David Foster Wallace (1962 - 2008)
September 14, 2008
David Foster Wallace Considers the Lobster. Acrylic, ink and collage on paper, 2006.
Los Angeles Times obituary for David Foster Wallace.
David Foster Wallace at Wikipedia.
Lyle Lovett Portrait Illustration
August 6, 2008
This is my entry for the BookMooch Journal “A Hunka Hunka Burnin’ Love.”
Lyle Lovett, ink on paper, 2008. Click image to see full-size.
I’m really enjoying this marker sketch process. They’re either cheap markers or old markers, so in either case they dry out quickly. That gives me an opportunity to layer colors like I would with glazes in painting.
Join BookMooch! It’s a great way to match old books with new readers.
The BookMooch Journals are an offshoot of BookMooch. Read more about the journals here.
Related: I’ve been updating my Flickr page. Pop in for a visit, yeah? The Mooch Journals have a Flickr pool, too.
Illustration Friday: Foggy
July 12, 2008
Let Things Be Foggy, ink on paper, July 2008.
I began this sketch during my stay in Canadian, Texas over the Fourth of July holiday. I don’t have any major shows planned or new projects in progress at this point, so I feel a mite bit purposeless. (It’s been a long time since my schedule was this open.) Plus, I’m exploring some less graphic, more painterly stylistic ground. This foggy place is the perfect environment in which to let some new ideas germinate.
See more of Illustration Friday here.
Here is a snapshot of my desk upon completing the drawing, where you can see my collage sketch:
Not What I Meant
May 16, 2008
Not What I Meant, acrylic on wood panel, 2008. Click image to enlarge.
A few years back I came into a whole pile of these 8 x 22 inch wood panels. I think they were raw cabinet doors that hadn’t been shaped and finished. Usually I paint on them vertically, so this is the first time I’ve used one in its wide format. Just in time for Illustration Friday: Wide.
Not What I Meant, detail view.
This panel was actually a so-so painting several years back. (In fact, it was one of a series of paintings I did that turned out so poorly that I realized I needed to go back to school and learn to paint. Hence: graduate school.) To start the painting you see here, I sanded the previous painting’s surface, then added the red and blue. I scratched the fish shapes away with an exacto knife (and many many blades). It’s so satisfying to transform a failure into a success.
Illustration Friday: Wrinkles
April 28, 2008
Crotchety Old Man, ink and graphite on paper, 2005.
From Wiktionary:
crotchety (comparative crotchetier or more crotchety, superlative crotchetiest or most crotchety)
See more at Illustration Friday.
Phoebe Gloeckner Knows Bodies
April 19, 2008
As I mentioned earlier this week, I admire the way Phoebe Gloeckner depicts the human figure (particularly the female form). After doing some more research, I learned that she is also a medical illustrator. Have a look at these haunting, virtuosic images. (Notabene: these are anatomically explicit. You have been warned.)
Read more about Gloeckner in this interview about cartooning on the PBS website, or straight from the horse’s mouth in Diary of a Teenage Girl.
Snip from the interview, in which Gloeckner talks about how she teaches art students:
…the classes change from semester to semester, but no matter the topic, the basic principle underlying my “method” of teaching (developed in just two years) is that a properly prepared artist/creator must simply know everything. Not just how to draw, but how to see. Not just how to use a computer program, but what the word “penultimate” means. And the shape and orientation of a goat’s pupil. And where Kentucky and Chile are, at least approximately. The only way to know everything is to learn how to think, how to ask questions, how to navigate the world. Students must learn how to teach themselves to use new tools, how to talk to unfamiliar people, and basically how to be brave.
Illustration Friday: Hat Man
November 2, 2007
This unfinished ink sketch is from my 2006 Family Portraits series. I have been working with a process of transferring ink drawings to a more lightfast medium (more on that soon). This drawing may have a second life for the Normal project.
See the rest of Illustration Friday here.
Normal, OK on OKC’s Channel 4
October 7, 2007
Illustration Friday: Red
January 26, 2007
Self Portrait with Left Turn. Acrylic, ink, and collage on canvas, 2006. Click image to enlarge.
I had a dream about colors and letters. Every letter was being assigned a color, and we would form words with swatches instead of sounds. I was on the committee to decide which letter got which color. The vowels were all getting red. I made the argument that E should definitely not get the red bandana swatch. Why? Because the letter E is so flighty. It’s the Paris Hilton of letters. It would take the red bandana (a strong, traditional pattern), and be like, “Oops, I dropped it! Tee Hee!” Better give that color to someone else.
Click here to see the rest of the Red entries for Illustration Friday.