Odd Fellow Meeting

"A work of art is a corner of creation seen through a temperament." ~ Emilé Zola

So tonight is a meeting of the Independent Order of OddFellows here in beautiful Honolulu, Hawaii... As with any meeting in paradise, I took the opportunity to make a few drawings. Armed with a pair of ball point pens I began to sketch. Here are the products.

Erica #2

"Both body and earth are sacred." ~ Mathew Fox

So this was a drawing of Erica. This for a while was one of the opening drawings in my portfolio. I have since changed it. There is a real crispness to this drawing that I like.

Sumi Landscape

"The possession of knowledge does not kill the sense of wonder and mystery. There is always more mystery." ~ Anais Nin

So, this is a Sumi landscape, the art style is a tribute to my Japanese heritage. I sort of based this picture on the image of a wall scroll in my room.

Bamboo #1

So getting in touch with the Asian part of me.

In high school I took a few classes in Sumi painting it is difficult and takes an extremely high degree of skill to make thing look perfectly. There are just so many things that could go wrong on these. So after filling the house with these paintings. I have a few that were very good. Here is one.

The stamp at the bottom is a katakana name stamp from 8th grade we made from an eraser. heh

Drawing Class Portraits

SO here are 3 quick portraits from a drawing class I took. The first is Jonathan Busse one of the instructors at WCC. I posted a link to some of his works. A lot of landscapes and watercolors, very neat stuff. The bottom two were two students at WCC.

Religious Icons

"It is certain that if you would have the whole secret of a people, you must enter into the intimacy of their religion." ~ Edgar Quinet

So being Catholic, I have been fascinated by religious images for most of my life. Their stylized look at the divine is kind of quaint and interesting. There is a sacred symmetry and formality to it all. So I have attempted to create prints of my own religious icons.

On the recommendation of a fellow printer, I decided to do a multiple press series on this one. Each of the above prints is three prints of each separate color. With the second being the second ghost print of the image. So for each color I made the print, printed the first one then went on to make a second print. I specifically avoided the color black, to avoid it dominating the image.

The image below is an angel I tried to make in the same iconic style. It is also three consecutive prints with each adding a color. The red and blue dominate this print a little, but overall it's pretty neat:

My Sketchbook 03/10 - 07/10

"Life is not a support system for art. It is the other way around." ~ Stephen King

So here is some material from one of my more recent sketch books. It is actually kind of an amazing one, with a lot of satisfying drawings in it. I obviously had a pen and ink crave. I also took some serious time to go to my two favorite drawing places, Starbucks and Borders.

It's very clear I was attempting to make completed drawings with background and setting taken into account for most of these. I also really was playing with what I could do with pen and ink. I think the end results are pretty impressive.

Daniel

"All art is communication of the artist’s ideas, sounds, thoughts."
~ Lionel Hampton

So this is Daniel, he was a model and a fellow student during my undergraduate program.

This drawing actually won me an award from a local art studio. Best in Drawing for the Community College Art Exhibition.

Erica #1 - Truth Beauty

"Beauty is truth, truth beauty, that is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."
~ John Keats

This is one of the more regular models over at WCC, Erica. I have been going through my sketch books and have found quite a few drawings of her. This drawing was in the juried "College Art" show.

Luck Bamboo #4

"Imagination has always had powers of resurrection that no science can match." ~ Ingrid Bengis

I think this is my favorite of this series.

I decided to focus on the bamboo in this last print really defining the stalk and the leaves carefully, This was also the last in the series on the plate, so the yellow ink I layered out over the plate let the colors from the previous prints come through. This created such a neat effect with the green and purple coming through as I made the image.

I added the smoky after image on the left part of the print with color pencil. Playing with the textures of the monotype. I did also clean the upper portion with watercolor in a effort to focus the subject a little more.