and embrace and simply afraid to. It's something I'm not used to. It's taken me quite a while to finally sit with certain things, or even acknowledge them, and it feels like there's so much more I'm now realizing. It's odd to be so frank to some and worried that others may find out. There's a lot of shifting again, goodbyes coming soon, complicated feelings and situations.
Mixed media drawing. The sky can spread oppressively across a flat landscape like the meadows of the midwestern United States. In this drawing I wanted to evoke that sense as a backdrop for a trio of Weirds, soothsayers of folklore.
Mixed media (pretty much every type of pen/marker I have is in these somewhere). Recovering from surgery last month, slowly learning to sit upright again, thinking about flowers. :)
My little fun series of everyday food during quarantine just to make it more cosmic ;) This one sketch a day approach helps with my long break in drawings! :) Sketchbook, coffee and ink.
I was fortunate enough to to take my sketchbook class to observe medical students dissect donor cadavers. These donors gave there bodies to science to further our knowledge of the human anatomy and to train our future doctors. We worked alongside the med students and anatomy fellows. It was a humbling and fascinating experience.
"Girl & Death". What started out as two separate pieces for Upfest in Bristol, slowly merged into one collaborative painting. On the left my part, on the right the artwork by Luke Gray (http://lukegray.net)
Wrapping my mind around drawing human / humanoid. Trace the silhouette first, then slowly carve out the anatomy and add on the clothing details last. Was also studying human anatomy earlier, tracing the body tones and proportions. Without paying much attention all these months, I managed to learn something I thought that I have been unable to do. Next would be to balance the style and details, especially with the faces...
"Lost little red." *He took a step closer as he towered her smaller form. He chuckled lowly as if her mere presence was a joke to him. He reached out, his long, sharp, black claws touched a strand of brown hair. "What a little snack you'll make."
This started as a pencil drawing (see the 2nd image) that I scanned and put into Photoshop. I tried various filters including: Smudge, Ink Outline, some Splatter, changed the Exposure and added a Sepia Photo Filter. After a couple of hours of playing (I’m not very knowledgeable about digital possibilities and just use trial and error) I ended up with a dramatic image with which I am quite happy. The reference was a magazine advertisement.
This is an acrylic painting that I made for someone I was close to. We would often take turns of one of us being overly affectionate and the other being playfully annoyed. I tried to capture this dynamic in the painting of these two owls. This painting was an experiment in portraying animals, something I don't do often, and using my paint knife as a tool in my paintings.
