My older brother Mike is in his own world. I’ve been unsuccessful in connecting with him in a meaningful way. Mike’s resting mode frequently included a characteristic hand position. The one depicted below seems to indicate attentiveness.
My brother Mike* would frequently hit himself on the head and chest and sometimes be would bite his hand very hard. It could be that he was frustrated but one time, a doctor suggested that Mike had a form of Tourette’s Syndrome. She thought that Mike’s behavior was merely a complex motor tick, the implication […]
I wanted to get this one right, so I sketched first with pencil. I inked over the lines that made sense and used charcoal to mark the shadows. Finally, I used watercolors to lightly tint the portrait. Get better soon, Mick!
My father loved music, as I mentioned yesterday. He instilled this in my younger brother Dave, and me. Dave plays piano for a living. These days, he is getting back to his roots, playing for himself. Practicing, practicing, practicing. The study below originated as a pen and ink study. I have a pen nib that […]
It is nespoli time again in our back yard. Last year I devoted several sessions to them (Nespoli, Preliminary Sketch Abstract Nespoli, Abstract Nespoli). Today I began with charcoal to differentiate the dark areas from the light. The background in the reference photograph was dark, dappled with light spots. I wanted to register the progression of brightness in the […]
I started by making curves with my charcoal stick. I overlaid the darkest regions with sepia ink and lightened other areas with titanium white. Once again I had nothing in mind as I drew my curves. I do see arrows of differing calibers, and even some tail feathers.
Another experiment mixing white and black with my pigments. The yellow I used was almost earth tone in hue. The first red color laid down was opera rose, which I glazed with Sennelier red, a very saturated, transparent color. Some of the bright rose color shows through a bit. I darkened the leading edges of the […]
I started on the upper left side of the grid from my other post today (see The Grid), and numbered each in a counter-clockwise direction, spiraling into the center. Below is the first painting in this series of eleven. Before dis-assembling the grid, I rubbed the entire assembly with charcoal to accentuate the high points […]
In the yellow abstract I did today (see Forward Progress), the first yellow wash was not absorbed by the lines I scratched into the surface of the paper. In my study below, I blotched watercolor onto paper that was already scored, and found the same result: the scratches did not soak up the pigments. To […]
I posted another square watercolor today (see Pen and Ink and Color). I began the square below also with a free-form outline. Instead of pencil, I used a soft charcoal stick. I had the term ‘biomorphic’ somewhere in my head (probably from reading about some of Willem de Kooning’s works). I did not choose my […]
