The Family

A little practice work. I’m beginning to really enjoy using color.

Color

Well, I’ve been experimenting more with color. Working with color is more time intensive and far less easy to cover up if you blend the wrong colors for a particular effect. So far things are going okay but I’m on the fence. I admit, I’m a bit nervous about making color a permanent stay in my style. Past attempts haven’t faired too well for my liking and I can’t really tell if I’ve made any progress over the years. Below are two past attempts at color. What do you think?

Woodlouse

Woodlouse – archival colored ink on 4×4 Strathmore Bristol vellum

It’s not often that I work in color. From experience, it’s a bit more tedious than working with just black ink when it comes to stippling. But sometimes black gets a bit monotonous to me and I need a little splash of color. Working on 4×4 Bristol vellum didn’t feel near as tedious as working on say, a 9×12 piece, so I rather enjoyed doing this little drawing rather than feeling anxious about the time it would take for me to finish. I guess the key for me is to keep things on the small side, which I’m beginning to see is the overarching theme of my life.

The Art Of Nature

In my younger years I was all into Surrealism and Scifi/Fantasy art. Now that I’m much older I’m far more into Nature and what’s in the natural world with it’s beauty and complexity. Although I still get excited by the fantastic worlds of Vallejo, Royo, Dali and the futurism of science fiction, being able to depict what actually exists and crafting in interesting ways the minute details of things before us that we might over look, seems far more interesting to me now. Trying to find a way to marry within my imagination the fantasy world with the real seems to be the challenge set before me at this moment in my life. Ever contemplate the folds of the skin on the leg of a pelican? Could that too be an alien landscape of a fantasy world we can only dream of?