Sonnet 30

Sonnet 30
Digital print on metal
16 x 18

Nude Unfinished

A drawing from the Tuesday Night drawing sessions at Argos Gallery. The short pose ended before I finished the drawing. That, I think, was a very good thing.

Nude Unfinished
Digital print (original art: charcoal & pastel on paper)
40 x 28

Drawings at an Exhibition

Details are being finalized for an exhibit of drawings from the Tuesday night drawing group that meets at Argos Gallery in Santa Fe. The opening is scheduled for March 7, 2014 at Argos Gallery. There should be a very interesting and wide range of styles exhibited. All submitted art will be drawings of poses that varied between 2 minutes to 45 minutes, so even drawings of longer poses should have a spontaneous and raw appeal.

Final details and the official invitation will be posted here in the near future.

Below are a couple of recent drawings from the Tuesday night group.

Florentine Print
Digital print
20" x 20"

Charcoal and white pastel

Charcoal with a dash of 16th Century parchment

Nude in a Green Room
Digital print
24" x 26"

Sienna Nude
Digital print
20" x 26"

January Pose
Digital print
20" x 26"

Tower at Dusk

Yesterday afternoon, New Year’s Eve, Robin and I went to the New Mexico Museum of Art in downtown Santa Fe to see the Renaissance to Goya exhibit (the only American venue for this exhibition). The exhibit included 132 drawings and prints by artist from four centuries, including Goya, Velazquez, Murillo, Zurbaran, & Ribera. Amazing stuff.

As I left the exhibit and walked through the museum's courtyard I noticed the late afternoon light illuminating the Pueblo-style tower, one of downtown's iconic landmarks. I grabbed a quick iPhone photo, then used Corel Painter X3 and Photoshop to create a 30" x 24" canvas.

Tower at Dusk
30" x 24"

Detail

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.