the finished product...maybe

Here is the finished painting for the Bike to Work Week poster. Maybe. I might go back and fidget with it.

different painting

Here's a painting I started yesterday while I was waiting for the Bike to Work poster painting to dry a bit.

Entropy

I have a kind of random, slightly haphazard method of creating a painting. I try to plan ahead, but I always think of things I want to try along the way, and the painting may go through several incarnations on its way to the finished product. Some people call this approach 'organic'. I call it chaotic. And also a hell of a lot of fun.

bike poster...continued

Three hours

one hour

The BTWW poster painting, one hour into the painting process

20 minutes

Here's the BTWW poster painting, twenty minutes into the painting process.

Tabula rasa

The blank canvas for the Bike to Work Week poster. I carried this canvas home from the art store on my bike yesterday. In the rain.

'Bike to Work Week' sketch

Here is the sketch for the painting I am doing for this year's 'Bike to Work Week' poster

Bike to Work Week!

The 'Bike to Work Week' banner on the Wisconsin Bike Federation's home page features a painting of a bike I did last summer.

http://www.bfw.org/

I am currently in the middle of designing an image for this year's poster for 'Bike to Work Week'. I will document the evolution of this painting and post updates. In the mean time...ride your bike!

Somewhere near 145th Street

So this is another painting I did from a photo I took while I was in New York. I was slightly lost when I took this photo (actually, I was slightly lost for my entire trip to New York). I know I was somewhere near 145th Street. I was supposed to be meeting my family for dinner, which I did, eventually, but not before spending a great deal of time trying to figure out where the hell I was.

Orange Building

Okay, I realize that "Orange Building" is a very uninspired title for a post. Please forgive me. I hope you like the painting better than my unimaginative name for it.

Oh yeah, and this building is in New York somewhere near Chelsea, I think. My crappy sense of direction gets crappier when I'm traveling.

dumpster art

While I was in New York I saw a lot of art. Everywhere. Without even going into a museum or a gallery. This is my rendition of some stickers/graffiti/writing I saw on a dumpster. I think the real thing was better

Brooklyn Billboard

This is a painting I did from a photo I took of billboard I was when I was in New York. Brooklyn, to be precise.

(another) self portrait

This is a painting I did of my self while I was contemplating my life in it's current state. After I finished the painting I dropped it face down on the dirty floor. That seems very appropriate.

Night Painting

This is a painting I did from a picture I took of the UW Hospital at night. Cheating? Maybe...but it's too ^%&-ing cold to stand still outside at night and do a painting, even a short one.

I like how darkness simplifies things and adds a layer of abstration to the image. The color is very limited compared to day, and it goes without saying that there are few value details. I like shape of the smoke against the dark sky in this painting.

New York!

This past weekend I went to New York to see my brother's senior viola recital, which was fabulous. I *did* kinda want to strangle the person who kept clapping DURING the music, but that's another whole story that has nothing to do with painting, so I won't talk about it here.

I fucking LOVE New York. The day after my brother's recital I decided to take a walking tour of Manhatten. I ended up walking 250 blocks and I woke up the next morning with shin splints. Shin splints!!! I thought I was in shape from riding my bike every day, but apparently I'm well on my way to geriatric decrepitude.

I didn't bring my paints to New York (it was such a short trip), but I did do some sketches.

The drawing accompanying this post is a drawing I did while standing on a street corner. I think my stubborn refusal to move for five minutes annoyed the people who were trying to use the sidewalk for walking. Well...THEY annoyed ME by not standing still and not posing for my drawing.

Day...?

Sorry for being AWOL. But I have good excuses! My computer's been acting up and my camera is on the fritz. The computer has now agreed to cooperate for the time being and I'm using a borrowed camera. And even though I haven't been posting I've still been doing some painting.

Day Five

This is a creepy styrofoam head wearing my big ass air traffic controller-esque headphones. It was fun to paint. It was also challenging to try to find colors in the white objects (both the styrofoam head and the headphones are white) and paint them.

Day Four

This is, as I hope you can tell, a painting of a beer bottle and a beer can. In other words, pure class. I also imbibed some "pure class" immediately before starting this painting.

Anyway...the bottle is Ale Asylum Ambergeddon and the can is Pabst Blue Ribbon. Both Wisconsin beers. And even though the PBR has that big honkin' blue ribbon award touting it's great taste and all-around beer-ness, I have to say that the Ambergeddon comes out on top. Waaay on top. And yes I *know* that PBR is the cool cheap beer that automatically endows the drinker with hipster cred, but I stand by my judgement.

Regarding the painting...I think I got too hung up on the color changes and reflections in the bottle and can, especially in the can. Damn you, PBR!

Cheers!

Day Three

Ok. So I realize this post is a day late. I also realize the image above is not a painting. But it's what I spent all last night doing. So I'm counting it as my painting for the day ("the day" being yesterday).

It is a poster/announcement for my brother's senior recital on 1/29 in NY at the Juilliard School. I'm going!! And I'm very very excited about going! I had fun designing/experimenting/making this poster. I feel semi-okay about the way it turned out. Why did I choose a skull for the centerpiece? If you have to ask "why a skull" you will never understand. Skulls are just cool. Period.

I took my drawing to FedEx/Kinko's this evening to make copies and ship them off to my brother. At the very last minute, just before I was going to seal the envelope, I spotted a typo. Grrrrrr!!!!!!! I had to redo it and re-envelope it before the FedEx guy made the last pickup for the day. Very frustrating.

Day Two

My thoughts on this painting: Gaaaaahhh!

Okay, so I got a wee bit frustrated. I found a yellow rubber glove and thought it would be fun to paint. Fun, ha! I spent about an hour on it.

I think I need to focus on finding more definite boudaries between light and shadow. I am also trying to paint with a lot of color. The painting itself is more colorful than the photo displayed here. My crappy camera is a convenient scapegoat.

I think tomorrow I might do a black and white painting. It is a good exercise because it forces the painter (in this case, me!) to distinguish between color and value, which is actually a fairly tricky thing to do.

Day One

I'm starting this blog to make myself paint.

I graduated from art school a few years ago. Since then I have gradually painted less and less. And now I barely paint at all. I let everything else in my life come first. Sad. But no more!

I will paint every single day (if at all possible) for at least an hour. I will document the products of my labors with my dying camera and post the images, with my commentary, on this blog. With luck, the paintings will get better as time progresses.

I don't know if anyone besides myself will follow this blog, but I'll pretend people are following it. For motivation's sake.

Today I painted my face for about an hour. Kind of a masochistic thing to do after not having painted for a while.