Buddies

More fun and games with ink.

stop lights and street lights

Sketched from a couple of photos I took around my city. I like photography as an art form, but personally I have a hard time seeing my photos as anything other than potential drawing reference.

Also, I've got a thing for power lines. No idea why. Well, ok, that's not entirely true, but I feel like mumble mumble representational of the complexity of urban life mutter human web superimposed across the landscape etc is a bit much to inflict on unsuspecting people of the internet. So we'll stick with that I think they look nifty.

Dragon street

So, uh, I got a little bored painting/drawing the houses.

This started out as a watercolor experiment--it's been a solid ten years since I've used them and let's just say that I'm a touch out of practice. Prismacolor markers and a brush pen were added on top because I wasn't feeling that patient, and in any case I rather like the effect. 

Cobh

Cobh, Ireland, from a photo I took. More Prismacolor markers, plus some faint pencil if you squint. 

decorative monster thing

First page of my new sketchbook. Prismacolor markers and a brush pen.

sketchbook page

Something I doodled while watching TV. This sort of thing is why I'm easily surprised by plot twists/often have no idea what characters' names are when I'm watching something.

Painting

So, over the past year, I've been working on this painting. I have this large roll of watercolor paper that I've been lugging around for about ten years now, and I thought hey, why don't I prime it and paint something really big? It'll have a nicer texture than canvas, I won't have to stretch anything, and when was the last time I made anything larger than ~16"x20" anyways?

Oil on Paper, tentatively called Urban Dreamscape 2

Yeah. This is 3.5'x4'. Yes, that's feet. I finished it last week and was so pleased, very happy with how it turned out and that I actually FINISHED the thing (to be honest I could work on it forever, but I had a friend whose judgment I trust look at it, give me a list of stuff to fix, and once that was complete I took it off the wall to force myself to stop). 

However.

Now I have to get it framed. There's a full framing studio at my day job, so they can help me, except that I think the painting is awfully close to full size of the glass sheets we have in stock, and it won't fit in my little car without being folded, it's taking up the entire floor of my office, and I'm not entirely certain why I thought this size was a good idea. 

At least it's much lighter than masonite?

Here are some detail shots: apologies for the quality, as they were taken with my phone while my real camera charges, and the paper doesn't exactly lie flat.

 

 

This is a sort of prequel to the above painting, where I'd started working on the idea of showing layered landscapes with a history of human development/influence. I'm still very much working on how I want to use paint, what kind of texture, how much detail, etc. All the things that painting on the computer just doesn't quite manage.

 

Oil on canvas, tentatively Urban Dreamscape 1