Art Show Update

I am pleased to announce that my drawing, “Nesters”, won third place in the AAC show. http://www.atlantaartistscenter.org/
I feel honored to have such a well respected judge and artist, Dale Rayburn , choose my work.

Positive chaos

I have been in the process of remodeling my kitchen. My house is trashed, but in the middle of all this chaos I am discovering new approaches to the project and some things I forgot I had!

Spring fever in December

Looking at all the brown I've displayed on this blog and the brown leaves outside my window makes me wish for spring again. I realize most people are looking forward to the Holidays, but it can become a very stressful for a lot of us. One of the ways I enjoy relieving stress is to play with an online painting program When I first discovered this program I decided to do at least one painting a day. Unfortunately I became so addicted to it I couldn’t stop at just one and the day would get away from me. I decided to put the fun aside for awhile, but saved most of the ones I created .

Today I wanted to play with the pixels again so I opened up my files of online paintings. I’m rarely satisfied with them as finished works but they make great starting points for more involved digital paintings which I create with Photoshop and Painter. Today’s image was created this way. Some time during the painting process it started to remind me of a stream or brook with tender wild flowers growing along side. I "pushed" the pixels and the result is the painting you see here, "Brookside". It was fun and the boring brown is gone.

Creative procrastination

It never fails as art show deadlines approach, I completely change directions. I call it creative procrastination. I’m guessing it has a lot to do with fear of failure. Whatever……this time when I was looking for a frame to salvage from my old stashed work, I came across a drawing I did in 1979. It had turn yellow with age and the patina totally intrigued me. The drawing was done over gesso and sand that was randomly brushed across the paper. I remember I spent hours drawing, picking and “noodling” with pencil in the negative spaces left by the brush marks. Seeing it again, the organic feel of the drawing reminded me of some sort of nest materials. Probably because I’ve had birds on my mind lately as subject matter. I photographed the drawing and uploaded it to Photoshop and began composing a new work of art on this background. I scanned in a picture of a crow, and pasted it three times across the image then added the graphics I created with Illustrator. When I was satisfied with the composition I duplicated the results on the actual drawing with pencil and collage. I titled the new image "Nesters", framed it and took it to the show for judging.

Blog-out days

Wednesday is the day that I devote to running errands and today I’ve been working in the studio. The Atlanta Artist’s Center’s http://www.atlantaartistscenter.org/ monthly show entry is Saturday and I plan to submit something this time. One of the pieces will be a mix media graphics collage that will have some of my computer images in the mix. I also plan to enter one of my abstract paintings. They both need to be matted and framed. Busy, busy. Needless to say I won’t be posting to this blog for a few days.