Dust Art

Here's something I never really thought of: Dust Art. The idea is to draw or paint detailed pictures in that film of dust that coats the back window of cars after a drive down a dusty road. To me it looks a lot like working with scratchboard.

Recently I was introduced to dust art through a post on Smallpax by Michaela Lawless (and we're not going to get into how I wish so hard that my last name was 'Lawless' -Ben Lawless... oh man). Anyway, she posted this sock-off-knocking picture of her own dust art:



Good show, Lawless!

Blog Rating

Blog Rating thanks to Dean, whose blog is also rated G. My pal Steak has a blog and it got a rating of PG-13 based on the following words (which I'll write with dashes so that I don't lose my own rating): k-i-L-L (10 times), c-r-a-p (2 times), h-u-r-t (one time). Hey Steak! Time to wash out your keyboard with soap!

In other news: I'm on vacation in this week! It's the funtimes.

Lots More Links

I've been meaning to make a drawing based on this great old photo from the old Bureau of Paranormal Research and Defense files (okay, okay, a book from the Warren Memorial Library). Unfortunately, when you're me, things keep coming up -like the almost constant requests from Ryan Corregan that I post a link to his blog.

In other news...

One Hundred Years Ago, three young pirate lads set sail together on the seas of uncertainty, and with the winds of fortune they began to make their way to the shores of manhood.



This past weekend the pirate lads were reunited, now full-grown and scarred by many a battle. Yes, the Virginia Renaissance Faire was a fun time for all (but most fun for those who carried the trusty bumboo.

Anatomy Part 3

Holy moley it's Monday!

Last week we continued learning about the arm at the weekly "Adventures in Anatomy" drawing group. The following unfinished drawing is from one of th best artistic anatomy books I've come across: Atlas of Human Anatomy for the Artist by Stephen Rogers Peck.



After book work we moved on to sketching from a live model. I tended to focus on the whole upper body this time. Here are a couple of the nicer looking sketches:



The other drawing excersize I've started is a charcoal portrait of Anna. I'll be lucky if I can work on it for 20 minutes everyo other day. I started by trying to work with Angelica. As you can imagine, I learned within a few minutes that a 4-year-old model is almost impossible to work with. You're more likely to get a waterfall to hold still. In the end I just took a couple of nice pictures of her:

SIDEBAR!

Thanks to my fine parents, I've added a small 's' to my sidebar information so that "playing my tin whistle" becomes "playing my tin whistles." Two weeks ago my parents came out to our house for a weekend visit. It was a fun time for all of us, but I was particularly excited because they brought with them a new low d tin whistle (the larger whistle in the picture above).

Now I can play slow, sad tunes and haunting melodies that drift through the night or somesuch.

I'm also ading a list of links. A friend of mine was upset, horrified even, that did not have a link to my wife's blog. Well, at least this is one problem in this sad world that I can actually do something about.

Anatomy Part 2

A few more drawings, from life, focussing on the arm:





Leonardo da Vinci wrote that the muscles in the body resemble porpoises all diving around one another. It's a colorful image, but the more I draw and look at muscles the more I start to understand how appropriate the analogy is.

Anatomy Part 1

I was able to bring a big, fat copy of Grey's Anatomy home from the library the other day. With the help of this book I'm taking the first steps in a sort of self-study course in artistic anatomy. So far it has been really fun to actually start learning the scientific/medical names of things like the different plates in the skull, or the bones of the wrist. And of course for me it is a little easier to learn through drawing.

Here are some of my recent sketchbook pages (photographs and not scans, unfortunately):







This afternoon I will be heading up to Henry Wingate's studio to continue in another vein -drawing from life. Today's focus will be the arm.

30 day

30 big years.

You kids turn that music down or I'm calling the cops. Now where did I put those rolaids...?

Let's Be Fancy!

Everybody likes to feel classy and swank at least some of the time.

The other day I made some classy and swank leather wine bottle wraps. With these great wraps you can drink the vino with class even if you're the worst kind of rag-tag roustabout. You see, these wraps cleverlyu hide the labels of your cheap two-buck-chuck and, since they sport hand painted illustrations on leather, everyone will assume that you wine came out of the private reserve of the king of America.



Best of all, these new leather winewraps cleverly lace up the back so that you can use them over and over again!



So stop dressing like a wino! Get yourself a classy winewrap today!