Artomatic 2012

It's been a few years since they've held an full fledged Artomatic event around DC, but this year's show is just a few days away.

Anyway, I'm in it this year, so are over 1000 other artists. It opens Friday May 18th at 6pm, and will be open until June 23rd. Check it out.

I've got a  couple of paintings up, one new, one a year or two old, and a bunch of drawings.  If you make it out to the show, I am up on the 9th floor.  Find my space and leave a comment.  A nice one.  A nice glowing complimentary comment that goes into great depth about how my art has moved you.  Or something..

P.S. The first 12 people to come by my space will get a free cupcake from Red Velvet Cupcakery.

Guy

I went to Politics & Prose with my sister tonight and heard Guy Delisle talk about his the making of his "Travel Chronicle" comics and especially his new book Jerusalem.  He was a great speaker with a really nice sense of humor and was pleasure to listen to & talk with.

Bonus, I got these sweet signatures & sketches from him in a couple of his books. (which are amazing and everyone should buy them and read them all now.  Like, NOW now.  Like tonight, go buy it tonight.)

Dr. Sketchy's Baltimore

I checked out a Dr. Sketchy's session at The Windup Space in Baltimore this week. (on a school night *gasp*!)

I didn't accomplish much worth showing as the vast majority of the time was spend on very short sketches, but I managed to produce a couple of decent, if unfinished drawings.  Still, it was fun drawing burlesque model Lauren Marleaux as she channeled her best Joan Holloway before sharing her more usual garb. (and let me add it was very humbling seeing the drawings by all the extremely talented artists who also showed up for the event.)

Waterfront SE

We intended to go into Nationals park to have our sketchcrawl during the ballgame, but had a hard time finding each other!  So when I finally ran into Matt we decided to stick to the waterfront and sketch a bit there.  I finished one sketch, but only got through a little of the other.

Drawing Marathon

Alexis, our model from 5:00 pm-7:00pm.

VisArts in Rockville MD had its 3rd annual "Draw 'til you drop" marathon this weekend. Organized by the talented Ricardo Pontes, (see his blog post for more info on how it went- theres a picture of me in there somewhere) the marathon was a 12 hour life drawing session where we were able to draw 7 different models through out the day.  It was a lot of fun, and went by in a flash.  Can't wait for the next one. There are a couple more sketches at my Flickr account.

Alyssa, our model from 9:00am-11:00am.

Keith, our model from 11:00am-1:00pm.

Rhus & Blueriverdream, our models from1:00pm-3:00pm.

Jason, our model from 3:00pm-5:00pm.

Zeki, our model from 7:00pm-9:00pm.

Columbia Heights Alley

So the original plan was to go to a couple of bookstores around the city and put prints of this sketch in the pages of as many copies of "The Art of Urban Sketching" as I could find. (Not an original idea, as fans of the Post Secret blog & books do this too with their anonymous confessions.) It turns out though that none of the bookstores actually had any copies on the shelves, so no-go on that idea. Instead I went back to the alley in Columbia Heights where I drew the original sketch and found some spots to give them away or hide them for people to find.

I found a couple of windshields to drop the envelopes.  Some that drove off before I got a picture of them,  of course not without a few funny looks as they picked up what I left for them.

When I felt like too many eyes where on me to put the last few envelopes on some windshields.  I found some bicycle baskets to drop them in.  A couple that also came and went before I got a picture off.

The original sketch

New Painting

I've had a bit of a dry spell when it comes to making art lately, but I've started a couple new pieces to try and get back into it.  There was an piece I began of the Eastman Theater I tried to finish a while back that, for what ever reason, became a a road block I wasn't able to get past.  There was another piece of a statue in Sweden that ended up having the same way.  Half finished, with no motivation to keep working on them, or frankly much of anything.

So I am putting them aside and hopefully will be able move past whatever it was that was mentally in my way.  So here is a quick, grainy, iphonie shot of a larger drawing/painting I've started.  I haven't been terribly consistent in my time spent on it, but compared to the last two or three years I'm doing much better at moving it along. 

(p.s. It's not meant to bee folded like this, the finished product will be flattened out)