I lost a friend of mine, Tara Krehbiel, to cancer last year. You may remember Tara from her work she did with me on the Artist Series Calendar. She was a fantastic art friend with a lot of shared interests as me.
Continue reading Tara in Red, In Progress & Thoughts
Traditionally, I usually participate in Inktober (as I have in 2019, 2018, and 2017). I decided not to do Inktober this year due to the drama around Jake Parker. Plenty of artists are still doing Inktober this year, but I decided this is a good way to use a bunch of my Culture Hustle Pinkest Pink (by doing pink stuff), even though it’s not necessary that you have to, you know, draw or use pink. Like Inktober, Semple provides prompts that you can use if you want. I usually don’t use the prompts, but use it as a way to do daily drawings for at least a month. I’ve been feeling quite creatively cramped this year for obvious reasons, so I’m trying to force myself through so perhaps I can start something that I can pick up later (or drum up some new illustration ideas).
Continue reading Pinktober 2020
This year I decided to participate in both of Paintable’s One Week Portrait challenges. The purpose of the challenge is to create your best portrait yet. Instructor David breaks up the challenge across 5 days, which allows you to create your very best work while putting in as little or as much time as you want.
While I’m pretty well versed in digital drawing, seeing the videos was a great refresher and anyone who draws can always do with a bit of practice studying. Back in April, I created the first one, seen on the left, of model Hamid Fadaei. I chose the reference photo for its particular contrast, fun lighting, colors, textures, and of course… The smoke.
The second reference image I chose, by photographer Anna Danilova, was pretty much the opposite of the first. It was using really subtle colors and shades, most of it was obscured, and because there’s only a relatively low quality resolution copy of this image on the web (and I cropped it in on the face), I had to make up some textures and other pixel data.
Overall fun to do, a nice practice exercise, and something to keep my mind occupied while the world is currently exploding. Hoping to have some new illustrations soon. Thanks for reading. 🙂
These past couple months have been… Rough. They’ve been really rough for everyone, myself included. It’s hard not to be affected when the world is on fire, the country is collapsing, everything is closed and/or cancelled, and everyone is fighting. I thought I wasn’t really affected, given my daily routine is pretty introverted, but it turns out that all of this hubbub happening in the world put a real damper on my creative ability. Writing has slowed; I sat down to write a few pages and ended up stopping after a paragraph, haven’t picked it up in weeks. Drawing has almost come to a halt; I started an oil painting with high hopes of having it finished quickly, but I petered out fast.
Continue reading Petrichor II – What’s in a word?
I know you’re probably groaning if you’re opening this or getting it in your email, because it seems everyone has something to say about the current events of the world right now. I have seen a lot of things, as many of us have, and I have read even more. I have “opinions” of things that not everyone will agree with, but I suppose I should just say it: Black Lives Matter.
Continue reading “The Wolves Descend”, a note about police brutality