Gift

Winsor & Newton colored inks on watercolor paper

Here are some drawings I made for my dad for Christmas...animals doing human things! Yay for gifts! Enjoy.

Backstage

Graphite in sketchbook

Dec. 2010

So, my new assignment at work is to be on headset, backstage, stage right, during Jeff Daniels' Onstage and Unplugged concerts over the next couple weeks at the Purple Rose. This job involves gushing over the spectacular bluegrass extravaganza happening onstage from my position behind the musicians, various small pre-show duties, and keeping nosy patrons from getting through the locked door at my side. All in all, not too strenuous a task, and I have found that I have the time to draw while taking in the genius happening onstage, bluegrass style. Here are the drawings that happened during the first few shows...I apologize for the poor quality...I recently find myself without a scanner, and my camera doesn't pick up the graphite too well. I felt the need to draw some more ladies with abnormal teeth...I really like exploring the idea of these women having hidden strength/danger within them; the teeth represent that inner strength...and they're creepy, which I am strangely drawn to. Most of the them also turned into self portraits--when I sit stage right, there is a mirror right in front of me, so I felt like brushing up on drawing myself (plus headset). Enjoy!

Floating Heads and Hair Ladies

Winsor and Newton colored ink in sketchbook

Dec. 2010

Well, it's kind of embarrassing how long it has been since I last posted...since then, I have moved to the center of the country (to a new job in Chelsea, MI, from the Quimby artist colony in Portland, ME, for those not abreast of my recent activities). It took awhile for internet to happen in this new place, but never fear, I am now connected to the great interweb, and consequently I have a slew of drawings to post. I have been doing a lot of self portraits over the time that I've been in Michigan...it is often easy to do self portraits just as an exercise because I am my own most readily available drawing subject, given the presence of a mirror or an untarnished mind's eye, but here I'm doing a little self-examination...or just some surrealist versions of myself, to dig through my ideas on the changes and new situations happening in life. The likenesses are not perfect, but there you go. A note on the hair ladies, which may not be so self-focused...I've been fascinated with hair, kind of inexplicably, for a long time...I love how it can be so symbolic, of emotions (like how the Victorians viewed their hair), of longevity, of a part of your visual and emotional identity (I also really like how hair can very easily become creepy). I also adore Frida Kahlo, and how she was always painting her hair in different arrangements to represent different things...just lovely. Anyways, enjoy! The drawings that come along with the floating heads are just some whimsy from my brain. More to come, and much sooner this time!

Gratitude/Departure

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Speedball ink with brush and nib pen

Nov. 2010

Pilot rolling ball pen and watercolor

Nov. 2010

Well, every good thing does indeed end (and hopefully leads to more good things)...I left the Quimby Colony in Portland, ME yesterday after completing a three month residency. Twas very sad to put Maine behind me for now, but hopefully new adventures will prove to be equally spectacular. These are just a few drawings I did to thank some of the people who made my experience at Quimby really, really amazing/transformative. The 60s lion has become kind of redundant, but I thought I'd do a different version. Then there's a sassy looking, smoking, Victorian buffalo (you know, like you do), and also a Victorian giraffe. The non-animal is just a musing on Victorian fashion, for another gift. Enjoy!

Hybrids

Speedball ink with brush and nib pens on butcher paper

Nov. 2010

Speedball ink with brush and nib pens and pilot rolling ball pen in sketchbook

Nov. 2010

Here is a slew of animal/human doodles. I'm still distilling the buffalo in clothing idea--she is the animal character I am most excited to learn more about through drawing her and her world, but here are some of her compatriots. This 1960s lioness has been intriguing me recently. I started drawing a lion face one day in my sketchbook, and her mane just became a 1960s flip-do, which got me interested in what fashionable suits she might wear, and the rest went from there...

The antelope/giraffe drawing stemmed from thoughts about sacrifices for fashion. The story that was running in my head is that the giraffe wants to be fashionable with a bow around her neck like the antelope, but she tried too hard to make her long neck fit into the fashion ideal of the shorter antelope neck. Here, the fashion sacrifice becomes humerous.

Some of these characters are really a hybrid of animal and human, and some of them are just animals doing human things. The difference between these types of characters, I think, can be the different between creepy and cute, or between mythological (think minotaur, centaur, etc) and storybook. Anyways, all good tangents to go on, many things to think about...

Silhouettes

Ballpoint pen on paper

April-May 2010

Cut magazine pages

Sept. 2010

Cut paper

Oct. 2010

Speedball ink with brush in sketchbook

Nov. 2010

For awhile now, I have been interested in silhouettes...particularly riffing, in my own work, on Victorian silhouette portraits. The top ballpoint pen drawings are from many moons ago, done last spring at Bowdoin College as part of my senior thesis project. I've included them again here as reference because I have continued with my fascination with the silhouette in works directly leading from these earlier drawings. The most recent iteration of this idea is the bottom drawing, a set of doodles I did the other day...ladies with buffaloes, ladies with long creepy fingers, buffaloes with parasols, all in silhouette. Above them are some paper cutouts I did earlier in my residency at the Quimby Colony, and I suppose they're pretty self-explanatory.

The Picture of Dorian Gray

Speedball ink (brush and nib pen) in sketchbook

Ever since I read it for the first time during my freshman year at Bowdoin, I have been fascinated by Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray. I would really love to do a larger scale illustration project about Dorian Gray, so that might be a coming attraction... stay tuned. I'm interested in using some visual saturation of meaningful patterns, like the one on the couch/background here, to demonstrate Dorian's world of excess, and I just love the ideas in the book about artwork and its inner life, the dangers of immortality, and superficial beauty covering something rotten inside. Here's a pretty straightforward picture of Dorian, as I get used to ink and nib pens and stuff. The quote written in the background is from the book, and it says: "You are a wonderful creation. You know more than you think you know, just as you know less than you want to know."

Drawing at Alex's House

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Black magic ink (brush and nib pen) on vellum

Nov. 2010

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Black magic ink (brush and nib pen) on Canson drawing paper

Nov. 2010

Alex Rheault very kindly invited me over to her house a few times last week to use some of her drawing materials, including my first introduction to vellum, which feels smooth as buttah to draw on with a brush. These are some larger scaled drawings, with whatever imagery came out of my hand. It felt good to loosen up and work larger, with bigger brushes and such. I'm trying to make working larger a drawing habit.

Tattooed Ladies

Speedball ink, brush, various nibs on pen in sketchbook

Nov. 2010

These ladies and their tattoo patterns just flowed right out of my hand, especially the one on top. Leading from Alex's advice on illustration, I've been trying to experiment with different materials, especially in terms of line width--brushes and nib pens have been very useful in this exploration. Soon I'll be posting some bigger experiments I've done with Alex's ink and brush supplies. The top drawing, like I said, just kind of happened...I had no idea she was going to be tattooed until my pen started tattooing her. While the drawings are related, the second one is inspired by a sketch I made several years ago after seeing "Eastern Promises"...not one of my favorite movies, but I was totally drawn into the culture and social hierarchy of tattoos in the Russian mob that was depicted in the movie, and made the sketch that inspired this drawing. She's got minaret-type designs on her cheeks, rainclouds and rain/tears on her forehead (it seemed like everyone had tragedy/issues in their lives in that movie), and long beetle-like, encompassing legs around her jaw--like the inescapable grasp of the mafia after you get involved with them. Anyways, that got a wee bit in depth! Enjoy.