A sketch a day: nocturnal tree
Into the Woods (miniature)
Into the Woods (Miniature) – colored pencil on canvas, 3.5" x 2.5"
The original miniature ($35.00) is available in my Miniatures online gallery.
A sketch a day: walking horse
Fun fact: Sharpie marks sip into drawing paper surprisingly fast. So fast that even quick sketches like this one become a battle against ink blobs appearing in the most undesirable places. It’s kind of funny as long as I make the exercise short and repeat it rarely enough to forget that reaching for a Sharpie is not a better option than hunting for a normal drawing pen hiding somewhere in the depths of my drawers, bins, and cans.
Gathering II
As busy as this year’s Silicon Valley Open Studios were, I managed to snatch up some time for drawing. The result is the second piece in the “Gatherings” series that was finished yesterday a couple of hours before the last day of Open Studios in front of the Cupertino Library was over.
Thank you everybody who came to see my art, to ask questions, share your stories, and support what I enjoy to do so much. Those were three wonderful weekends!
Artist trading card exchange at CAG
I planned to try something new with ATC for this exchange at CAG: galloping horse hooves, parts of horse faces, or something like that. Instead, I ended up with four whole horse heads.
Maybe the fact that Newborn is taking longer than anticipated to get finished has something to do with it, I don’t know.
Here are the heads:
And this is what I got from my wonderful fellow artists:
A sketch a day: bad hair day
Silicon Valley Open Studios 2014
It’s Open Studios time! Please join me and very talented artists with whom I will be showing through the first three weekends of this May. So wonderful to participate in this event again after a 2 year break!
WEEKEND ONE: MAY 3RD & 4TH
Site 339
With Amanda Krauss, Krishna Mitra, Slava Shabrov, and Holly Van Hart.
30 Sunrise Court
Menlo Park, CA 94025
WEEKEND TWO: MAY 10TH & 11TH
Site 130
With Rajiv Khilnani, Stephanie Maclean, Deborah Rockey, Slava Shabrov, and Arena Shawn.
750 Jordan Avenue
Los Altos, CA 94022
WEEKEND THREE: MAY 17TH & 18TH
Site 149
With Ria Bhatt, Janki Chokshi, Sagi Erez, Helen Ju, James Lee, Colleen O’Connor, Masha Schultz, Slava Shabrov, Heather Sibley, Nina Uppaluru, Sid Veloria, and Carrie Zeidman.
10300 Torre Avenue
Cupertino, CA 95014
Or see all sites in one place on my SVOS page.
SVOS Preview Art Exhibit at the Main Street Cafe and Books
“Summer Day in Santa Cruz Mountains” has been accepted at the SVOS Preview Art Exhibit at the Main Street Cafe that will be open from March 29 till April 26, 2014.
Please stop by, have a cup of good coffee, and enjoy art by talented local artists!
Main Street Cafe and Books is located at 134 Main St, Los Altos, CA 94022
Open Monay – Saturaday 7:30 am – 5:00 pm, Sunday 9:30 am -2:30 pm.
Overlooked Beauty
Lady’s smock (cuckoo flowers) are tiny and very unassuming when we walk past them or over them. Their beautiful purple, lilac, and whitish colors is about all that can be easily appreciated when they form a patch. I love shooting and drawing little things like these and then look closely at the shapes, lines, and colors that make them up and draw it all bigger than in real life.
This was my first attempt to use colored pencils on wood and do a three-dimensional piece. While it was an interesting experience spreading a drawing over more than one plane I think I will stick to my usual two dimensions. But I do want to continue experimenting with drawing on wood. It adds a unique glow that shines through pencilwork and makes it look quite different. I like that.
As it turned out, I need to be careful placing strokes over wood; the same color will look differently as wooden textures change over the board, as strokes are laid along the fibers, across them, or at an angle. And forget about scanning the finished piece. A lot of fine color details get lost along with the wonderful glowing effect of the wood.
The original is available in my Colored Pencil online gallery for $45.00
Running Free is a part of the SVOS Preview Art Exhibit at Saratoga Library
“Running Free” has been accepted to the Saratoga Library Preview Art Exhibit that will run from March 4 till May 1, 2014.
Saratoga Library is located at 13650 Saratoga Avenue, Saratoga CA.
Open Mon-Tue 1:00 pm – 9:00 pm, Wed-Sat 10:00 am – 6:00 pm, Sun 1:00 pm – 5:00 pm.
A sketch a day: walk in the park
Trying to exercise patient light strokes after dealing with canvas and rough watercolor paper. Somehow I got too heavy-handed for smooth drawing paper and with this little sketch had to stop and remind myself that the goal was to go with light strokes. As in, light on everything.
White Fantasy
This is my latest miniature partly inspired by a very cold and snowy winter of 2011-2012 and partly made because right now here in California it’s overly warm and sunny even by local standards. In the process of bringing winter closer to me I found out that a digital canvas can take a fair amount of scraping with x-acto knife which is pretty convenient for putting snow over heavily darkened areas.
The original is available in my Miniatures online gallery for $35.00
A sketch a day: Rocky Mountain Horse
A sketch a day: horse in the water
Artist trading card exchange at CAG
Yesterday at the meeting in the Campbell Artists’ Guild we had an artist trading card exchange. This is what I brought, they are my experiments with metal pens and markers combined with colored pencils:
And this is what I got in return:
Pretty wonderful extra gifts for my Birthday! 🙂
On the Way series at the KALEID Gallery
The new three piece series, On the Way, and another small work, Gathering I, will be a part of the upcoming annual HARK! exhibit and sale at the KALEID Gallery.
The On the Way series is my exploration of people in transit, both literally, on foot, and metaphorically as a state of mind, the experience. I kept the details to the minimum because they would be a distraction to the notion of “here and now” that in this case was more important to me then particular surroundings or the final destination. Oil pastel is a perfect medium for this; it does not eagerly land itself for a lot of details, so staying vague is pretty easy.
The opening reception will be held during the San Jose First Friday, on December 6th, 2013 from 7 pm till 11 pm. If you are in the area, stop by to see high quality art of amazing variety and to chat with the artists.
The exhibition will continue until January 18th, 2014.
KALEID Gallery is located at 88 S 4th St, San Jose, CA 95112.
Open Tuesday – Friday from 12:00 pm till 7:00 pm, Saturday from 12:00 pm till 5:00 pm.
The originals of “On the Way I” and “On the Way II” went to their new good homes!
A new piece at the Art Under $200 exhibit at the Pacific Art League
I am pleased to announce that both my pieces submitted to the Art Under $200 exhibit at the Pacific Art League have been accepted.
You probably saw this one already:
And this is a new artwork that was not shown anywhere else yet:
The opening reception for the exhibit will be a part of the Palo Alto First Friday, on December 6th, 2013, from 5:30 pm till 8:00 pm.
The exhibit will stay open till December 24th.
Pacific Art League is located at 668 Ramona St, Palo Alto, CA 94301.
Open Monday – Friday from 9:00 am till 5:00 pm
River of Light
This is another piece in the “small landscapes” series that was started long time ago, survived a two year interruption, and is finally getting done. It’s always difficult to pick the pencils again when you almost don’t remember what you had in mind in the beginning. But as a nice exception to the rule, this little drawing was finished relatively easily. It was almost all about playing with colors and almost no struggling through the process.
The first piece in the series was Open Space, and if all goes well there will be three more.
The original ($140.00), greeting cards, and prints are available in my Pastel Pencil online gallery.
Glowing mountains – miniature
I have so many pieces in progress that each one seems to be a never ending drawing journey. It’s good to switch gears between subjects and media all the time, but at the same time I would really love to finish at least something already. So, a something finally got finished:
The original is available in my Miniatures online gallery for $35.00
Gathering (a rocky one)
This one started as an exercise after I haven’t done any pointillism in more than a year. In the process of getting the feel of the pen again I began to see a composition in the bunch of rock textures and from that point treated the small drawing more seriously.
The horses came into the picture last to make things more interesting. I thought of lighter-colored petroglyphs etched on a dark rock surface and decided to reverse colors. That seemed to work better with the rest of my rocks.
There is another Gathering piece in the making already. Turned out playing with rocks in black and white is just as exiting as doing it in color.
Explorations in Colored Pencil II
Today the San Francisco Chapter of the Colored Pencil Society of America had an opening reception for their annual juried show, Explorations in Colored Pencil II. We drove down to the Coastal Arts League Gallery in downtown Half Moon Bay hoping to make it in time, and luckily for us the traffic was very bearable.
The show is great, and I am not saying this because I am very partial to the medium. It’s really a strong collection of different styles, techniques, and subjects.
The show will be open till October 6, 2013.
Malibu Succulents, by Phillip Zubiate III
Malay Lacewing, by Denise J Howard
Inspiration is for amateurs…
There was a quote from Chuck Close on A.C.T. Art MArketing Blog part of which rang true to me:
If you wait around for the clouds to part and a bolt of lightning to strike you in the brain, you are not going to make an awful lot of work. All the best ideas come out of the process; they come out of the work itself.
I don’t put the entire quote here because I am not all that sure about the beginning which is about inspiration being for amateurs and because the rest merely expands on the excerpt above.
It’s a fact, at least for me, that waiting around for an idea or looking at work of others gets me nowhere and eventually it feels like I’ve got a solid brick in my brain that makes it impossible to create anything. I do enjoy looking at what other artists do, by the way. I could do it all day long, it just does not help with the problem at hand. Drawing without much expectation is far better. I can abandon the original idea before I get too far, change it while it’s still changeable, throw the entire thing away because it refuses to cooperate, or base another drawing on the original failure. All of it is still more productive than waiting for a miracle to happen on its own.
There is no shortage of advice on getting inspired and getting over a creative block; I trust it makes a real difference for others, but for some reason it’s not doing much to me. Maybe I am approaching it the wrong way?
March 13, 2013 sketch
Long time ago I was asked for a commission of a black cat, but the reference photo provided consisted mostly of beautiful amber eyes and some very dark blobs that suggested the cat surely was somewhere there in the almost black surrounding. I could not even guess the rest of his face, so asked for a better photo and never heard back. But what was not good enough for a commission once, could work for my own amusement. This is a different cat, and I am not sure how so much of it besides the eyes got into the sketch. It was not planned for.
colored pencil on colored paper, 6″ x 4″
Sketchy horse
“Sketchy” is a style in Harmony that I like the most. Besides being imprecise and somewhat unpredictable by nature, it does not take kindly to thinking as you draw. The result is always a disaster, and the later in the process it happens the worse it looks. Since this is my first attempt to draw a horse in Harmony, disasters happened more than once. Luckily, I only use black and white, so for the most part when black gets out of control I managed to offset it with white. It’s not exactly erasing, but I think it works.
Other things I learned:
– colors in the color wheel come out anything but what I select and what shows in the preview square. Grays always have some odd tint, so I had to drop the idea of using them, or this would be one psychedelic horse head. I was not in the mood for psychedelic at all.
– apparently just because you can draw on the sides of the toolbox that is centered at the top of the page, it does not mean that you can draw behind it too; that’s how the horse lost nice pointy ears that I was going to give her
