Rose Fesitval 1/2 Marathon....

Well at least someone is doing something constructive today.

March Sixth 2014

   

Im not sure exactly when I decided to make this, but I knew I had to finish it today.

Another Caricature and a Bad pun

I did forget one rule of drawing in pencil this morning.  Dont press too hard.  The indentations in the paper affect how it looks when you photograph it.  The camera wouldn't pick up the dark in his left eye because of the glare.

I don't want to get political here...so I won't.  However,  no one has heard from this guy about the recent events.until today.  So I figured now is a good time to do a caricature.  And here is the bad pun.....For those of you who don't know who this is, I'll give you a hint:  I was Vlad that I put in a little extra effort on this caricature.  I spent a little more time on this one than the Obama, and it came out a little better.   I can hear the collective groans and I apologize, but  once I thought of that pun, I couldn't stop myself.

Get ready for more snow...

During and after photos of the last snow storm.   Of course they say there's only a slight chance of snow.  I snapped these from my front door.  I have no intention of painting these scenes, but thought I'd throw them in here.

During the Snow

After the Snow

It was almost 60 degrees on Friday, and now I hear there might be more snow, of course not as much as we had last month but still...   This is not what I bargained for. 

Caricatures Count Too and Audre Lorde

Institutional rejection of difference is an absolute necessity in a profit economy which neeeds outsiders as surplus people. 
   As members of such an economy, we have all been programmmed to respond to the human differences between us with fear and loathing and to handle that difference in one of three ways: ignore it, and if that is not possible, copy it if we think iti is dominant, or destroy it if we think it is subordinate.
    But we have no patterns for relating across our human differences as equals.  As a result, those differences have been misnamed and misused in the service of separation and confusion.  

AUDRE LORDE,
Sister Outsider (1984)

Instead of trying to paint, I decided to do this sketch.  A caricature of Obama.
I was inspired by the artist Jason Seiler, who is pretty much OFF THE CHARTS with his illustrations.  I'm hoping this will kickstart my productivity.    As for the quote above,  I've been reading Race Matters by Cornell West.  The above quote was used in the book.  This stood out for me because I agree that differences in people are often misnamed and misused in the service of separation and confusion.   I have heard people refer to the president (still) as a Muslim because of his name.  (And as if being a Muslim connects one with terrorism).  Regardless of what one thinks about the presidents ideas and policies, it is fundamentally wrong to judge someone in such a simplistic and stereotypical way. 

Obama sketch

I shamefully admit that I haven't read AUDRE LORDE's book, or for that matter any of her poetry other than what I was able to google recently.  All I know is that she is a Black Lesbian Feminist, so that is enough for me to disregard everything about her.  Wow this separation and confusion stuff really works.  (BTW, that was sarcasm for anyone not hearing it through the print)
Here's another interesting quote.

“Black and Third World people are expected to educate white people as to our humanity. Women are expected to educate men. Lesbians and gay men are expected to educate the heterosexual world. The oppressors maintain their position and evade their responsibility for their own actions. There is a constant drain of energy which might be better used in redefining ourselves and devising realistic scenarios for altering the present and constructing the future.”
― Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches

GO NINERS

GAME TIME

Two views in two ways

      I copied these two quotes from David Burbach's blog.  More words of wisdom and inspiration.

 "Art is an interpreter of the inexpressible, and therefore it seems a folly to try to convey its meaning afresh by means of words."--- Goethe

"Good composition is only the strongest way of seeing the subject."---Edward Weston

Just so happens we both found the same subject interesting in different ways.

Behind I've Been Framed

David Burbach

Stewart Cinks Tan Line

It has been said that if you have nothing to blog about, then don't blog.  I found myself once again feeling angst about seeing the same post every time I opened my blog.  So I had to decide whether to leave it or post something not necessarily worth the time.  I decided to post this photo of Stewart Cinks head at the Sony Open in Hawaii .  The though being that if I have to look at THIS  every time I open my blog, I will most definitely find something actually worth positng in the next few days.  We'll see if this works.

On a side note, my friend and fellow blogger Gary Everest attended the Sony Open last week and actually had some blogworthy posts about it.  Gary used to golf , and explains why he gave up the game to devote more time to painting.  I try to do both.  I have actually gotten better at golf, but haven't reached the point where I'm ready to do what Gary did.
   Oddly enough, I have not been working much the past week, yet still haven't picked up the brushes.  I crushed my foot at work and was couch ridden.  I didn't feel  enough inertia to paint anything, even though the desk was 10 feet away.  I'm feeling another flurry of creativity coming on though.  Maybe I'll start with an abstract that I can title Stewart Cinks Head as  an homage to kick starting my creativity. 
  By the way, my foot isn't broken and I'm back hobbling around on it.  Going to take some weeks to be back to near full health....and as I sat here it came to me that I could share another thing.  An artist I admire.  Rod Penner does tiny photo-realistic paintings of small towns in Texas.  His subjects are always interesting to me.  In fact just Sunday I saw a house that looked like a perfect subject for one of his paintings.

Blue Bonnet Cafe  Rod Penner

First I will show you the Painting of Blue Bonnet Cafe by Rod Penner....and I was fortunate enough to find a reference photo that he recently shared.  Yes he is technically solid, but his choice of subjects are what I most like about his work.

Reference Photo shared by Rod Penner

The reason I don't like to share reference photos on my blog is because people have actually mistook the photos for my paintings.  Obviously these are people not entirely familiar with my work, because I don't paint hyper-realistic(ally?)
Rod Penner must really have that problem.  I bet if you had to pick which was the painting and which was the photo it would take some time.  Again, while his technical skill is incredible, his subjects draw me in...I aim to prove that is the appeal of his work.  Soon.