NEW HORIZONS, OLD MEMORIES

I've been busy working on new ways to create images. With the use of the computer I have been combining computer printing with painted pieces. I have been applying heat transfers over acrylic paint on paper. This can be used to strengthen a weak painting with heavy graphic images. Stencils are used to let the printer print through the stencil and the use of origami pieces as well. Reasonable successful have been my efforts to print on substrates other than paper.
A recent trip to Texas was the imputus to create some new sketches and the photos were put together in a slide show with narration and music. I used Windows Movie Maker. We also saw some great art work in the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth and the Kimbell Museum in the same city. We missed one museum we had wanted to visit in order to go to Billy Bob's Texas, the largest honky-tonk in the world.
Now, I'm back to creating art work and would be a lot faster if I could figure out my new mp3 player!

Studio Listening Matter:

• Carbon Leaf
• Ibrahim Ferrer
• Waylon Jennings
  

And, by the way, the above painting is of a swamp buck, buckus swampus. One of the lesser know creatures of cryptozoology, it lives in the swamp and marshlands of the southeaster United States.

if you gonna play in Texas, you gatta have a fiddle in the band.

I must draw. I believe that it is apart of me. And there is seldom a day that i don't draw. sometimes it is of specific things. I may be using it to design a painting. in the sketch I work out the desing and composition and color before attack ang the paper or canvas. Maybe I will dedicate a page to how many textures I can create with a line. It's all about marks on paper. Sometimes I use it to design my web pages and sometimes to record a recipe. But mostly it is a repository of visual knowledge. All my ideas that reach fruition begin in my sketchbook..

I haven't been doning much painting but I've been following my mantra. I draw every day as my sketchbook attests to it. I decided that Texas is not a Southern state. STANDARD ICED TEA IS NOT SWEET AND BOILED PEANUTS ARE UNKNOWN.

Studio Listening Matter

• Willie Nelson
• Diana Krall
• Howie Day
• Bare Naked Ladies
  

....and then I woke up!

There has been a while since my last blog. Ah...where did the time go. I've been working on my website revamp a lot. Also, selling on the sidewalk. Actually the sidewalk sales venture has been an exercise in futility. One Saturday the screens on which my paintings were displayed blew over in a stiff breeze. The sound of breaking glass is not soon forgotten. Such is the life of a sstruggling artist. I am considering getting out of the reproduction business and reinventing myself. A new "branding" or rather a "rebranding". Upcoming, iIve gotta go to TX for a college graduation. Should get some interesting sketches. I'm working into more non-objective art work and will paint nothing that is not fun. Life is too short to do those things which are not fun. Of course, there are certain must-be-dons.

STUDIO LISTENING MATTER

• Death Cab For Cutie
• Bela Fleck
• Howie Day
• Billie Holiday
• Frank Sinatra
  

maybe, I'm dreaming...

Alas, there is no picture. It takes time to the photography and all. Is this creativity an itch or what? I'm always wanting to change things. Does anything suit me? Am I the only one who sees things the way they should be? Questions for the ages... Currently, I am enjoying getting away from the restrictive ness of purely representational art work. With great difficulty I move to the pure expressive non-representational. There is comfort in familiar images. Security of knowing. Are those painters who paint with photographically reality uncreative? I don't think so. They are interpreting as they see it. And those of us who sometimes see more that reality or that which is not there? Then there is another name for us.

Studio Listening Matter,

• Ladysmith Black Mumbaza
• Five Blind Boys
• The Ink Spots
• Robert Cray

"I believe that imagination is stronger than knowledge,That myth is more potent than history,That dreams are more powerful than facts,That hope always triumphs over experience,That laughter is the cure for grief. And I believe that love is stronger than death."(Robert Fulghum)

With my thoughts wrapped around Juanita I am aware of nothing...

I am still working with "drip images". The inspiration for the above was the stark nakedness of the dead trees in the marshes of the Carolina low county. The zap of color is mine. Sometimes if you load the images in the ccomputer and play with the color saturation you can get some interesting FX.

Yesterday was good. Very creative in the AM, two paintings completed. After my workout and lunch with a glass of red (got a mini-buzz) it was back to work to work on my lesson plan for tonight's lesson in beginning water color. I am continuing to work with heat transfers as a picture making method. Creating pictures by alternate methods is fun.

Studio listening matter:

• Marsha Ball
• The Blind Boys of AL
• Shrimp City Slim
• Rod Stewart