Some notes: I realize that I’ve never done an Asian portrait before. I made this girl look caucasian. She’s Indian (East Indian, not Native American).

Her glasses are crooked or her eyes aren’t on an even plane. I’m not sure which. I’ll have to measure a few more times to be sure what it is. Also, her mouth has a grin/smile thing going on that I didn’t capture here that well. And her neck is darker than what I have. My stump did more erasing than blending. And I need to get the direction of the head correct – she sort of looks like her head is turned a bit but sort of doesn’t look like it. Her nose is off-center if her head isn’t turned. I might take a creative license here and do it how I think it looks best. It isn’t, after all, a commissioned portrait – and Karin Jurick (it’s her site!) said to have fun with it. Well. Um. Fun, here I come!

But I did get to do a charcoal on toned paper with both black and white charcoal. Which I’ve never actually done before. And I really like the effect – it gives a realistic glow to the image.

I’m going to take my study and overlay it to the original image in The GIMP (Photoshop alternative for Linux) and see where I went wrong. I did do this while watching about 4 episodes of The Office. It took me about an hour and that hour went by really quickly. So it goes.

I had a painting I had done about 2 years ago when my son was 2. It was just me and him messing around. Mostly me trying to keep oil paints out of a 2 year old’s eyes and mouth. It began life as a terrible self-portrait so I intentionally ruined it with my kid. I scrubbed the canvas and then I sanded it down. Oil paint isn’t the best sanded material, in case you’re wondering. So I decided to go over it with a dark, dark brown. It’s been that way for 2 months. I have 2 other self-portraits prepared, but I’ve lost the muse on them. I might just paint over them.

So it goes.

I took a picture of myself with my digital camera, cropped it and shrunk it to fit the 11″ x 14″ canvas, and modified it in The GIMP (Photoshop-like clone for Linux) with the “photocopy” filter. That basically takes it down to an outlined drawing. Then I opened OpenOffice Presenter (PowerPoint clone) and made a 1-pager with a portrait orientation and a size to match the canvas. I dragged my image onto it, printed at actual size (my printer only does 8.5″ x 11″, so it printed 3 sheets’ worth), I traced the details I was concerned with onto tracing paper, rubbed white conte crayon onto the back, and then re-traced over the tracing paper to transfer the image to the canvas.

Next, I’ll spray it with fixative to make sure the conte crayon drawing doesn’t smudge. Then it’s ready for painting.

I haven’t decided how to paint this yet. I’m thinking that I should keep it dark. And drippy. And maybe lace in some wording/verbiage as it comes to me. I might just pull out enough lights to make it recognizable, attack it with thinner, pull out some more lights, and thrash with thinner again. I liked the effect I got yesterday so I want to get to it before it makes me want to pound nails through it. Hmm, now THERE’S an idea…

I’ve always been a fan of Patrick Nagel. The white skin, ruby lips, solid colors, often vacant (literally blank) eyes, the classic 80′s triangular design work. I was flipping through some old sketchbooks and saw some pieces that were reminiscent of Nagel’s sketches (which I have in the book, The Art of Patrick Nagel), so I thought I’d cheat and make my own Nagel directly *from* Nagel.

Of course, I’m going to make it my own, but it’ll be very reminiscent, very Nagelesque. He did his work in acrylic, mostly, and I”ll be using oil. I’ll probably also show my brushwork, which was something he never did. And I might “break the toy” and blaspheme the paint… like maybe smear the make-up or lose the edges or some not-so-Nagel aspects that’ll make this art a reflection of the dark, dingy insides of yours truly.

November is Art Every Day Month. Okay, it’s not some real holiday or anything, and you won’t find it on any calendar or as an Outlook add-in. But I’m really going to give it a go this month. Something – ANYTHING – done, every day. Progress on a piece, painting, doodling, crafting spitball sculptures, whatever.

This particular drawing is on canvas and is prep work for the Different Strokes for Different Folks entry. It’ll be my third piece that I’ve entered to be displayed on Karin’s site. It’s actually sort of nerve-racking to put yourself out there like that, especially with so many great interpretations. But it’s also inspiring – your take is your take, how YOU see it, not how it is to anyone else.

As you can see, I did a grid this time. I was enlarging from a really bad printout, but that’s okay because I’m not concerned with much, just the outline. I could have free-hand drawn everything but the grid saves me some time. It’s nearly 11:30pm and I’ve got to get up before 6am and get ready for work, you know. One day this will be my full-time gig. Until then, grids are my friend. Well, maybe they still will be because I *have* learned to draw and to see but that’s not what I’m after here.

I’m calling this one, “Lost,” because it’s an image of 3 travelers, together but alone. Shadows touching without knowing. Each with their own thoughts that probably are more similar than we’ll ever know. Just being the busy little ants that we are. Where are they going? They don’t know, they’re lost in the continuum. Time-space is a void and they’re just along for the ride. They don’t know where they are or where they’ll end up. They’re lost. Aren’t we all?

I’m not sure how I want to proceed on this. I’ve considered a few things:

• solid colors, no shading, outlined in black
• glasses and eyes/nostrils/mouth in black, the rest of my head one color, blue background, white star
• a light flesh and a slightly darker flesh (2-tone), black outlines
• a light underpainting (so I can still see the drawing) with broad, messy strokes that don’t stay in the lines. Come back through with black to outline. Come back through to clean up colors and hide all pencil lines
• throw it in the trash?

“But Still I Persist,” 11″ x 14″, preliminary graphite drawing