She's one of my favorite peeps, so she was easy to paint.

This is an acrylic portrait (9" x 11"), based on a lousy cellphone photo, of the daughter of a friend. It was done as a Yule gift for my friend, with the stipulation that her daughter doesn't get to run off with it to college.

This is the first 100% acrylic piece I've done in over six years, without crutching on colored pencils to deal with the face. Go me... Getting a little more confident now that I know much more about underpainting and sealing my detailed preliminary drawings under the paint. The color & patterning used was *much* looser than I am wont; I kinda liked the freedom afforded by having to make up background, due to the lack in the photo. This was really fun; it's inspired me to do more painting.

Splendid Solstice and Joyous Yuletide greetings!

I did the original pen & ink for this for a holiday card many years ago and colored the scan in Photoshop. Happy Holidays to all - and may the coming year be far better than the last for everyone!

Guilty as charged.

Gilmoure recently mentioned the Space Whale trope in his Tumblir blog, as noted on TV Tropes. (Heaven help the budding television (or comic or anime) writer, trying to avoid the land mines here.)

Anyway, as noted in the entry:

"Somehow, at some point (probably in the 1970s), the ideas of space and whales became permanently interwoven in the collective unconscious. Why? No one really knows, but here is some wild speculation:"

I'll own up to my own contribution to this; I give you my vintage Space Whale, done at the age of 17 in my freshman year at the University of Florida, c. 1978. (11" x 17"; done originally in "0" Rapidograph on Strathmore 3-ply bristol, as I recall, though this is a scan of a xerox of a stat.) For the record, no drugs were involved. TV Tropes implies there should be.

Yes, my professors absolutely hated this one.

"Steamed Grouper" - State #1

A close one! I didn't know I had left my burnishing tool at the Art Center until I rummaged around for it in my tool box this week. It's the one I use mainly as a sort of steel pen to make thick & thin lines in my etchings; essential. The Center's press closed today until January 11th so I had to finish scribing it when I got in this morning and get it etched in the tank - leaving *just* enough time for one print.

This is State 1; not much more to do but some burnishing of random dings and smoothing out the leftover power grinder marks on the beveled edges.

"Steamed Grouper"

I finished the sketch for the companion piece to the "Laser Guided Snook" etching yesterday. (See earlier post below.) I should be able to transfer this to a copper plate and start drawing into the hard-ground this weekend. It'll also be about 5"x3" when completed.

Hey, what a coincidence! I'm having sushi tonight...

"Catboat" is progressing.

I pulled three of these prints on Tuesday morning. "Catboat" is a three-color linoleum block print, printed in oil-based inks on the DFAC press on white Rives BFK paper. The companion piece shown is last year's "Melonseed Skiff", also a three-color block print. (My sailboat, Goshawk, is a 14' Crawford Melonseed skiff and I had a little Cape Cod catboat when I was a kid, so these are near and dear to my heart.) These are done in a period Arts & Crafts style; nautical themes generally aren't done in new A&C art as opposed to the usual gingko leaves and pine cones. I'm going to troll these around some A&C venues to see if there's any interest.

I'm not entirely happy with the ink application however; I'll pull the edition with a lot more extender in the ink to increase transparency and luminosity in the water and also close to the horizon in the sky. I also think I'll cave in and carve out a little more of that cloud on the bottom right to eliminate a strong diagonal that emerged with the contrasting background. But I'm generally happy with how it's coming along.

My first show!

I'm pretty excited! it's a small show shared with two other artists, printmaker Elizabeth Coachman and photographer Don Moyer at the Mahaffey Theater/Progress Energy Center For The Arts in St. Petersburg, FL: "Through the [Viewfinder] of the Mind". 


I just have four pieces in it: the two sailboat block prints "Melonseed" and "Catboat" (see above) and two earlier hand-colored etchings, "Burrowing Owl (With Coreopsis)" and "Eastern Screech Owl (with Scarlet Sage)", which can be seen on my website. 


The show was hung by November 16th, 2009 and continues through January 31st, 2010 but the "meet the artists" opening will be 5:30pm-7:30pm on Wednesday evening, January 27th, 2010. Please come by if you can!

"Aviatrix" - 5th and final state.

I managed to pull exactly two prints of this etching before a local SF convention art show, where I sold the best artist's proof. My art center's etching press closed for a 2-week fall break immediately afterward, and then I left for IlluxCon in Pennsylvania for a week, taking the only other print to show to some friends up there. Finally, I got back to printing this piece over the Thanksgiving holiday. Since the first two, I've done some minor clean-up on the edges and have a better feel for inking this one. I'm now pulling an edition. Here's "Aviatrix", a 5"x7" steampunk-inspired piece. I'll be putting this one in a custom Arts & Crafts frame for the S+M member show in March but must hunt down some cream or buff Rives BFK paper for the rest of the edition, rather than white. Cream paper and dark brown ink shows this piece off best.

"Laser-Guided Snook"

My latest copper-plate etching, soon to be joined by "Steamed Grouper". The print is in umber brown ink on Rives BFK paper, approx. 3"x5". I'm putting together an Etsy shop for my smaller prints and projects right now; the 'Punk Fish will be listed on it for sale.

New blog, new block print.

It's about time I started this; I tend to randomly post artwork for no rhyme or reason on emails to friends or on my other journal. It's about time I got serious about a sketch journal for a place to upload new stuff. I'm busy with printmaking (etching and linocut block prints), some children's book concept work and whatever else strikes my fancy. Since this is public, I hope to use it as a device and incentive to create something new most days, even just a thumbnail. I may not post for days at a time, or (let's face it...) even weeks, but I'll be hyper-aware that there's a blog out there needing content all the time, so I'm hoping this will help spur personal daily productivity.

To that end, here's a small linocut of a raven (about 6") that was inspired by a friend's corvid-themed Halloween party. I started it the eve before. This is the 4th state, pulled on Tuesday morning.