A Few More Inks

Two more pen and ink drawings. The first one is from a photo I found online then edited significantly, cropped, and used as a reference. It's just houses on a hillside, but represented a significant challenge, owing to the detail, etc. The second is a local landmark, the Salisbury House. It's on the National Register of Historic Places and was constructed by a manufacturing executive about 80 years ago using pieces of manor houses from England and elsewhere. As you can see, this one involved heavy used of ink and brush as well as a dip pen. (Both of these are available. They're about 8x10 on illustration board, by the way. Click the image for a larger version.)

Pen and Ink

Also these past weeks, I've been indulging in an orgy of pen and ink drawings. This is one of my first loves--I orginally worked in ink in the 1960s--but I hadn't done as much these last years. Anyway, I began doing some landmarks and scenes pertaining to Iowa, and these are some of the best of the lot. The first is the local courthouse, listed as a National Historic Building. The second is simply a group of signs that interested me. As you can see, the second involved work with both dip pen and brush. Time permitting in the next few days I'll probably post a few more of these. Working

without color can be very liberating, not to say fun. It's too bad that this medium is used so infrequently these days, compared to the golden years of illustration a century ago.

A New Year

A new year, and as this year rolls in, like each new year this century, I'm mildly surprised to have lasted this long. Since September I've delivered several portrait commissions and completed three of an ongoing series of portraits of department chairs at my university. This one is 16x12 on panel, done from life over a period of several months.





In the same period I've been working on several other projects, including a group of works dealing with world hunger. Here are a couple of them, each only 8x6 on gessoed panel. I did these as two-value studies, an idea I filched from James Gurney (see his blog, Gurney Journey online at http://gurneyjourney.blogspot.com/ ). These were done using ivory black and titanium white over a ground toned with raw umber to around value 5. These kinds of studies are teaching me a great deal about how to render form without being "picky"--that is, without using tentative, small strokes instead of thinking about form and about value. Painters who can master that kind of idea--economy coupled with bravura brushwork--are the most appealing to my eye. These days painting is (or should be) more about the paint and often less about faithful rendering. Sub ject is important, but if one seeks photographic accuracy, take a photograph. A painting is much much more. The tone of the panels was actually overlaid onto old sketchwork--hence the varied look of the backgrounds. (As always, you can click on the small image to view a larger version.)

Figures

Since I haven't posted new work in the past few months, there is a pretty big backlog to put up here. Most are monochromatic, like part of the work posted earlier in June. These, like the others, are done with a palette that is mostly raw umber and lead white with a touch here and there of black. Oil on panel, 20x16.

Another new one. This is a stormy winter day in Iowa. Oil on panel, 24x20.

A Study

One of my favorite illustrators is Joseph Leyendecker. His works of the early 20th century have amazing energy and impeccable draftsmanship. I took one of his advertising images, done for a breakfast cereal company, copied and transformed it. Leyendecker's original shows a thinner kid. And his colors are brighter than these. But the essentials of a kid with a napkin tied around his neck, loving whatever he's slurping from that huge spoon, were well worth keeping. This one is 12x12 on panel and will be in the show this month, too.

Pushcart

Preparing for a show this month, I've been doing more monochromatic paintings. This one, like the others, is based very loosely on an image I found somewhere. Juxtaposing a bright yellow against the (nearly) monochromatic background wasn't really a conscious decision. In many photos every object has a distinct color--often a Kodachrome-like saturation--but even the yellow here is dulled. This one is 11x14 on panel.

New Work

These last weeks, while I haven't been posting here I've definitely been working. The end of this month (June) I'll be exhibiting new paintings at "The Other Art Show" in Des Moines. The show is actually part of an arts weekend in central Iowa. There is the Des Moines Arts Festival, held in the downtown area, outdoors, which supports the Art Center, among other things, and the "Salon des Refusees" aka The Other Art Show, held at the state fairgrounds, indoors. Personally, in July in Iowa I'll take indoors every time.

Here are a few of the works that will probably be shown. They represent a different direction, I think, being rather dark and almost monochromatic, but they're in line with the one I posted earlier this year, "Goodbye." Both oi these works are 12x12, oil on panel.

Rainy Day

I did this one alla prima from imagination, based on several ideas I've been kicking around. It's 20x16 on a hardboard panel. What I mainly tried to do was boil the image down into nothing but the essentials. The panel was primed with a mid-value gray and the painting was made with only raw umber and flake white except for a touch here and there of a dulled mix of pale yellow ochre/cad red. The title is "Goodbye..."