Forever Flamenco


To round out my Sunday, I head over to the Fountain Theatre, for Forever Flamenco. The first sketch is of the cafe at the theatre. Next I did one of José Tanaka playing guitar, Richard Chavez dancing, two of Lakshmi Basile dancing and finally one of Rosa Maria Prats singing. I didn't get to draw Luis Pena, but he too was amazing. It was all over so quick. Very energetic and fun. There was so much expression. Not a bad way to prepare for the next grueling work week.

Featured Artist: Jorge Martinez

I wanted to feature a piece by my extremely talented friend, Jorge Martinez. We actually met at a show at the Temple Bar a couple of years ago, and I saw him again at a show there last night. I did a few sketches, which I'll post after this, but he did one too. I was going to post that, but he sent me this other piece to put up instead. He does amazing things with cut paper, markers etc. I've been trying for a long time to get him to put his work out there. He is an amazing talent and this is the smallest taste of his work. Please email him and encourage him to setup a presense on the web.

Laguna Beach


The week just passed my by again. Last Sunday I went to Laguna Beach, checked out galleries and tried to paint a little, but mostly just sat on some rocks and stared out into the ocean. That place is like a little piece of paradise.
Here are my two favorite galleries there:
Laguna Fine Art (have a look at the amazing Dali etchings).
Richard Macdonald (beautiful sculptures and an amazing sculpture garden in the back).

Colored Ink and Watercolor



I'll stop saying work is nuts...because it is and will be...but I did these today. The colored inks and acrylic ink are really fun to work with. With black ink I have to be careful not to bleed too much or I lose too much of the image. With these colored inks, you get all kinds of interesting colors and textures from ink mixing with watercolors.

Work Much. Fun Little



Working a lot lately...very tired, but it was fun to squeeze in this life drawing session. Just playing some more with ink. The three poses in the second image and the three poses in the last image were all 1 minute poses. The rest were 3 and 5 minutes. Off to bed...

Wednesday Figure Drawing


This week I tried out some new art supplies. My friend Cholki suggested I try different line widths a while back, so I picked up some dipping pens with various nib widths. It's a little tricky changing tools when you're doing very quick sketches, but for this session I used one thick and one medium nib with red and black waterproof ink. It completely changes the way you think about adding color with red line versus black. It'll take some practice to get more out of it.

Thank You

I Have a Dream

"But there is something that I must say to my people, who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice: In the process of gaining our rightful place, we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again, we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force."

Beyond Vietnam

"This I believe to be the privilege and the burden of all of us who deem ourselves bound by allegiances and loyalties which are broader and deeper than nationalism and which go beyond our nation's self-defined goals and positions. We are called to speak for the weak, for the voiceless, for the victims of our nation and for those it calls "enemy," for no document from human hands can make these humans any less our brothers."

Thank you.

Wednesday Life Drawing


Here are this weeks life drawings. Being able to spend a couple of hours in the middle of the day doing these is great. It's just enough time to warm up and start getting somewhere. It gets tricky to find space for these to dry as I'm cranking them out during these sessions. I like laying them all out on the floor at night and choosing the best ones to post. I culled about half of what I painted today, which is pretty good and even the stuff I cull keeps getting a little better each time.

Santa Monica Tree

I spent most of the day out in Santa Monica, wandering about, enjoying the weather to try and get away from working in front of the computer. I ran into my pal D'Lo who was wandering about as I painted this tree. Later I picked up some more inspirational Ralph Steadman books and visited my pal Gary.

I could have done so much more with this one if I hadn't painted in the darker values on the second layer of branches...oh well. I tried to use some blue and red to get that sense of depth back, but it would work better if it wasn't as dark. Those trees are amazing!

Watercolor Faces



Here are some more practice faces. This time, some are from photoes of Afghan refugees (taken from the internet) and others are from photoes I took in Pakistan in 2005. These are drawn straight in ink and then painted.

Peshawari Faces



So, I'm back to working on faces again. Here are a few Peshawari faces from some great photoes I found on flickr. I prefer to work from life, but capturing a likeness is going to require some stillness. See if you can figure out who's who. These are all really quick and straight pen sketches. I want to bring more looseness into faces while still capturing the essense of the person I am drawing.