Semi-abstract

While working in abstract is very empowering, breaking out of the borders of what is recognizable and allowing the viewer to interprete for themselves, it is also nice to play with recognizable elements in a random way. Here is an example of just such a piece.

Abstracts - No. 1

The advantage to working with digital tools is that you can develop some quick ideas, play around with textures and lighting, and re-work colours without worrying about paint costs, paper, and clean-up. I've worked on abstract pieces experimenting with colours, shapes, tonality, and texture and here a couple that bring out very different emotions. The blue-yellow-red composition has a very bright feel that implies a bright sunny day, while the green composition has a middle of nature feel - to me, at least. How about you? What do you see in these pieces?

The faces that launched a thousand ships

Well, that might be a bit overdone, since none of these doodles were meant to be Helen of Troy, but here are some miscellaneous visages. Faces are everywhere, and having a piece of paper at the mall, on public transit, or at the airport can be very helpful. Some of these are creations, while others are based on actual people. There are plenty more, but I don't want to overload the page just yet.

While we're on sealife

Artists pencil on pastel paper can give a nice look and feel to the work. I found the brown of the paper worked well with the natural colours of the turtle in this piece from a few years ago. This is still not up anywhere - it travels with me in my portfolio, and has been crimped a bit here and there.

Bring on the Macintosh

When I first saw an Apple Macintosh in action I said to myself, 'self, I have to get me one of those'. And in 1994 I did just that, spending a ridiculous amount of money for something that, by today's standards, amounted to a wristwatch. But once in the digital realm it was impossible to escape. The ability to manipulate and experiment with images was getting more and more interesting with each version of software and each release of 'How to' books. The tablet was still a few years away, but there was still lots that you could do.

Don't ask me

I was doodling one day back in the 80s and came up with this character - for some reason a roller skating dragon-like thing seemed to make sense at the time. Well, it was the 80s and lots of things seemed to make sense then that don't now.

How about 2 decades later

To reinforce the idea that I've been interested in all things fast for a while, here's a piece that I did in 1987 of a Yamaha FZ. I still had my Suzuki at the time and did this during the dead of winter to keep the riding spirit alive.

This is a photo of a copy of the original.

A decade and a half after completion

It was 1992 and Scott Goodyear was still driving competitively. I did this in artists pencils one weekend and then left it on the wall for 2 weeks. After the 2 weeks I tweaked the background and built up the colour in the car a bit more and then it was done.

The original currently resides with my brother-in-law in California.

It's time to see the light of day

I'm moving to another part of the country, and that requires extensive purging of stuff to reduce the load. It also means that I've been going through lots and lots of boxes finding sketches, doodles, and art that I had forgotten about. So, this got me to thinking that maybe it's time to start putting stuff out there so that new stuff doesn't suffer that same fate as the old (I will be posting some selections from the 'archives' so that work is not gone forever).

The first one is a quick sketch that I did of Johnny Cash using PD Pro and a wacom tablet.