Learning how to sketch

I kept finding increasingly difficult to seat down and draw something, while a small pile of unfinished paintings is slowing developing in my room. After some reflections I decided to go back to sketching as a way to keep enjoying drawing stuff and stay away from those large, detailed drawing I tend to stick to.

Crayon on paper
about 21x21cm

Which was hitting literally any drawing project I was trying, because everything looked too complex, too long, too hard, and I was getting unhappy with my drawing skills.
So I found online this "Sketching for real" tutorial on Katherin Tyrrel's Pastels and Pencils site.
It was like a breath of fresh air. "My goodness - I thought - that's it! I need to go back to sketching, where I can draw happily again without spending 20 hours for a single picture."

The Roboraptor above is my first sketch following Katherin's instructions - a Roboraptor in pencil and crayons, done in about 30 minutes. All right, I confess that I made other 3 or 4 drawings of this toy, but the beast is trickier than it looks...

P.S.:
I need to thank also (again) Charley Parker for his Lines and Colors blog, as I read about Katherine's site from his posts.

Mistress of happiness and bounty

Beloved Bastet,
mistress of happiness and bounty,
twin of the Sun god,
slay the evil that afflicts our minds as you slay the serpent Apep.
With your graceful stealth anticipate the moves
of all who perpetrate cruelties
and stay their hands against the children of light.
Grant us the joy of song and dance,
and ever watch over us
in the lonely places in which we must walk.

Oil on canvas, 40x30cm
(click on image to enlarge)

Oy vey, Zoidberg

A portrait of Dr. John A. Zoidberg, by far the greatest alien character ever.
Also to celebrate my return to oil painting.



Oil on cardboard, 24 x 18 cm

Shodan!

Yesterday I received my shodan black belt in karate!



It was a long journey, started as far as 1981. When I gave up with karate long time ago I thought it was for good. But as they say, karate-do no shugyo wa isssho de aru, it will take you entire life to learn karate.
And Oscar Sensei got my name embroidered in katakana on the black belt!

Felicitas 2008

A portrait of my favourite model, in her usual morning stance.
The print in the background is M.C. Escher "Earth" woodcut, that he made on commission for Eugene & Wily Strens, friends and print collectors, as holiday gifts for New Year 1956. Actually the writing behind Felicia is "Felicitas 1953"

Indian ink on paper, 24x33cm
Click on image to enlarge

Sleeping Elena

Elena drifting peacefully in a sea of calmness.

Watercolors on paper, 33x24cm
Click on image to enlarge

Etretat

From the time we went to Normandie and Bretagne.
Elena standing on the chalky beach of Etretat in a sort of Hokusai-c atmosphere.

Ink drawing and Photoshop painting, 33x24cm
Click on image to enlarge

I fiddled with a pencil drawing of this since last summer, then boldy decided to ink it "so to stop changing it", then scanned into Photoshop and painted with the Old Man Mad with Painting in mind. Does not really feel like it. Maybe it's old Photoshop being a medium too cold?

A manifesto for postdigital art

I placed online the manifesto for postdigital art, the new frontier, the break-throught that will change visual arts like oil-painting did in the 15^th century.

Not simply using digital tools to draw and paint, but to find the new artistic value beyond the doors that these tools are opening.

For this purpose I created a dedicated site www.not-oilpainted.org, which so far contains only the manifesto; and will be my gallery for the explorations in the uncharted territories of postdigital art. As soon as I find the time ...

100 Photoshop Tutorials

I try to use this space to discuss only my own material, but the collection of Photoshop tutorials I found while browsing Charley Parker's blog Lines and Colors is so interesting that I need to link it.



This collection of 100 Photoshop tutorials (for Creating Beautiful Art) gathers a number of techniques that can be applied when painting in digital, keeping in a single place enough knowledge to give me ideas and keep me experimenting for the rest of 2008 (thank you Charley!).

Chromatic Warming #1

An exercise on Sierpinski carpet and Klee's "Pedagogical Sketchbook" from the Bauhaus years.