His work is amazing.

Oh, and you saw the teaser trailer, right?

/via Coudal Partners.

Here is a full list of the interviews I’ve conducted to date. I’m nearing the end of the first batch of interviews. The next batch will be much different.

• Kannika Soonthornyankit in Bangkok, Thailand
• Tina Bohlman in Waxahachie, Texas.
• Rod Buckle in Scarborough, England.
• Reza Rasoli in Los Angeles, California.
• Diane Geoghegan in Jerome, Arizona.
• Andrew Yeroshewych in Odessa, Ukraine.
• Russ Maxwell in Geneva, Switzerland.
• Alison Nicholls in Port Chester, New York.
• Robin Neudorfer in Sierra Madre, CA.
• Janis McElmurry in Lansing, Michigan.
• Vinita Pappas in Oregon.
• Gabrielle Rose in San Francisco, California.
• Keinyo White in Washington DC & New Zealand

This doesn’t fit on The Watercolor Gallery so I thought I’d share it here. Krüger is an amazing artist but what makes his work even more amazing is the scale at which he works. This painting of Mick Jagger is 71″x71″. Amazing detail at that size.

Inkling from Wacom records what you draw on paper and creates vector graphics, complete with multiple layers, that you can transfer to the computer in a variety of formats. It is also extremely portable and well-designed.

WANT. Watch the demo.

/via TechCrunch.

Looks like a great place to work for an artist of almost any type.

/via TheOneRing.net.

Finished. Learned a lot.

I have a lot to learn but I’m never going to learn if I don’t practice, practice, practice. So, here’s me practicing. I hope to finish this one this week and start a new one next week. I’m going to attempt one watercolor per week for a little while to get my legs back.

This is a fantastic video. That is all.

I thought that I should take some images of the process for this piece so that I can look back at it and learn where I went wrong. I believe I know where I went wrong so I am now sharing this information with the world. You know, for the betterment of mankind and all of that.

Step 1: Pencil drawing

This is where I believe I went wrong. Right here on step 1. I went off the rails immediately. I approached this painting by first drawing the entire thing in pencil. I don’t think I should have drawn as much detail as I did. Perhaps I should have drawn the fisherman – due to the complexity of his face, outfit and the lamp – but the rest I should have left up to the painting.

The reason I believe this is – as you will see from the following images – this painting became an exercise of coloring in the lines. The exact oposite of what I wanted to do.

Step 2: First wash.

I made a few small mistakes at this stage too. The beaches are a horrible color. In the finished piece they end up standing out much more than I would have liked. I also immediately began to lose the tone values for the painting.

(This is my term and may not be correct.) Tone values, for me, are how light or dark certain things are in a painting. So if one area is black, and one area is white, then everything else should make sense in between. Nothing should be too dark in tone or too light in tone when comparing it to the reference photo.

The birds in this step, for example, are nearly black already. In the reference photo there were a few areas that appeared very, very dark and nearly black. The birds were not one of those areas. So the tone values for this painting began to be lost very early on in the process. This is something that I could have rescued had I noticed it. But I didn’t.

Step 3: Second wash.

Now you can begin to see what I meant by the “color in the lines” approach I ended up taking. First off, the entire reference image is in a shade of blue. For whatever reason I lost track of this pretty early on and so I ended up choosing colors that I felt might end up looking OK instead of relying on the reference photo as my color guide. Stupid rookie mistake.

The other mistake you can begin to see is that I didn’t mix colors well enough for how complex the fisherman is. He’s got a lot going on and – again because I drew so much detail in the beginning – I tried to represent every single thing he had going on. In reality I could have gotten away with a much more constrained color palette.

When I showed my mother-in-law this painting at this stage I remember her saying “Is that a scarecrow?”. Well, obviously the lines are too blurred between the fisherman’s regalia and everything else. She had no idea how he was dressed and that he was wearing some sort of whicker jacket.

By this point this painting was so far off of the rails that I probably had little or no chance to bring it back. And, as a beginner, I didn’t even recognize my mistakes and so I continued to make the same ones with each step.

Step 4: Third wash

Do you hear that? That is the sound of a train wreck. I couldn’t bring myself to work much longer on this painting so I simply went onto step 5.

Step 5: Pencil outline. Done.

I quickly outlined a few key things with a pencil to make them stand out a bit and I’m washing my hands of this painting. It is going on my wall to remind me of my mistakes but eventually it will end up in the garbage.

Here is a list of the main lessons I’ve learned:

• Never draw too much detail in the beginning.
• Follow the reference photo as your color guide.
• Don’t try such complex paintings before you’re able to do them. You’ll only be discouraged.
• Be very aware of tone values.
• Never stop trying to get better.
• It is OK to throw a painting out and start over.

I hope by me sharing this process someone out there will see not only what I’ve noticed that I did wrong but also pick up other things too.

Today I’m going to focus on audience. I haven’t really talked much about audience since I began. To be honest, I wasn’t really focused on it. I was tracking it but I wasn’t worried about where the audience would come from or actively trying to grow the audience on my own. I didn’t buy any ads, share any links, or do anything special whatsoever. I simply focused on making a gallery that I would like to visit. In fact, the only update I gave regarding audience was back in August when I said:

“I have many, many ideas for The Watercolor Gallery and I’ll be working on them as the site gets more and more of an audience. Right now, after only a week, the audience seems to be near 50 people per day. I’m extremely happy with this.”

Well, the Watercolor Gallery has found an audience. Since that update there have been several surges in both traffic and people ‘following’ the gallery on Tumblr and Twitter. The two most notable surges amounted to thousands of new people being ‘members’ of the gallery. And if I was happy with 50 people per day I’m very happy for thousands. The two main surges resulted from a painting going ‘Tumblr-viral’ and, yesterday, The Watercolor Gallery being featured on Tumblr Tuesday.

By the way, having a single post go Tumblr-rival seemingly has more legs than being featured on Tumblr Tuesday. However, being featured is only 24 hours old so I’ll withhold firm judgement until the dust settles.

I have reason to be happy with The Watercolor Gallery gaining so much momentum in such a short period of time. As I said in August, I have plans for the gallery that would be utterly fruitless without a fairly large audience. So far I’ve added two new series to the gallery in addition to the paintings.

The artist interview series has been a smashing success. It isn’t easy, and took a bit of work from me to get rolling but so far the interviews that have been published are just great and the upcoming interviews (of which I have 12 in the can right now) are just outstanding. Watercolor artists are part of a global community and this fact shines through these interviews. So far I’ve published interviews with artists in Bangkok, Thailand, Waxahachie, Texas, Scarborough, England, Los Angeles, California and Jerome, Arizona. These interviews have not been the most popular (in terms of “likes” or “reblogs” on Tumblr) posts on the gallery but – I think – they add a certain professional nature to the gallery as a whole. The Watercolor Gallery isn’t just a Tumblog that reblogs every watercolor painting that passes by my desk. It is a serious look at how artists can be inspired by looking at and learning from other artists, their paintings and their workspaces.

Which leads us to the Artspaces series. In a word, this series has been a flop. I’ve gotten absolutely zero submissions since I began this series on the gallery. Zero. The artspaces that you see on the site have been gathered by me personally. I’ve searched for them, asked for permission from their respective owners to publish them, written the posts and published them. But I’m not giving up. I believe we have a lot to learn from the workspaces of every artist. I believe every artist should want to have their artspace published on The Watercolor Gallery – for two main reasons. First, I think it is an easy way to be seen on the gallery (whether or not the artist specializes in watercolor). With the audience growing every day it now means something to be featured on the gallery. Second, I think it is a fun series and who doesn’t like to have fun? I might be wrong about the Artspaces series but I’m going to give it a little while to catch on before I make that decision.

I believe the Tumblr community is one of less interaction then online communities of the past. They’d rather simply click a “like” button on a photo then read an entire post, submit a photo to your site or compete in a contest. At least, that is the way that it appears. I plan on overcoming this challenge by, hopefully, providing something valuable to everyone that joins the gallery. I hope The Watercolor Gallery becomes a notable moment in an artist’s journey when they are featured there and for it to be another tool for artists all over the world to be inspired by others.

The future of The Watercolor Gallery looks very bright. Some of the things I thought I would have to wait months to be able to try I believe I can do sooner thanks to these boosts in audience. I’m looking forward to working even harder on making The Watercolor Gallery a truly special place for watercolor artists and those they inspire to gather together and enjoy each other’s work and company. I’m extremely happy that so many people have thought it worthy of their “follow”.

To celebrate hitting this milestone I’ve begun posting interviews with artists from all over the world. I’ve been collecting these interviews for about a month in preparation for hitting the big One Oh Oh. The first interview is with Kannika Soonthornyankit from Bangkok, Thailand. I figured where better to start than half-way around the globe?

Future interviews will be with artists in New York, Texas, England, Switzerland and even some with artists that seem to have no permanent address.

The entire purpose of The Watercolor Gallery, as stated on its about page, is to help inspire me and others to do great work in watercolor. The artist interview series is just one more way that I’m trying to accomplish that goal.

I’ve got plans for how to celebrate reaching 250 and 500 works of art in the archive but you’ll just have to wait and see what those are.

To anyone that has subscribed to The Watercolor Gallery’s RSS feed, followed it on Tumblr, or followed @h2ocolor on Twitter – thank you. Thank you for being interested and hopefully inspired. Stay tuned, there is much more to come.

/via Coudal Partners.

The Watercolor Gallery is not even two months old yet and it has 70+ pieces of art in its archive, a Twitter account, a brand-new domain name thanks to Jesse Davis, a fledgling yet unused mailing list (you can subscribe on the gallery’s homepage), and much more.

How, in such a short period of time, could one person who is running this website as a few-hours-a-week hobby possibly have set all of this up? It is all about the tools.

The website, as you’re undoubtedly aware, is using Tumblr for both hosting and the content management. I use the “Share on Tumblr” bookmarklet to quickly create drafts during the week as I rummage around the Internet – which I’ll then go back in later (typically on Sunday mornings) and pretty them up, write some sort of description and queue them up for the entire week. Tumblr has made creating posts for the site quicker than any other software I’ve ever tried – and I’ve used a lot over the last 16 years.

The mailing list, which I haven’t yet used but am collecting email addresses for to the tune of a few a day, is powered by Mail Chimp. For my use, so far, Mail Chimp is free and simple to use. Win, win.

Having an account on Twitter has several advantages. Many people do not use feed readers. Having a Twitter account, even though there are a very few people following it currently, makes it possible for those that do not use feed readers but do use Twitter to keep up-to-date with the gallery. The other main advantage is being able to engage the community and artists that I find on Twitter under The Watercolor Gallery’s brand other than my own Twitter account.

To track the statistics for The Watercolor Gallery I’m using Google Analytics. It does a pretty decent job of quickly showing me what people are most interested in on the site as well as whether or not people simply come and go or if they stick around and look through the gallery or not. It is pretty interesting to see.

For an upcoming artist interview series, wherein I will interview some of the artists who have been featured on the gallery already, I am using a quickly thrown together and free Wufoo form. This form asks the artists the same few questions, collates all of the information together for me, and emails me an easily digestable block of text that I can then use for the interview itself. It is quite wonderful really.

Aside from that I may need to edit an image here or there to fit the gallery – which I use the incredible Acorn for.

Although I’m sure the number of tools I use to make life easy over at The Watercolor Gallery will increase or change – I’m really happy about how easy it is to put out what I think is a fantastic website.

Lets just say I’m enjoying myself. I’ve wanted to put together a site like this for longer than I can remember. Tumblr has made this incredibly easy. So far The Watercolor Gallery’s archive is sporting over 30 works of art dating from 1868 to 2010. I’m learning how to keep on a schedule, to build up a queue for times when I’m not near the computer, and also finding my slightly critical but more or less positive voice for the blog.

I have many, many ideas for The Watercolor Gallery and I’ll be working on them as the site gets more and more of an audience. Right now, after only a week, the audience seems to be near 50 people per day. I’m extremely happy with this.

The first idea is to have weekly feature threads which I’m starting this week. This week’s feature thread is Scrolls from China. Each day The Watercolor Gallery will feature a work from their archive in hopes to bring some attention to orphans in need in China. (The posts for the entire week are already in the queue and scheduled thanks to Tumblr.)

Other ideas that I have will require a slightly larger audience. Also, a slightly more global audience. As it stands, as far as I can tell from the few statistics I’ve been able to gather, most of the visitors to the gallery have been from the United States.

If you enjoy watercolor in anyway please consider following on Tumblr or subscribing to the gallery’s feed.

“I love watercolor art. For years I’ve found inspiration by looking at the works of others and trying to determine their techniques, methods and tools – all while enjoying each piece of art for what it is.

The Watercolor Gallery is my collection of the best of what I find in my quest to be inspired and taught by others.”

I’ve just barely got my feet wet over the last few days so I’ll have much more to say about this project in the future. For now, however, consider following it on Tumblr or subscribing to the feed if you are a fan of watercolor like me.

Taking just shy of three years to complete, this amazing representation of Tolkien’s fictional city Minas Tirith is made completely out of matchsticks. The Great White City, as it is referred to, is made up of almost a half-million matchsticks.

I linked to its progress a little over a year ago and I’m happy that Patrick Acton, the artist and constructor of this great work, was dedicated enough to finish it. It is gorgeous.

Here is how Shane describes his work:

“These are actual photographs straight from my Canon camera. I grab my camera and follow my intuition as everyday objects in nature and around the house call out to me to reveal their hidden beauty. I like to slip into the flow of energy that lies beneath the surface of things we find useful, comforting, or perhaps have come to take for granted. The camera lens distills the essence of color and pattern, while also showing the inter-connectedness that we miss from the perspective of so-called normal reality. Though I can be as cranky as the next person, I love being able to find beauty virtually everywhere and share it with you. These images are created fully “in camera” and are not manipulated otherwise.”

The fact that Shane is able to create such amazing images without using any special equipment or post-processing is evidence of his artistry.

A messy pile of brushes.

Inventoried and repaired.

Picked up a copy of Lessons from a Lifetime of Watercolor Painting by Donald Voorhees. I’m going to go through this entire book this winter. First step is to get my brushes inventoried. A few of them were broken so I fixed them (no need to spend money on more).

Continued from Day two: The shell.

The warmth of the egg startled him at first. He never expected, in this cold, for the egg to be as warm as it was. Putting his hand back on the egg he tried to gauge the temperature of this massive, greenish egg that had suddenly appeared in his backyard. He figured it had to be near body temperature. It wasn’t hot to the touch but it was more like holding your own hand.

Putting a little of his own weight into it, he pushed the egg with one hand. It didn’t budge.

He looked around it quickly to see if might be sunk into the earth in such a way that it would prop itself up some. It didn’t seem like it. It was setting nicely in some sort of grass. It couldn’t have been his grass because his grass was covered by at least a few inches of snow.

Snow. Snow usually meant tracks. He hadn’t noticed any tracks in the yard that looked abnormal. A few from him, walking back and forth to the barn since the last squall. A few from Rufus, his 50lb. collie-mix, that seems to go right under the egg. Where was Rufus?

That dog was always on the go. Ted couldn’t remember the last time he saw him. Probably around breakfast on the day he found the egg. That was almost 48 hours ago now! Rufus’ tracks went directly under the egg and out the other side towards the back of the barn. It didn’t look like he was injured by, well, whatever might have left (or, laid?) this egg here.

Anyway, Ted Arnold was no tracker. Even in snow. He never picked up that trait. Whenever his brother would show him deer tracks during a hunt and say “See, this is a doe and she was moving pretty quickly through here towards the river. She left some poop right here, which means she’s definitely a doe by the way the stool doesn’t clump like a male deer’s does.” Todd would just nod his head and mumble something about figuring that himself. In truth, Todd had no idea what they were looking at. Sure he saw the tracks, he saw the poop, but he didn’t know if they were coming or going, made by a female deer or a sasquatch. The only thing he could think about when they were hunting was getting back to the cabin to warm his freezing toes by the fire.

His brother’s skills might have come in handy today if there was a single track out of the ordinary here in the snow. It hadn’t snowed since the day before the egg appeared. So if anything was here that could have left tracks, they’d be clearly visible. And they weren’t. What could have possibly laid such an egg and not leave a single track? What could have built a small nest for the egg without moving so much as a snowflake? Maybe Ted was just so bad at tracking that he couldn’t make out the tracks. Who knows?

He decided to call his brother and ask him to come over to have a look. Ted Arnold made for the house pretty quickly once he had made up his mind to call his older brother David. Ted had David’s number on speed-dial. They talked often to coordinate fishing and hunting trips.

David’s phone just rang and rang. Weird. Ted was sure that David had an answering machine. He decided to try David’s work number at the shop. David’s day job, now that he wasn’t helping out at the farm anymore, was a mechanic for the local GM dealer. Since GM wasn’t getting a lot of work lately David was usually only there in the morning. But Ted thought he’d try it anyway.

“We’re sorry, but this number has been disconnected.” was what Ted thought he heard the voice say over the phone. Disconnected?

Looking out of the window at the egg, which sat about 25 yards away from the back door, Ted noticed that it had begun to snow. Well, that’d mean that his brother’s tracking skills were no longer of use. He’d try him again later.

Hanging up the phone Ted walked outside into what seemed like an amazing squall. The flakes were coming straight down and were the size of half-dollars. Everything was getting a fresh coat of snow, and quickly. Everything but the egg, of course. The egg was way too warm to let snow sit on it for very long.

Ted began to wonder if the egg was in danger of getting too cold. He thought back to the hen house. How all of the mother hens would cover their eggs to keep them at a constant temperature. Why didn’t this egg need to be protected? Was something going to come back and sit on it? Why was it so warm?

Then Ted thought about what could make the egg so warm. Something must be warming it from the inside of the egg, rather than the outside of the egg. There was nothing underneath it that could be heated it from below. So there was only one answer that he could think of.

Life.

To be continued…

“NaNoDrawMo is a personal challenge to push would-be artists beyond the bounds of comfortable “when I have time” practice for one month and see what happens.” All of my drawings are being done using the incredible Acorn by Flying Meat.

Continued from Day one: Discovery.

NaNoDrawMo – Day two: The Shell.

The appearance of the object was such that it was almost undeniably an egg. The shape, the texture, the way it sat upright on its bulging bottom in amongst some well-placed blades of grass made it quite obvious.
Wait. Well placed? What placed this egg here? Whatever it was it must have been something pretty big. Ted Arnold spent the next few minutes guessing the size of the egg from a few feet away. It was about as tall as him, he figured. Perhaps a bit more. Although he hadn’t yet tried, he guessed that he couldn’t wrap his arms around it. That meant it was at least 7 ft. around. Wow, 7 ft. around!

Just then an odd odor sprang into his nose. Had the wind shifted? Did he just pick up the scent now after standing near this object for so long? He looked around to make sure there was nothing in close by that could be producing this odor. It wasn’t a bad smell, he thought. It smelled like someone had just taken a long hot shower. Not quite like soap but a lot like hot water, if hot water even had a scent. The barn, which was only about 15 yards away, had a very distinct smell. Wet hay. Because of a few holes in the roof and it being late fall the barn always smelled this way. The scent Ted was smelling at this moment was most definitely not the barn. In any case he didn’t see anything that could be producing this scent besides the egg.

He took a few steps towards the egg. Standing this close he could see the texture much more clearly now. The surface was anything but smooth. Bumps, divots, pin-hole sized craters covered the egg from top to bottom. Just like a chicken’s egg, he thought.

Growing up on a farm meant that Ted had tons of chores as a child. One of those chores, which he still does to this day, was to clean out the chicken coop and collect the eggs every single morning. Looking at the egg’s texture now it immediately reminded him of how a chicken egg felt in his hands. From a few feet away though, chicken eggs seem relatively smooth with hardly any texture at all. If you look closely at a chicken egg the texture becomes obvious.
This reminded Ted of the moon. The moon, shining brilliantly in the night sky, looked flat as a quarter. Sure there were shades of grey that he now knew were enormous craters, valleys, and shadows produced by large mountains that covered the surface. He thought back to the first time he saw man step foot onto the moon. He was about 12 years old when his father was watching a program on TV chronicling man’s achievements in Space.

Space. Could this egg be from outer Space?

Stepping even closer to the egg Ted outstretched his hand, which at this point was fairly cold due to the wind, and held it an inch from the shell about halfway down the egg. He knew from reading up on eggs that typically the yolk of the egg is suspended in the middle with a pocket of air on the bottom and the “egg white” on the top. He wasn’t sure what made him think of that but at this point everything he knew about eggs was flashing through his mind. He placed his hand on the egg pretty firmly as a way to also gauge the weight of it when immediately he noticed something he didn’t expect…

The egg was incredibly warm.

Continued on Day three: Life.

“NaNoDrawMo is a personal challenge to push would-be artists beyond the bounds of comfortable “when I have time” practice for one month and see what happens.” All of my drawings are being done using the incredible Acorn by Flying Meat.

NaNoDrawMo – Day one: Discovery.

Ted Arnold, a farmer from New England, notices what appears to be an egg just outside of his barn. Cautiously he approaches the object wondering where it may have come from.

As he stares at it for a few minutes from about 10 feet away he remembers a distant memory from when he was younger. Long before his father died and left him his corn-feed farm that he had run for over 40 years. Long before his mom died when he was 8 during one of the hardest winter storms in the history of Vermont.

This memory was from a time when his father used to tell him and his sister stories around the fire. Stories from when he was young. Stories like the time when his grandfather brought his father and his aunts and uncles on a boat from Wales and immigrated to the United States. Coming through New York City, trying to find work, slowly building up enough money to get to Vermont and ultimately building the family farm. The story that was coming to mind now, however, was a story of the time they thought they found something outside of the barn and his grandfather made his father and the rest of the family stay in the house for nearly an entire month! His father explained how he had no idea what happened after they found, whatever it was, out by the barn. His grandfather wouldn’t say anything. He barely ate, slept, or talked to them for the month. The children just went about their business of doing their school work, playing card games, and doing some of their chores that they could do – indoors.

When the month was over, his father told him while staring at the fire, his grandfather came back into the house nearly sulking. He had never seen his grandfather, or his father for that matter, cry. But when he described the way he held himself he knew that this was about as close to that as possible.

That was all his father told him. That was all he knew! And now, could it be, whatever had happened so many years ago is happening again? A strange object has appeared in the same spot his father described in his story. But now, there was no one around to tell him what it was. No one for at least 4 miles, actually.

He decided to get a little closer to it.

Continued in Day two: The shell.

“NaNoDrawMo is a personal challenge to push would-be artists beyond the bounds of comfortable “when I have time” practice for one month and see what happens.” All of my drawings are being done using the incredible Acorn by Flying Meat.

I’m thinking of participating in NaNoDrawMo an art initiative that takes place through the month of November. The inspiration comes from Steven Frank (whom I interviewed a few months ago) and he was inspired by NaNoWriMo the month-long annual writing initiative that happens every November.

It seems like a big challenge. 50 works of art in 30 days. But, I’ll give it a shot.

Update: NaNoDrawMo now has an official URL: NaNoDrawMo.org.

For our 10th anniversary, which was on the 27th of August, we received an incredible gift from Eliza’s mother Carla – an anniversary party in our favor. Since she told us many months in advance that she was going to throw us this party we were able to help with some of the planning and, something I thoroughly enjoyed doing, the invitations.

Since we were planning on inviting a few hundred people I knew that we couldn’t do anything like the LOST invitations (since they took a long time to do) and certainly nothing hand-drawn like the thank you card that I had done in the past. This had to be something digital, printable, personal, fun, and reflect our personalities.

My favorite set of photos of Eliza and I are ones that we took in a photo booth. To be honest I don’t even know where we were when we took these photos (I’m sure Eliza will leave a comment below answering this) but I just know that these were some of my favorite photos of us. I decided to extend that idea into the invitation and started to browse around online for inspiration.

I ended up finding several examples of people that had taken photo booth generated photos to use them in “film strips” as ways to create things like invitations and other fun projects. Once I had the idea in mind, I opened Photoshop and got to work.

The idea and execution is amazingly simple. Take a single film strip, duplicate it as many times as you want, move them around to make them look like they are sitting on a table, and pop in some photos. But we had a problem. We knew we needed to have text on the invitation for things like the date and time, location, and RSVP information. So Eliza had the idea that we’d hold up blank sheets of paper and I’d then be able to add the text later. This worked out really well since we were able to position the information anyway that we wanted it and spread it out over the invitation as we thought would look neat.

So Eliza and I fired up Photo Booth, an application that comes with all Macintoshes, took a few hundred random photos of us doing silly faces, normal faces, holding up wine, cats, and blank sheets of paper. Then, I slowly placed us into all of the film strips and rotated them until we were happy. Then we saved the file and sent it off to Overnight Prints – a simple and inexpensive printery that we’ve used in the past.

The invitations turned out to be a pretty big hit and now I’m looking forward to putting something together for the thank you cards that we’ll be sending everyone.

Decided to try my hand at the aforelinked Odosketch. Taking inspiration from the Black-eyed Susans I drew this. Pretty neat to see it played back.

I played around with Odosketch for a few minutes and at first glance – it is one of the better ‘in-browser’ sketching tools out there. I look forward to working with it in the future. Via David Kaneda.

Although the sketches only tell part of the story I really like to see this sort of process where the artist slowly brings the character to life. Each sketch is a character onto itself but finding Carl through all of these is the challenge/reward.

I think my favorite tweak from the first Carl drawn to the final Carl is the length of his neck. Oh, and the sideburns Carl sports near age 50 are super.

Since I’m just now getting the chance to post about this bookmark I thought I’d take some time to share the process I went through to create this bookmark – albeit simple. Sometimes, and maybe this is only true for me, we look at things at being too difficult or involved to have the time to do instead of just giving it a try. This is usually the case for me and any art project I plan on doing. By sharing the process I’m hoping to debunk that myth a little. Making these little art projects can be both fun and not take up too much of your time.

I started out searching Flickr for bookmarks, geishas, and anything I thought that would inspire me to create this bookmark. You can rummage through my favorites on Flickr to see anything that I’ve found on Flickr that I find inspiring. Somewhere in there are a few elements that I pieced together in my mind in order to create this project. A geisha drawing here, a Japanese sign there, and I ended up with an idea.

Next, I began to make rough sketches (pictured above, click the photo for a larger view) of how I wanted to draw the geisha for the bookmark. I tried four different styles. One that had an umbrella, which didn’t turn out well. One that was a more anime/kid-like take on a geisha that I believe is from a current cartoon that I didn’t think fit with this project. And one that I ultimately settled on. Once I found the style I thought I liked the best, I sketched it a second time for practice.

I then outlined the geisha on a corner of small 140lb. watercolor paper. This gave me two straight edges off-the-bat and made it easy for me to make two simple cuts to finish the project. Using my simple set of watercolors I painted the geisha and was done. In retrospect my “keep it simple” approach worked well for this bookmark though I would have liked to experiment with making a “crazy” or “detailed” edition of this bookmark. Maybe next time.

Told you it was simple, but it was a lot of fun, and Eliza liked it!

I’m embedding part one “Initial lay in” here. You can watch part two “Laying in light and shadow shapes”, and part three “Finish and refine” on Viddler.

As I’m finishing my re-reading of The Two Towers, and will be revisiting this grand city made in the side of a mountain in a few pages, I can’t help but link to a complete replica of Minas Tirith made of matchsticks. Via Boing Boing.

Update: Turns out they’ve finished it.

Random 60: Doing what you love, not what you’re good at. | Favorite on Viddler.

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I often find myself doing things that I really like to do, even if I’m not particularly good at them. Art, for me, is a great example. I like dabbling with watercolors, pastels, pencil sketches, and even digital art like Flip. Basketball is also another example. I love playing basketball but I don’t think anyone on earth would consider me very good at it.

What do you love to do even if you’re not particularly good at it?

Side note: Thanks for all of the excellent feedback I’ve been getting from the Random 60 videos. These have been truly fun to make and I plan on continuing.

Date taken: February 10, 2009.

In the lobby of Ben Franklin TechVentures is this neat piece of metal/art of the Ben Franklin logo. Viddler is annexed in this building.

My latest challenge to myself has been to figure out my own style. I’ve been doing small exercises in sketching to, besides simply practice, figure out how I want to approach a specific project. For instance, I have a card from Hawai’i with a lovely, classic style woman on the front wearing a grass skirt. I tried redrawing the picture as I see it on the front of the card. I failed miserably. I then tried a ridiculous rendition. It was, well, ridiculous. I then tried something of my own – something I could do rather quickly without a lot of thought or erasing. It turned out better.

I have no idea if this is the proper exercise to figure out what style I want to follow. But I’m hoping to one day stumble across a particular style that I can get comfortable and succeed in. Something that makes me happy with the project that I’m working on, is relatively easy to do (for me), and ends up being me. I realize this could take years but I think I will find just as much enjoyment in trying to find my style as I will in actually finding it.

How in the world haven’t I been subscribed to XKCD? Thanks to SuggestRSS (more on this service soon) now I am. The above is one of my favorite recent comics. The subtle details, even in a simple drawing style such as it is, are a really nice touch.

Source: XKCD.com
Via: SuggestRSS.

My feet hurt just thinking about it.

That is why I decided to make a Thank You card instead of buying one. In late-December Eliza and I stayed at my brother’s house in North Carolina. We enjoyed ourselves and they were more than gracious hosts. I thought that reason enough to send them a Thank You card for everything they did for us.

At first I didn’t have any idea what I wanted to create. I did some simple Google Image searches for inspiration. After paging through countless results, refining my search over and over, I finally came across this image. The idea is simple enough. One animal per letter. Neat. Then it hit me… instead of an animal per letter what about an activity that we were grateful to have done with my brother and his family?

That is what this Thank You card attempts to represent. Although, I look at it now and wish that I spent a little more time on the alignment of the circles but, save that one minor detail, I’m happy with the way it came out.

The card was created using a three-step process. Pencil sketch, color with crayon, and then outline the objects using a marker. After I asked Eliza to quickly trace some quarter-sized circles (she actually used a 25-cent piece) I made some simple pencil sketches of the things we wanted on the card. In order from left to right: playing basketball, visiting wineries and enjoying wine, watching football games, making soup, Eliza and the kids building a gingerbread house, taking photos, the cozy fire, and making cupcakes. There were many other things we enjoyed doing during our visit, but hey – I only had 8 letters.

After the sketches were more or less in the form you see them now I crudely colored the entire thing in using crayon. I haven’t colored in years so this was sort of interesting. I’d like to work on coloring a little more but I’ll get back to that at a later date.

After I finished the coloring I redrew all of the outlines using a fine tipped black marker. This helped to define the objects, bring the coloring to some focus with hard edges, and make the card stand out a bit more.  I also then drew in the letters at the bottom of each circle.

Oh, the photo represented on the card was inspired by a real photograph we took though I changed the color of our shirts to make each person stand out a bit. Eliza’s favorite color is yellow so that is why her shirt is that color. You’re welcome babe!

This was a fun project to put together. Whenever there is a purpose and a little bit of thought behind something it is a much more rewarding experience to create it and give it away. I’m looking forward to the next excuse I have create something like this again.

This comes courtesy of Jason Kottke, so if you subscribe to his site – you’ve already seen this. For those of you that haven’t - meet Willard Wigan, an artist who specializes in micro-sculptures. Willard manages to sculpt the world’s smallest pieces of art that reside inside the eye of a needle or on top of the head of a pin.

His method is indeed madness. He uses a single hair off the back of a common house fly as his paint brush. He keeps his hands steady by working in between the beating of his heart. He once inhaled an Alice from Wonderland piece he was working. Which, in and of itself, would have been frustrating, but it turns out his works of art are rather valuable. He recently sold his entire collection (which at least count was somewhere between 12-15 separate pieces) for $20,000,000.

ABC News Video: Willard Wigan micro sculptor.
BBC Article: THROUGH THE EYE OF A NEEDLE.
Official Site: Willard Wigan :: Micro Sculptor.

Speaking of KISS (you may or may not have seen my Waking Ideas post from last week called Meeting Gene), here is a really interesting gallery from Ron English called The Secret History of KISS.

In the above art I count 4 Gene Simmons, 2 Paul Stanleys, a ton of Tommy Thayers, and only one Peter Criss. What gives? Maybe Ron English really likes Thayer.

Source: The Secret History of KISS.

Eric Fortune goes over his process from sketch to finished piece. Not only is this a good glimpse into a good artist’s process but also how the process ends up playing a big part in the style of the piece.

I love stuff like this.

Source: Creative Process: Eric Fortune.
Via: OMG Posters.

I really think I just like the idea of creating dolls that “cheer you up because they are so sad looking”.  That and I think these would make great gifts for kids because they are cheap, made for each person you’re giving them to, and get away from the normal dolls that we see today that are all about high-fashion and bull crap.

PDF: Download the PDF for the doll.
Source: Make Your Own Sympathy Doll on Viddler.

Speaking of Bob Ross, you can watch a ton of his episodes online. Not all of the videos are complete episodes, so you’ll have to watch the duration closely. But, there are some gems.

I blame Troy Rutter for me taking a stroll through my memories and wanting to watch a ton of Bob Ross videos.

Source: Google Video Search “Bob Ross Videos”.

One of the great things about the Web is that inspiration can spread in ways it never has been able to in human history. Whether you blog, Twitter, or use any of the social services now available – remember that anything you do or say could inspire someone else to do something (and in my cases in an even greater way than you could have yourself).

Thanks Troy, you’ve inspired me to someday take up oil painting so that I too can live-out my childhood memories of watching Bob Ross “just beat the devil out of it”.

Source: Lessons Learned in Painting.

I’ve only put The Owl on there for now, but I plan on putting other odds and ends on there soon.

Source: Art by Colin Devroe.

I’m going to try to keep doing watercolor paintings, maybe even one each week. This week I really wanted to do an owl, so here I present my fifth watercolor in this new effort; The Owl.

I tried a few techniques this time that I hadn’t before. Some of them worked out quite well, like under-shading on the Owl (probably hard to see in any of the photos).  Some of them didn’t work out so well, because I did them wrong, like the snow by using salt.  I didn’t use enough water to make the salt effective.

The salt, if done right, will cause the watercolor to separate and move away from the salt. It would end up causing a neat effect that would work well for snow, stars, or other textures. But, again, I didn’t use enough water for this to work.

There is a lot that I would do differently, if given the chance, so I’m really looking forward to my next crack at another painting next week.  Overall I’m thrilled with the way this painting came out – but there are a few subtle things (like the snow) that I wanted to add to this and I simply didn’t do it the right way.

Live, learn, move on, try again. Here are some more photos of my watercolor paintings. Next I think I’m going to tackle a Japanese sign.

Speaking of watercolor painting – I thought these pieces, and prints, by Oliver Jeffers were rather inspiring.

Source: Picture Book Prints by Oliver Jeffers.
Via: OMG Posters.

There isn’t much of an inspiring story behind either of these pieces. The orchids painting was a lesson from a Japanese watercolor painting book that Eliza picked up for me. The birch tree I wanted to do because, for whatever reasons, birch trees are some of my favorite trees.

I plan on doing this same orchid painting at least a few more times.  The techniques in the book are beyond both my abilities and, I think, the abilities of my brushes. My watercolor brush set isn’t of the highest quality. In order to have the reeds, or leafs, in this painting be much better than they are in this first try – I will need to get the technique down.

I’m fairly pleased with how this piece came out. It took me about 3 and 1/2 hours to complete the painting, since I had to allow the paint do dry between “coats”. My impatience near the end is probably what caused the tree, specifically the trunk, not to turn out exactly like I wanted to. Less a problem of technique and more a problem of patience on this one.

I’m looking forward to doing many more this winter. My goal is to get good enough at watercolor to make a piece that I want to hang in our apartment.

Essentially it is art using paper but instead of Origamido’s approach, which is only using one sheet of paper, Julien uses scissors and other tools to create a scene or object.

Pretty cool stuff.

Source: Julien Vallée.
Via: Coudal Partners.