7/1

Started work today on the sculpture which will be made from pieces of the Hoosier Dome roof. Got out some to clean it first, it's really sooty. Working on sketches and getting materials together for the piece. Here's a hint. I probably won't have time to update this blog as it's due August first. Back in 30 days!

6/19/10

I'm done with this new painting. Here are some detail shots that shows some of the smaller areas where people and a truck and birds are now in. Given that the people are about 1/2 inch tall, it should give you an idea of how painting with a 5 hair brush and a magnifying glass can go. Think really, really tiny. Very hard to take a decent picture which shows the painting to it's best advantage online due to the long, narrow format and the limitations of my camera.

Anyone sick of the daily rain yet?

6/8/10

Have been doing some serious painting lately. This latest roof with 2 dormers was painted three times with three different style dormers. Only two roofs and one tree left... then I just need to add the people and birds. This thing is finally wrapping up! Other than that, made rice-a-roni from scratch and it was great! No more pre-processed foods for me, that was the last holdout.

6/1/10

Back from vacation, with all sorts of great times to reflect on. And I have been painting, so here's an updated shot of the lower left third, not too much farther to go. Built a front porch on the cabin and here's a video for you to watch on that. Gardening is in full swing now, but taking the rainy days to paint which means that there will be plenty of opportunities. Happy June!

5/16/10

Since prepping for vacation, have not been painting much, but there's something I've discovered that I wanted to share. It's a recipe for granola bars that I doctored up and made a bit better. These bars are thick, chewy and very nutritious, much cheaper to make (overall) than to buy a store brand and don't contain any corn syrup or chemicals the way pre-packaged ones do. I've been eating these for breakfast for the last 3 months and have actually lost weight eating one a day plus a container of Silk Soy Yogurt. Hope you like them as much as I do... Enjoy!

5/8/10

It's an atypically cold, cloudy Saturday for May and I've been painting today since I can't mentally get into the gardening thing when it's so cold out. I don't have any pictures to show just yet. Getting closer. I've also been NOT at the easel lately due to creating websites for two other artists I know (along with other corporate work).

Bob Shade and Bruce Moore have fairly extensive sites at these links.

They have vastly different styles, but each has their own qualities as people and artists and I'm lucky to count them among my friends. It was fun to create their sites, so go and browse around if you have a minute and see some art!

5/2/10

Unfortunately, I have no pictures to show still. Getting closer all the time. However, I have a bit of knowledge to pass on to those who read this infrequent blog infrequently.

I've been painting a lot of windows. The current piece seems to have hundreds. The hardest part of rendering them are the little crossbars between the pieces of glass. They're called muntins, but for months I've been mistakenly calling them "muttons", which would be the plural of roasted sheep. (I thought the word had two meanings. My bad.) Apparently, their origin is from the inability to produce larger pieces of glass during the 16th century. The glass, called "lights" is now available in any size, of course, but for some reason we've held on to this artifact from an earlier time due to architects' and public tastes and sentiments.

Some folks mistakenly call them mullions, but that word is used to describe the larger divisions between seperate windows in a row.

Now they are a mainstay of most modern windows... but why? It seems silly to me to have a ranch-style home (which is about as far from Victorian as possible) which features windows with muntins. Or seeing a brand new modern home with muntins in modern window shapes. It seems we like our views divided by bars or perhaps we feel safer somehow with smaller panes of glass. Perhaps there is added strength as well.

I, for one, do not like them, if for no other reason than it takes forever to paint them (both in paintings and in actuality) and they can really ruin a nice view. And it's difficult to clean a window with them. They also gather dust and grime unneccessarily, which adds to the cleaning chore. However, if I build a cape cod-style home, I'll probably have them in the windows. But you can be sure they'll be BETWEEN the panes of glass or removable for cleaning!

Armed with this factoid, you can thrill your friends with your new-found knowledge of windows, or at least be prepared for Jeopardy if they have a matching category.

4/27/10

Apologies in advance for not having anything ready to show right now. I've been busy fixing the foreground of the piece, turning two small cottages (that look oddly small, even in the source pic) into a large dormer fixed to another structure. After changing it twice, took a small break from the thing and am now back at it. Should have something to show in a few days. Getting closer to done all the time!

An artist in Australia, John McNelley, posts pictures from time to time on WetCanvas, an artist's site which I frequent. He'd said there was a piece of his up for grabs if someone simply paid postage, so I bit. He sent the 16 x 20 piece to me and it's pretty darn amazing. I've really like/am envious of his work, very imaginative and it sits in that margin between landscape and abstract which I hope to work in often. It's now on stretchers and is being moved from room to room till it finds the right spot.

Visiting some pro interior designers today to show my work and hoping good things happen.

4/10/10

Spent most of the afternoon working on this entire row of trees and now I can move on to the bit of street that shows and the next row of houses and buildings. It's fun working on trees and shrubs after doing so many roofs and bricks. Something more organic which I can paint a bit looser and make look whatever way I want. And, as promised, here's an overall shot to show the painting as it is now, complete with the tinted doors and all the other additions.

It will really be nice to get this painting finished and up on the wall so I can start in on looser things. My hand is starting to cramp quite a bit!

The 38 transplanted trees seem to all be alive and well, we got some colder weather and rain which really helped out. My wisteria is going to really bloom for the first time, 12 blooms in all. It should really be something and I'll post photos here when I can. A good crop of strawberries, blueberries, arugula and spinach are all coming in nicely. And there are blooms covering both apple trees, thankfully they have not come out yet, or the last two night's frost would have done them in for sure. The gardens really look good so far this year, but they are about 3 or 4 weeks ahead of schedule which is a bit unsettling. Global warming, anyone?

4/5/10

Saturday was spent getting these structures' base painting done and then Sunday and today were detail and clean up days. Spent three hours doing clean up today and I'm still not entirely done, but had to call it quits for the day. I'm officially 2/3rds done with this piece, the next bits will be more of the trees and shrubs between the rows of houses and then a few more small buldings before I get to the roofs and chimneys that are in the foreground. Little by little, this is starting to really look good. I will take another overall shot after the trees, I promise! I just hate showing this thing any more than I have to with big messy areas of underpainting still glopping it up. You can begin to see why many artists don't let a soul into their studio for fear of getting the wrong impression before a piece is finished!

In other news, I've added 38 new trees to the yard, transplanted from the land down south. Cedars, red pines, white pines, Ponderosa pines, oaks and one birch. As warm as it is getting (too warm too fast) I think that's it for the year. I pledged 10 bucks to the Arbor Day Society and they're sending flowering trees out at some point, I hope they live with all this early heat!

I'm still trying to decide between two ideas for the sculpture using the Hoosier Dome roof. One is a tree, one is a bird. Perhaps the bird will land in the tree when all is said and done.

3/28/10

OK, so by now some of you may have noticed a correlation between the recent nice weather and a huge lack of posts to my blog. Guilty as charged. When it's sunny and above 65 degrees and spring, I have to be outside working on the yard. Painting is for rainy days at this point. Today being one, I've finally finished those pesky sideways buildings and the little house attached. It's taken me days of painting, re-working and downright frustration to get these to where I'm comfortable with them. No, they are not perfect, but in the mix of the painting, they look pretty good and I need to move on to the next structure if I'm going to be done by the end of April (which is my goal.). Note to any budding painters out there: Make sure you have top-notch reference photos if you work in-studio on landscapes. Without them, you will spend a lot of time gnashing your teeth!

OH, and I did add windows to those doors on the last houses, they look much more believable. I'll post photos of those in the next overall shot I take.

3/14/10

It's "spring forward" day, have you changed all your clocks to Daylight Savings Time, midwesterners? I feel like I lost an hour this morning.

Here are the next two houses, completed. I'm contemplating adding a window to both of the doors, but I can't see them in the reference so I have to go and study some doors to see what's what. I can officially say that I'm halfway done with this painting, so there's a tiny light at the end of this tunnel. From this newest shot you can see how it's all starting to come together!

Keep Indianapolis Beautiful is giving artists huge swaths of the material that was the roof of the Hoosier Dome to make things with. There is a contest to enter that has a deadline of the 15th of May, but I won't be able to make that with my idea, so I'm going to exhibit my piece in the fall, but won't be eligible for the prize. I'm not as worried about that as I am the actual piece and it's weight. I'm planning on making a huge bird. More to come on that later.

3/9/10

Actually, it's been more than a week, but the day I planned on taking shots and uploading I ended up with an aura migraine. If you know what those are like, you can't possibly blame me! After that, the next day was pretty busy, but I'm back at it and have new pictures. To be honest, there's not a lot to see, mostly bushes and partial houses, but I did get one new house done this morning. And this is one that I put glassblock in the end window because I wanted some little oddities like this to keep the picture interesting. This tree is only about an inch tall, just to give an idea of the level of detail.

3/1/10

Apologies all around, I am working on new shots of the village piece, I want to continue getting the trees and partial houses done before I upload a new picture. Thanks for your patience. A new shot coming later this week!

2/23/10

OK, the last batch of of houses on the back row is done. Here's a shot of them, plus a close-up of the last grouping and an apartment building that's on the end of the canvas.

The next row has a lot of trees, so I'm back to painting foliage and limbs before I get to the rowhouses that are brick. I think there's a lot of brick painting in my future! I don't mind too much, bricks are the place where you can get creative with textures, cracks and stains.

I have a feeling that back row was possibly dutch-influence because the next row seems to be a newer batch of structures that have 1800s-era windows and chimneys, whereas the back row seems to be a different architecture altogether.

Last week, I finished some mechanical drawings (digital) for a client that is getting ready to file a patent, so all this tight work has warmed me up for something that has to be darn-near perfect. Such a huge difference between paint and a computer, my hand is not nearly as steady, some lines had to be painted many times before they would cooperate. Unfortunately, my canvas does not have "un-do"!

2/15/10

Here is another detail shot of the next few houses. While I feel like I'm moving at blazing speeds, I'm sure to others it looks like a snail's pace. Much of the time I'm going back to little areas of things I've already painted and fixing tiny mistakes in window muttons, roof lines, shadows and the like. It can be quite maddening to get a few inches away from something I thought was finished, only to be spending an hour on the same area days later! Only about 24 houses to go. Ha!

We have yet more snow. It was supposed to be a dusting yet it is another 4 to 5 inches on top of what we already had. It's beautiful but it does get tiring shoveling the driveway for the umpteenth time. Spring is only a month and a half away, however. That's just 6 weeks. Soon we'll be whining about the heat!

2/10/10

After doing the clean-up on the first houses, I have a new shot HERE and two more of the next houses and the little pink house that took all day today. It's about actual size here. I hope I can still see when this painting is done!

2/7/10

Superbowl Sunday! Go Colts!

Here's the first two houses... some details need cleaned up, but my eyes got pretty tired... it is slightly smaller than actual size. DETAIL

2/3/10



Above is a progress shot, (click for a larger look) the entire background is finished now and there are some close-up detail shots here, here and here.

Trying to add just enough detail to the bushes and trees (a branch here and there, some seperate highlighted foliage, etc.) to keep it interesting but not so much as to distract from the main point of the painting: the houses. It has been fun up to this point, but I think things are going to now become a bit more intense and difficult. I figure if I can get one house done each day I should be done in about a month or so. Come back for updates in a few days!

1/30/10

Above is the work-in-progress (WIP) underpainting stage of a work I'm finally getting started on. It's a cropped-down portion from a stock photo of a seaside town, either England or Ireland. I've heavily edited the picture to take out some items in the foreground that were blocking the composition and inserted an extra chimney here or another house there, but it still looks pretty natural I think.

Of course, this being an underpainting makes the whole place look rather dreary, (and many artists might give up at this stage!) but in a few weeks things should shape up nicely. Sometimes it's difficult to keep in mind that this entire stage will get covered up over time. I like to think of this as the "winter" stage of a painting that will later get a layer of springtime and summer on top.

I'm going to give it the same look as Church and State, almost real but not quite. A kind of storybook look which I think is rather charming and might end up having more shelf life than a hyper realist piece. Less headaches for me too, since the photo is rather fuzzy and parts are hard to make out. My eyes are definitely not what they used to be! All of those little claypot chimneys and roof tops are very compelling to me and the little houses on the cliff might end up getting various colors to help brighten up the piece. This will be a fun little painting, it's 12 x 36 inches, perfect for above a door.

1/21/10

In light of the disaster in Haiti, I've decided to step up to the plate and help in the best way I know how. This came about because I was chatting over drinks with some buddies and related with some frustration that I "want to help, but can't figure out how". I don't have a medical degree and I'm not rich. After some thinking, I decided that while I can't afford to donate any funds (I do this nearly every year with CARE at Christmas anyway) I could afford to donate a majority of whatever money I would get from selling a piece of art.

After speaking with CARE's Chicago office, I set up my front page and an additional page to talk about it. Hopefully, if someone has been mulling over buying something of mine, this will help spur them on and they and Haiti will both benefit! So, come on people! Help Haiti Now!

In other news, I'm almost halfway thru doing the commission piece and am looking forward to working on new pieces in the works. The "banes" piece is taking much longer than I'd planned, but more due to my being picky than anything else. The first one which this was modeled after was not nearly as careful but I figure if the client liked it well enough to have another one done in a similar vein, I should do my best.

Surfing the net recently, I noticed that the Murphy Art Center has been purchased by a new group and they are in the process of making it a more professional and less, shall we say, juvenile place. Let's face it, it needs an interior facelift big time. The wall "murals" (and I use the term loosely) were a mess and the bathrooms and other public areas smelled bad and were filthy. Safety was an issue and the building was not really what I'd call secure. Hopefully the good work they're doing will attract a crowd back to the Murph and that scene will revitalize once again.

1/06/10

A new year is here!

This week marks the 14th year that I've been living in this house out in the country and October marked the 15th year that I've had my own art business. Seems like a much shorter time somehow, but the calendar does not lie. Looking back on all that has happened, all the shows and pieces created, the gallery ownership experience and all the work that has come through, I've been very fortunate. Starting my own business was one of the best decisions I've made in my life, especially considering how many negative experiences that took place working for others. It's totally worth the higher taxes, the high health insurance bills and the scary weeks when business is slow.

This site has gone through many changes over the years and has evolved into a much more navigable and informative place than it was back in 1995. I recently looked at the first site I had online and am too ashamed to show an example here, it was just that bad! However, I was one of a handful of artists to have a site back in those days and I can at least say mine has never had a black background, which is, for me, the true sign of bad taste.

Looking forward, this site will undergo another set of changes this year and I hope those who have been revisiting will enjoy what happens.

I've been slow to get January's pages up as there have been some issues here to deal with (plumbing) and our vacation home in Crawford County got a new layer of gravel on the long, long driveway. January is the best month to do it, especially if there's no snow on the ground. We've had too many dump trucks get stuck in the mud in other months. A quick drive down, a bit of supervision and 300 dollars later, the road is much safer and our little hideaway is much easier to reach.

Here's hoping everyone has a great new year of peace and prosperity!