Revelation

It's startling when something you have been doing almost literally your entire life suddenly clicks into place as something you could do for...well, almost literally your entire life. I have been drawing and painting for going on nearly 4 decades now. Since I was a wee lad in the Georgia countryside looking for my own way to escape what I saw as a boring existence (and have since learned to heartily embrace) I have used art as a means of expression and personal escape.

As a youth I did not have immediate access to oils and other fine art media and even when I did, I had no one to train me in their usage. I was extremely intimidated by these tools and it wasn't until college that I got my first true look at most of them. So what I was left with was pencil and pen. I never looked at color as much as I looked at the linear aspects of drawing. I have, of course, since learned to appreciate and even revel in my appreciation of color. But I still first look at those linear aspects that formed so much of my early views of drawing and composition.

Since I have started these pen and ink watercolors, it is as if some sort of mental barrier has been broken down for me. This method allows me the fine tuning I can achieve with pen and ink and the coloring that I later learned a love for. With the oils and other painting mediums I have to force myself to allow the details to not take over. I am not a "realism" painter. But with the pens I can achieve much more the look I am searching for.

First up, a cardinal.



Next up, an elephant. I have painted this big fella a few times now. On a trip to Africa many years ago, this was the first elephant we saw after MANY days of looking. I still like painting the old tusker's portrait...



I did both of these as tests for the new style. Both of them are only 4"x6" watercolor sheets. Let me know what you think!

Cowboy Up!

One cowboy painting hot off the press...er...easel...okay fine, hot off the drafting table. Happy now?

I really do hate the title saying. "Cowboy up." It's a saying popularized by people who are not actually cowboys and wanted a new, nifty way to tell someone to toughen up. I use it as diner lingo. "One cowboy up, hold the pistols and heavy on the chaps!" See? I have now introduced a fun new oeuvre into the world of the restaurateur. I fully expect to be compensated when this new chain of Old West diners sweeps the nation by storm.

ANYHOO...back to the painting. I have painted this fellow before. And done pen and inks of him. And I'm pretty sure he's in a few sketchbooks now that I think about it. I just really liked that pose. Nothing but the confidence of the young and the swagger of a cowboy all condensed into one seated pose on a gate.



Checking Out the Competition ink and watercolor, 8x10 (on a 9x12 sheet of watercolor paper) $150

Hey everybody, it's the "Thank You Chicken"!

I know it's a rooster. But yet again, I like the way "Thank You Chicken" sounds. Again, only because it makes me laugh. Anyways, I just finished my first official pen and ink/watercolor! Since my friend Denise (Font Queen) was ever so generous as to donate a set of Rapidographs to me, I felt that she should have a thank you gift for such a spectacular present to Paintmonkey Studios. She had told me of a liking she and her son had for chicken decor and she had liked the one that was the first ever prize for the Paintmonkey Studios Facebook challenge. (More on the second challenge coming soon!)

So I decided that I would combine the two things and create her a chicken with the new pen set and splash on some watercolor to finish the image. So here is my thank you gift for a brilliant new medium for me.



Angry little sucker, isn't he? Roosters just always look angry.

Some computer stuff isn't ALL bad...

So I was trying to enter a contest where you design the next character for a movie/comic book sequel. I won't name names, but it's out now and it involves body parts and kicking. Anyways, I didn't read the fine print in time and realized too late that I was too late to enter the contest (I would have felt bad but the silly thing had ended even before I started working on the character).

But I felt I would share it SOMEWHERE and suddenly it occurred to me "hey dummy, you have an art blog". Ta-da!

I did the basics in my usual format, ink on bristol board. But I noticed everyone else had color entries (again, BEFORE I realized the contest was over). Granted, they had done theirs on the website and it only involved uploading photos and using basic tools to put costume features that already existed over the photos. So I figured I needed to do something to jazz mine up. Since I had done it on bristol board, I knew from my horse drawing that watercolor doesn't work great on bristol board. Warps it nicely. So I thought outside my normal realms...

My brother had just recently acquired some gigantic package of Photoshop and related software. So I emailed it to him to see what could be done. He was doing some coloring with it, but I knew what I wanted so I took the opportunity to go up there and see what these computers could do.

Here is the finished product:



My brother had gotten the basics out of the way for me and then gave me a slight tutorial on how this stuff works. I think for my first time with computer coloring, it's not TOO hideous. It may work for some things I do in the future but I think I'll stick with my antiquated methods for most of my work.

Oh and by the way...for those of you who think I have lost my mind as far as what constitutes a superhero, I have not. I based this character on Ignatius J. Reilly, the protagonist from John Kennedy Toole's masterpiece, A Confederacy of Dunces. I thought a superhero based on one of the most obnoxious characters in literature was just funny.

Blech! (Maybe...)

I finished my test drawing of the horse. I LOVE my new pen set. I am in the mood to only use these right now. But I do still love color so I got it in my head to keep on experimenting on the horse. First the finished pen drawing...



Then I thought "why not add color to the horse". Why not, indeed? So what if you haven't used watercolor in close to twenty years? So what if you weren't that good with it to begin with? WHY NOT?



Okay, well it's probably not as bad as I first thought looking at it, but it's not great. And it's certainly nowhere NEAR the quality I want to have for these types of drawings. I think I like where this is going so I'll keep practicing and we'll see what happens. (On a professional note: watercolor does NOT work well on bristol board. Lots of warping going on. But I figured that would happen.)

Back to drawing board...literally.

A Couple of New Things

Not too much today, but I wanted to put up SOMETHING. I've gotten a couple of new cartoons done. I'm not really in the mood to go all political blogg-ey, so I'll let them do the talking.

I dislike re-writing history...especially since there is no one conquered yet.



Next up, the obvious answer to everything in the United States today.



And now I just wanted to update on my Rapidograph testing...(outside of the work done on the cartoons, that is). I AM in fact, continuing to work on the horse drawing. It's just taking a bit longer since I've been trying to get the cartoons done. So, here is the next progression of horse pen and ink...



...seriously, I am LOVING my new scanner.

Irritation and Jubilation

I have a lot going on this week. The cartoons are coming as fast as I can get them down. I am perpetually irritated though. One of the unfortunate side effects of paying attention. But the jubilation comes from having a lot of new tools that REALLY make this whole process a lot easier.

My friend Denise (heretofore referred to as the Font Queen or FQ for those in the know) had an extra set of Koh-I-Noor Rapidograph pens that she was gracious enough to allow me to have. These things absolutely rock! They make lettering a MUCH less ungainly task and that while I still don't LIKE it, at least I don't break out into a sweat thinking about it.

This one was done last night after talking to my cousin through Facebook. She is a teacher and had just found out that her county was making cuts to a reading program that she considers very important. And that was enough for me. Getting angry about these things is tricky though. Really the only thing you want to do is tie the people responsible to a chair and just scream at them and call them obscene names all night. And while funny to me, it doesn't really lend itself to a fun graphic joke (okay, again, funny to ME). So while as a person you may be HUGELY irritated by something you have to find a (hopefully) productive and (even more hopefully) humorous way to get your point across. Here's what I came up with last night:



A better way of expressing my displeasure about this topic than just screaming mindless insults. And just as a side note, the writing on the signs was REALLY hard to come up with. This is because I have awesome parents, and family, and teachers who TAUGHT ME TO READ! Unfortunately for me, this makes purposefully writing things wrong extremely difficult. Oh well. So thank you to everyone who ever encouraged or inspired me to read!

And just so people don't think I've gone completely fine art-free, I did get started on this before my dander got riled up.



The other tool that is making life easier is my new scanner. Taking photos of oil paintings works pretty well, but photographing pen and ink is a GIANT pain in the keister. All in all life is pretty good on the art front.