Watercolor heads

I've been messing around with little watercolor head again recently. These are all pretty small, like 1-3 inches tall on different types of paper, trying to figger out what works best. I use magazine photos and old Hollywood pics for reference on these.

So, I hear you want to draw!

I get asked often how to draw or more accurately how to draw better. The short answer may sound kind of smart ass-y but the old saying is 100 percent true...'You learn to draw by drawing". I suppose that there are artists that are born with a gift of drawing prowess, but that certainly was not my experience. I have gotten to whatever place I'm at with drawing (still far from where I'd like to be) by pure stubborn manual labor. I draw, I read art books, I practice, I draw, I watch tutorials online, I take classes and oh yeah did I mention that I draw???
Even with the explosion of information available online I for one still feel that there is no better help for artists than some really good books. I collect folders full of content from the web myself, but a lot of it never gets looked at again, but books can be open right next to you at the drawing board or breakfast table to give you some insight into what you are doing.
In my opinion, there is no better guide to good solid drawing than the Andrew Loomis books, period. Figure Drawing for all it's Worth and Drawing the Head and Hands are back in print after many years and every artist should have them on their shelves. I was happy to see a couple of Loomis' books on the shelves of Norman Rockwell's studio when I visited a while back, that should tell you something about the level of insight an artist of any level may glean from these volumes.
Another book that I pass along to beginning artist is Drawing the Head and Figure, but Jack Hamm. This book is so good that it has been kept in print in an affordable paperback edition for decades. I am always happy to see it at Barnes and Noble and major book stores holding it's own against the sea of terrible 'how to draw whatever" books that jam the shelves.
So while there may be no short cut to better drawing, there is in fact a lot of helpful info out there to keep you on track.

Thanks Steve

While the focus of this blog is decidedly 'non-digital' I couldn't let the passing of Steve Jobs go by without send out a heartfelt Thank You to him and the universe.
I am no techie, but his creativity and vision have made my life a better place. I use a Mac for most of my professional work, I love Pixar movies and I seldom draw out in the world without my ipod keeping me company.
Imagining a life as big as his that has touched so many lives for the better is really humbling.
Thanks man.

I've got a lot of these

Here's some more....

Charcoal is my new thing

Not much in the way of painting going on here lately, but I have been doing a lot of drawing in charcoal. I like it because it's new to me, messy and fun.

greenish profile

Another Golden's Open acrylics piece, 6"x8" canvas mounted onto 1/8" masonite. Since I only bought a handful of tubes to try out these paints, I am working with a limited palette. White,black,red,yellow ochre,blue.

Pixie hair girl

While I am a big fan of long hair on women, even I have to admit that sometimes shorter is better...it's rare, but that chick from Northern Exposure and Haley Berry immediately come to mind ;)
6x8" quick painting done with Golden's Open Acrylic paints.

Beauty is enough

Scott Burdick is a fantastic painter and he recently gave a talk about Beauty vs. Modern Art that is well worth you time to watch. I only intended to take a peek but ended up watching the whole thing. Tilting at windmills maybe, but watching this made me feel good.

Headhunting sketchbook for sale

It's been ages since I posted any paintings here, but I have been drawing in my pocket Moleskine sketchbook. In fact, I've printed up a small facsimile style book of some of my on the spot cafe sketches called "Headhunting". I wanted the book to look as much like my pocket sketchbook as possible so it's got the rounded corners, the cream color paper and I even managed to capture some of the ghosting/bleed through I get from drawing in ink on both sides of the paper. Book measures 3.75"x5.25" with 32 pages, black card stock cover with white belly band title strip.
Price is $5 plus $2 shipping within the US, if you are overseas, drop me a line first and I will get you a shipping rate.
Thanks

Golden Girl

Here's another girl done with the Golden's Open Acrylics. I did these on canvas board. I had a big piece that I knew I would never use so I cut it into smaller pieces to use for these little heads.

Golden's Open Acrylics

I've always been an acrylic painter. Oh, I've used everything else, but I always come back to acrylics. But I also can't resist trying out new products so I bought several tubes of the new "Open" acrylics by Goldens. "OPEN" refers to how long chemicals will remain workable before they set up, in this case the paint. A lot of people gripe about the fact that acrylics dry too fast so these are the paints to shut those people up!
These handle much more like oils than they do like acrylics, in fact they handle more like oils than the water based oil paints I've tried in the past.
I paint pretty thin, so this was dry to the touch the following morning, but since I seldom spend more than a couple of hours on these types of quick paintings I was working on wet paint the whole time.I suppose if you were an oil painter that worked really thickly , these would be a godsend since they'd try in days rather than weeks!
Often when I try out new supplies I'm like meh! But I like these and I'm going to play with them for a while.

Return of the Flapper

This post from back in 2006 was getting a lot of spam for some reason, so I deleted it and since I still like her, I thought I'd repost her;)

Charcoal is your friend

I've been playing around with charcoal lately, I'd never really used it much before. I'm using fat sticks so I can't get too tight with the details. I actually made the sticks in the fireplace after seeing a demo online...I'm always up for making stuff! Drawing with charcoal on cheap newsprint paper is fun and fast and messy and it's also closer to painting that drawing with a pencil point. These are all under 5 minute sketches.

Superhero watercolor girls

I know that I haven't been posting regularly, but that doesn't mean that I haven't been churning things out....just not much time for acrylic paintings recently. Here are a bunch of watercolor pieces I did recently though. I wanted to keep the colors as simple flat tones and avoid getting into rendering things too much. All 9x12 ink and watercolor on watercolor pad paper.

watercolor head

Still playing around with watercolor heads...

Moleskine sketches are better than nothing!

It's been a while since I posted here so I thought I should throw up something. The truth is that I am making some kind of art all day, everyday, I just don't do personal paintings on a regular basis. I do however carry my moleskine pocket sketchbook and do quickie sketches like these often enough to fill up a couple of books a year. Here's a random bunch in no particular order or reason;)

Eskimo kiss

I like polar bears and I like girls so that's really all there is to this one. While Philip Pullman's The Golden Compass is possibly my all time favorite fantasy series this has nothing to do with that. Yeah,I've done a bunch of sketches in my sketchbook over the years for Lyra and Yorick paintings but have yet to actually take the time to do one...someday!
I guess this is the second in my series of "nose touching" paintings...the first being that duck/horse one ;)

Big hair girl!

Lot's of hair this time. Since most of my favorite painters are very bold and brushy, I'm trying to be a bit braver with brushstrokes etc. I have a tendency to srub and try to blend things out rather than just putting down a stroke and leaving it alone. I was definitely keeping that in my head on this one.
This was done on a sheet of canvas stock that I was told was made for color copiers, it's an actual sheet of canvas not just some paper with an embossed weave pattern stamped into it....I like it!

Tiger hat girl!

It's been a while but here's a new girl. I've been working on a lot of very technical drawing stuff lately so the other night when I got home I was definitely in need of some "real art" therapy. Yeah, I needed that ;)

Cafe haunting and sketching

Whenever I don't have paintings to show, I like to fall back on the good ol' Moleskine sketchbook drawings. I do a lot of these while I'm grabbing a snack at cafes/airports etc. I used to go to a local figure drawing session but kind of fell out of the habit and so these 'people' drawings fill that need of drawing folks from life. Drawn directly in ink with a Japanese brush pen marker in the small Moleskine plain paper book (not the moleskine "sketchbook").