Video: Chicken Drawing

Here is a chicken drawing for you!  The species is a Silver-Spangled Hamberg.  The original drawing will be available at my sale this weekend. 

Enjoy!!

Oil Painting: Pickle Jar

Pickle Jar

Oil Paint on Canvas

A 4.5" x 7"

Oil Painting: Laura's Dog

This is a dog painting in oil I recently completed. It is my friend Laura's dog. Laura lives in New York City and has two dogs that she takes out for walks and would, for me, take photographs of them taking a pee.

I finally finished this painting.  It will be used for the cover of a story in The Book of Bartholomew. The story is titled Mental Exercises in which, while walking home from a party, Ned reminisces about a walk with his father and their dog Jingles.  I want to thank Laura for being such a good sport and willing participant.  Although, I did hear that the dogs were a little bit put-out by their part of the project.  Granted they had to go pee anyway, but who would want that posted on a blog?  It is disrespectful.

Keep on using your Artist's Brain - even if it is embarrassing to your pet.

Illustration: Donkey Burger Logo Trials

I recently was creating a logo for Donkey Burger, the fast-food restaurant in The Book of Bartholomew. A donkey was the first order of business. I needed to create a comical donkey head. Below are some trials of different donkey heads. You can see that I had a pretty good beginning and only tweaked hair, mouth, ears and eyes from this point. My first go is the upper left image in the group of eight. I didn't like the hair, so I printed out several incomplete donkey heads and then tried different hair styles.

After I settled on a hair style, I wasn't happy with the ears.  I had one thin ear and one big ear.  They didn't match.  At first I copied and pasted the thin ear to the other side of his head, so they matched.  I didn't quite like this.  Then I created a big ear for the front, to match the one in the back. I liked this better.

Now that I had the donkey head like I wanted it (although I still want to change the eyes slightly) I made it into an official Donkey Burger logo by adding the name, some circles and stars and the tagline. I like "Meat with a Kick," which is safer than the other choice of "Eat My Ass."

This logo will appear on the next published story in The Book of Bartholomew. The story is titled "Lunch Rap," and will be published on March 18 at http://www.bookofbartholomew.com/

I hope you enjoyed this. Keep using your Donkey...ooops!... I mean, your Artist's Brain.

Drawing: Glass of Water

Here is a glass of water to go with the salad.

Drawing: Salad

I decided to draw a salad the other day. It will be an illustration for the story Someone To Call Home. I went to the kitchen and tore apart Romain lettuce leaves, added sliced red onion, feta cheese, diced apple and pine nuts. I topped it all off with some ranch dressing. I then sat and drew for three hours. I sketched out the bowl and a few "landmarks" with pencil and then began drawing with ink. I was getting hungry and happy to finish the drawing and eat the salad.

I know some artists who would gather every Wednesday night, draw/paint the food they were going to eat that night and then cook it and eat it. I joined them one night to paint a plate of shrimp that we then grilled. That was delicious, too. Food and art go together, don't you think?

Drawing: Frog Drawing

Here is a frog drawing I created quite a long time ago. It has been in storage for at least ten years. I used it in the story #3: Geraldine, from The Book of Bartholomew.  It looks just fine here as a digital image, but the paper which it is on is very thin and when I was shading in the area underneath his chin I pressed too hard.  This resulted in the paper buckling and puckering.  The lead is also shiny and different from the rest.  That is why it has been in storage.  BUT, it looks good here.  It was used as a background image behind the text in the story Geraldine. 

I have painted and drawn frogs over the years.  My interest goes back to a quote from a Flannery O'Connor book in which she describes a column of souls rising to heaven like an endless stream of frogs leaping over each other on their way to salvation.  I think humans are somewhat froggy.  We are uglier and more primal than we think.

I hope you all are having a nice holiday season, when we take time to see the beauty in those around us.