Sparkling Water with Lime

Sparkling Water with Lime
18 x 24

Merry Drawing

A quick Photoshop enhancement to a charcoal drawing on newsprint to announce the cancellation of our regular Tuesday evening drawing group that happened to fall on Christmas Eve this year. The model has a sleeve tattoo that extends from her shoulder to below the elbow. Pretty cool.

Breakfast At Harry's

Robin at Harry’s Roadhouse, a favorite spot for breakfast, lunch, or dinner in Santa Fe.

Breakfast at Harry’s
Digital print on canvas
28 x 20

Detail 1

Detail 2

Napa Flowers

During an early Christmas visit with relatives in Napa, CA, I passed some time by sketching on the iPad, using an app called ProCreate. After getting a little bit familiar with the interface, I loaded an iPhone photo of a flower arrangement of Calla Lilies, then repainted the image in ProCreate.

I imported the ProCreate image into Photoshop, enlarged and retouched it, increased the resolution, then imported the retouched version into Corel Painter X3 and repainted it using the Oil Brush Cloner. After saving the Painter file as a Photoshop document I retouched some more.

The final image, 40 x 30 inches, will be output as a gallery-wrap canvas.

Napa Flowers
Digital print on canvas
40 x 30

Detail

Detail 2

A Gallery Somewhere

Whenever someone asks where I plan to show my drawings, paintings, and digital prints, I say “I don't know—a gallery somewhere.”

Introducing: A Gallery Somewhere.

Currently in the planning stages, A Gallery Somewhere will be brick and mortar when a location works, at least temporarily, for an exhibit. It will also be an online gallery that sells limited edition prints, posters, and originals of my work and also that of select artist friends.

Art print poster for A Gallery Somewhere

Skin Deep

Our Tuesday night drawing group is planning an exhibit of life drawings, probably in March, 2014. Anyone who has participated in the group can submit a drawing that was done at one of the Tuesday night sessions.

I plan to post photos of the show here. The exact date and location will be decided in the next couple of months. It should be interesting, considering the incredible variety of styles that artists in the group create every Tuesday night.

Skin Deep
An exhibition of life drawings by the Argos Gallery Tuesday Night Drawing Group

White Chalk

In an old box of art supplies I found an extra soft white pastel stick that works much better on newsprint than any other chalk or pastel I’ve used. Schmincke Pastell is handmade in Germany and dried for eight days before it’s wrapped and packaged by hand.

A dozen artists attended last night’s three-hour drawing session of around 25 different poses varying from 1-minute to 45-minutes.  

Reclined
Charcoal and pastel on newsprint

Model with Dark Hair

Model with Dark Hair
Charcoal

Charcoal, oil, & pastel

Drawing at Duel Brewing

I've been hearing that Duel Brewing in Santa Fe hosts Sunday mid-day drawing sessions, so I decided to check it out.

A $25 fee provides you with a live model for two hours, a Belgian waffle, and a Belgian-style beer of your choice, brewed on the spot. The atmosphere was inviting, the 6 or 7 artists in attendance were nice and friendly, the model was great (she modeled for our Tuesday night group recently), the lighting was dramatic, the proprietor and staff were welcoming and gracious, the waffle was excellent, and the beer I chose was “Non-Fiction,” a less-hoppy version of their Belgian-style IPA, “Fiction.” I've also tried their medium-bodied amber ale “Bad Amber.” All good stuff.

An unsuspecting, not-artists couple with an infant in a car-seat wandered in during the drawing session, having missed the sign on the front door that said the brewery wouldn’t open until 1:30. I have to say they handled it pretty well, but this is Santa Fe, after all. After a while you just kind of expect weird stuff to happen occasionally. . .  like a naked woman casually sitting alone in a pub. 

Duel Brewing is my idea of a friendly neighborhood pub. Definitely going back there soon.

This drawing started as charcoal on newsprint. I took an iPhone photo of the newsprint pad and opened it in Photoshop where I added digital color, texture, and highlights, then enlarged the image to 30 x40. 

Ambient Light at Duel Brewery
Digital print
30 x 40

Psychedelic Pose

Psychedelic Zydeco

As Robin and I strolled down Bourbon Street in New Orleans, a psychedelic Zydeco explosion of light and sound came blasting out the front door of a bar...

Psychedelic Zydeco
Digital print on canvas
38 x 30

  

Kill Me Tomorrow

In the play Othello, Desdemona desperately tries to talk the insanely jealous Moor out of smothering her by pleading “Kill me tomorrow, let me live tonight." That would have worked on me, but Othello is obviously a moron who thinks the source of his infidelity information (his BFF, Iago) is a truthful and honorable man. Really? Everyone in the audience knows Iago is evil. 

Oh well, at least Othello realizes, just before killing himself, that he “loved not wisely but too well.” Loving “too well” seems to be a nasty condition that many men in the Shakespeare canon suffer from. 

If I were a woman I’d prefer a “loving-pretty-well” kind of relationship. Anything a little less “Shakespearean," thank you.

Kill Me Tomorrow, Let Me Live Tonight
Digital print on canvas
16 x 20

Detail

Nawlins

Last week I had a three-day rendezvous in New Orleans with high school friends. Our official high school reunion had been a couple of weeks earlier, which we couldn't make for various reasons, so we convened in New Orleans for a smaller reunion with world-class debauchery.

Just kidding. About the debauchery. Even with the fact that our hotel was at the corner of Bourbon Street & Royal.

Some locals call it Nawlins. Growing up in South Louisiana I called it Norluns. No one in Louisiana knew it was called The Big Easy until Dennis Quaid starred in a movie with that name in 1986. I saw that movie in Shreveport, Louisiana in 1986 with a friend who, like me, had grown up in Louisiana. We thought “Hmmm, I wonder what the name of that movie refers to?” Now there are signs all around Norluns referring to itself as The Big Easy.

When I returned home I painted a digital portrait of my high school pal in The Don't Hurry cafe.
He now lives in Germany, sort of the opposite of Big Easy.

To make sure we were doing the Big Easy thing, we visited The Don’t Hurry cafe, in the Garden District.

If you run out of money while on Bourbon Street you can usually find a part-time job. 
I happen to have advertising experience, so getting a job was not a problem for me.

2 to 30

Drawings from Tuesday night’s drawing group. For three hours poses ranged from two to 30 minutes. The quality of drawings ranged from “toss it” to “keep it,” with most of the “keep its” coming from the two-minute category.

I’m pretty sure there’s a lesson there, but I’m not so sure I want to know what it is.

Two minute pose. 

Twenty minute pose. 

Two minute pose.

Two minute pose.

Pink Nude

Another digital print version of an original sketch from the weekly Tuesday night drawing group.

Pink Nude
18 x 24

Muscular Model

Tuesday night’s drawing group was packed with 14 artists and one pretty darn muscular model. The group has had such good attendance in the past six months that we decided to have an exhibition of life drawings by artists in the group, drawn specifically during a Tuesday night session. We hope to have the exhibit in February or March. Details later.

Digital print from original charcoal drawing.

Two-Minute Pose

Digital print created from a charcoal sketch of last Tuesday night’s model.

Jesse’s Pose
30 x 40

Jesse & Rose

Some sketches from September’s Tuesday night life drawing sessions, featuring Jesse & Rose, two great models.

Jesse in Charcoal

Two-minute sketch

Rose on Newsprint

High-energy Hair

Bob Told Me To Use Red

Friend and mentor Bob told me to use red if I want a painting to sell.

OK, got it.

Note: The term “mentor” comes from the name Mentor, the advisor of the young Telemachus in Homer’s Odyssey. At least that’s what I recall from my extensive Greek studies in years past (muffled laugh).

This unfinished painting started as an oil-on-canvas painting. While waiting for the oils to dry a bit I   photographed the painting, imported the photo into the computer, then added some digital brush strokes as a study for later when I continue working on the original with oils.

Almost Ripe
Oil on canvas
30 x 20

Rush Hour

A landscape, in progress, based on a photo I took several years ago of the road between Chimayo and Nambe, two villages north of Santa Fe. Traffic hasn't changed much. Still as busy as ever.

Rush Hour
Oil on canvas

Phantom Painters of the Opera

Went to the Santa Fe parking lot this morning with 5 other TPAPs (Thursday Plein Air Painters). Not one of us actually painted the opera house (The Crosby Theater). Instead we all opted to paint the mountain view looking east from the parking lot.

View from the Opera
Oil on canvas
Digital print 36" x 28"

Variation 1

Winter Morning Stroll

Mysterious woman on a winter morning stroll in Brompton Cemetery, London.

Brompton Cemetery is one of seven huge cemeteries that Parliament established around London in the mid-1800s to cope with a shortage of adequate burial grounds. It contains over 35,000 monuments and covers over 40 acres. 

Winter Morning Stroll

Detail

Yon High Hill

A re-worked watercolor sketch using digital brushes. 

When I saw the morning dew on this hill I thought to myself “But look, the morn, in russet mantle clad, walks o’re the dew of yon high eastward hill.”

Or maybe that was Horatio in Hamlet, Act I, Scene I. 

I sometimes get the two of us confused.

Yon High Hill
30" x 24"

Detail

Great Skellig

Robin and friend Carla contemplate the mystical island of Great Skellig (barely visible on the horizon) in the Atlantic, just off the southwestern shore of Ireland.

A monastery was founded on the barren rock island between the 6th and 8th century. It was continuously occupied until it was abandoned in the late 12th century.

I’ve heard of monastic solitude but, come on!

Digital print
22" x 18"

Robin, detail.

Botanical Garden

The Thursday Plein Air Painters met at the recently opened Santa Fe Botanical Garden for a morning of location painting. I'm getting used to the idea that I don't need to leave the painting location with a finished painting. That's probably a bad attitude, traditionally speaking, but I’m breaking lots of other rules too, so there.

A section of Phase One of the brand new Santa Fe Botanical Garden. Painters are setting up under a portal.

Color sketch of garden rock sculptures, painted on location with acrylic on watercolor pad. 

Later, in the studio, I added a little more detail. 

After reworking more, I took an iPhone photo of the painting, imported it into the computer, repainted the imported version using Corel Painter software, then enlarged the digital painting to 30 x 40 inches (below). 

The final digital version.

Detail.

   

Mermaid Tavern Plaza

Digital watercolor of the Mermaid Tavern Plaza, also known as the front yard.

G’s Studio

Last week, Bob (from my Tuesday night drawing group) and I visited G (also a regular at the drawing group) at her studio in Santa Fe.

Cookies, sparkling water, and freaky massive drawings exploding onto canvases. Experience some of them at her web site.

I shot a few iPhone photos in the studio, including one of Bob that I later used for a digital painting.

Visit to G’s Studio
Digital print
30" x 24"

Detail

I also grabbed a photo of the mysterious G and used it to create another digital painting.

G in Her Studio
Digital print
36" x 32"