two quick sketches

marathon portrait

This commissioned portrait turned into a marathon painting for me, and I'm still not sure why. It started off simple enough: I marked the position of the figure with a few brush strokes, then went about the business of blocking in the color. No problem there.

Next, I roughed in the bench and gave the figure a face. This may have been the genesis of the problem that arose later on, putting in details too early in the process. More on that later.

The third image just shows more clarification of the bench and the background. From the beginning, the client wasn't sure if she wanted the bench to have the tulip design in the finished painting nor if she wanted the bench to remain white. Since she wasn't sure and since it wasn't much work just to paint in the bench, that's what I proceeded to do. It was additionally decided that the hairdo would be different than in the reference photo, but until I got a new reference photo for the hair, I went ahead with the short, pulled-up hair.

In the fourth picture, I have completed the white tulip bench, and it was decided that the bench would distract a little too much from the figure.

After the decision was made that the white tulip design was too much, I went ahead with a bench from my own imagination, hoping this design would be visually thinner and maybe less cluttered-looking. Ultimately, it was still a little too much.

In the sixth picture I have changed the bench to black, which definitely allowed the figure to stand out more; additionally, I had to lighten the background so the darker bench could be seen. I have also changed the hair to a basic hair-down hair style [though lacking any style at this point, not to mention the artificial-looking color, as I had no reference photo to go by yet].

And it was somewhere between the previous stage and the final product that this painting turned into a marathon for me. Part of it was that several things came up in the meantime - a scheduled family trip, my first Northshore Art Market, not to mention other paintings I needed to complete along the way - but mainly it was just the elusiveness of capturing the likeness of a person's face. I worked and reworked the face so many times I was seeing double. And maybe it was something about this particular face: I completed two other, smaller, portraits just fine while struggling with this one. I haven't done too many portraits in my career as an artist and I'm far from a portrait artist, so I don't mind saying that this has been a good learning experience for me, and I've picked up many valuable lessons along the way. If nothing else, I know now not to promise a client a certain date of completion.

Plato

Plato, 36x36", $800

Painted this one a few weeks back, just never got around to posting it here. So now I am. I used a generic photo of a dog from who-knows-where online, painted it in a happy-go-lucky abstract style, and named the dog Plato. Measuring in at three feet square, this canvas is presently hanging in our living room.

Calico #2

Calico #2, 42.5x42.5", $1,200

I like big canvases. Though it doesn't look it, this painting [Calico #2] is painted on just such a canvas [three and a half foot square]. I've got another canvas the same size as this one, primed and ready to go. So, what do you think I should paint? I need subject matter ideas. Let me know!

3 tree, big

"3 tree, big" acrylic, 20x16", $200

Northshore Art Market

Had a great day at the Northshore Art Market in Covington. It was very hot and very humid all day [that wasn't so great], but I got to meet many wonderful people, make a few important contacts, and sold a few paintings in the process. Shown above is a photo of the booth. It was smallish and the paintings were crammed in there. The biggest improvement I could make is to purchase one of those big white canopies [you can see them in the background]; they are taller and allow more light through which brightens the atmosphere [unlike my little cave-like display].

Anyway, I plan to do more of these art markets in the future. I'll let you know when and where. And I'll bring more sunscreen next time, as well.

2 days until art market

Finished four more paintings for the art market. These are all smaller [11x14" and 12x12", respectively] and are all priced at $100. From left to right, they are "Blue Closeup," "Watchful Eye," "Lake Arthur Cypress," and "Lily Elegant".

I'm still not sure how many paintings I will be bringing. The wife bought a popup tent thingy which I will test out today in the backyard. Then I will have a better idea how much space I will need to fill with paintings. Anyway, more to come.

pug mug

I painted this painting once before from a photo I took years ago of our friends' pug. It was such a natural for a portrait that I had to paint it again. (Turned out almost as good as the first one, by the way.) I took a few photos showing some of the process. All told, this painting took a couple of hours.

First step was to do a quick sketch - I wasn't concerned with details, just the placement of the major parts of the portrait. As you can see from these photos, I was using a photo on my computer as reference. This works fine for small paintings, but large paintings just don't fit in my little computer room. Second step was to block in the painting. I usually like to start with dark areas, as in this painting, because I know I will be applying several layers of color, preventing the shadows from becoming dead areas in the painting. And then comes the fun part - step three, if you're keeping score - I quickly block in the rest of the dog, repainting all the lines as I go, so as not to lose them.

And in between the third step and the final painting, I sprinkle a little fairy dust and turn around three times and viola! The finished painting: "Pug Mug," 20x20" $250 - One more painting down on the road to Art Market.

typing

5 days until art market

This coming Saturday is the Northshore Art Market in Covington, LA, where I will be showing my paintings and hoping to sell a few. My brother Tim asked me how my preparation was going, and my only response was to reach through the phone line and strangle him where he stood. Okay, that didn't happen, and I'm not nearly as "on edge" as I probably should be. Here is where I stand: I've got my cousin Robby (thank you, Robby) and the wife to help setup and tear down - Robby's got a line on a tent to fend off the sun or the rain as the case may be - and Tammy's folks will be here to help take care of the little one while this is going on - I have no solid idea how the paintings will be displayed - and I have yet to print off any business cards or bio sheets, both of which I plan to do before the big day. Did I mention it will be this Saturday?

I was planning to paint many many new paintings for this big event but have not really painted anything until yesterday and today [that's okay, I have plenty of backup paintings]. But I managed to complete four decent paintings today. Here they are:

They are, from left to right, "Lone Egret," 20x16"; "Looking Back," 20x16"; "Railroad Landscape," 20x20"; and "Lounging Cat," 16x20". Each are priced at $200.

Well, that's all I can think of - lot's of work left to do. More to come.

notebookism

Here is another website I frequent from time to time. It's centered on the interesting, creative world of [what else] writing in notebooks. Sure it's an odd subject for a blog, and no not every post is very interesting, but every so often I will find a gem, feeding some creative fire within me, urging me to drag out a long forgotten notepad and start doodling or taking notes or whatever.

Okay, so it's not for everyone. But for those of you interested: notebookism.com

June 9th Art Market

Just a quick announcement. On June 9th from 10:00 to 4:00, I will have a booth at the NorthShore Art Market in Covington, LA. I will try to have on hand a broad variety of my paintings on display, and I'm thinking about painting throughout the day [to give the good people's a good show].

So if you're in the area, stop by Lee Lane and introduce yourself!

xkcd.com

I know there are other web comics out there, but I wanted to mention this one because I usually really enjoy it. It's called xkcd, "A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language." - some of the cartoons are hokey, some of the cartoons contain semi-lewd material (whatever that means), and most of them would appeal only to the geek-minded among us. Here's a recent one that I snickered at.

switching to linux, part three

switching, part one
switching, part two

part three - the upside

Once you get your bearings [a substantial qualifier, admittedly, for many users] Linux is wonderful. The biggest upside, I'd say, is freedom. Most of Linux is open source, which means it's source code is open to public viewing and editing. In many cases, in fact, a person can take open source software, repackage it, maybe improve upon it, and sell it to others; it's more complicated than that, of course, and would depend on the type of license by which it's covered. [see the Creative Commons website for more info on the creative commons licenses available]

Along with this freedom, another upside is that most open source software is also free as in no cost to download and use. This is not always the case, but more often than not. So on one side you could spend thousands on software, and on the other you could pay nothing and have just about the same experience and tools [and then some] at your fingertips. Sound too good to be true? But wait there's more! Alright, I'm getting carried away now, but all this freedom just makes me happy.

Besides all this freedom and free-dom, there is also an immense, albeit subjective, amount of fun to be had using, configuring, and learning Linux. This part, like I said, is subjective: if there is no inner-geek within you, no willingness to learn a bit about the underpinnings of the operating system, you will probably have an opposite opinion about this potential of Linux. Don't get me wrong, Linux works just fine for the non-geek computer user as well. The default install of Ubuntu, for instance, provides an office suite comparable to MS Office [but free], a web browser better than Internet Explorer [wink], a Photoshop-like application [nearly as good, if a little awkward to navigate initially], an email client and personal information manager much like MS Outlook, lots of little games, and much more. All very familiar, I think, for anyone coming from Windows or Macintosh. [I'm tellin' you though, under the hood is where the fun is!]

I could go on. Especially on the subject of configuring Linux. But I'll save some of that for another day. In wrapping up this series, I'll attempt to answer a tough but potentially telling question: could/would I recommend Linux to my mom? Here's my answer: "yes......" Those trailing dots, once again, represent a few qualifiers. If my mom had hardware or software that was not made to run on Linux, we would have to first find replacements or workarounds. This would be true, I think, switching from any operating system to another. I am one hundred percent certain that there is a solution that would work, however. Case in point: my scanner was not going to work in Linux - no driver for it for Linux - so my solution was going to be to purchase another scanner [there are plenty that work fine under Linux], but a new, and more elegant, solution has shown itself. I now have Windows XP running in a virtual machine within Ubuntu [using Virtual Box]. Sounds creepy, I know, but Windows doesn't know the difference. This means, for hardware or software that needs Windows to run, I can just fire up Windows XP in a little window within Ubuntu. Very cool (and using open source software).

Admittedly, researching and setting up such workarounds, and then testing the stability of the workarounds would require a geek. So if Mom lived a little closer or if I get a chance for an extended visit, I could and would install it for her if she wanted. And ongoing tech support could be done over the phone [as I presently do from time to time for her Windows' woes].

Bottom line, Linux is a great Desktop environment. Everyone should at least give Ubuntu's live cd a try - it allows you to boot from the cd and experience Ubuntu without installing it on your hard drive. Here's the link.

men occasionally stumble

"Men occasionally stumble over the truth,
but most of them pick themselves up
and hurry off as if nothing had happened."
--Winston Churchill

I ran across this quote while surfing the InterWeb today. It's a great quote. But something about it reminds me of a "The Far Side" cartoon. Is it just me?

my new favorite dictionary site

As you may know, Google has a built in dictionary search - type in "define:" followed by the word you need defined and Google returns with an array of dictionary options. This is very handy and it's all well and good, but this is not the site I was going to mention. My new favorite dictionary website is NinjaWords.com - check it out. It's simple and fast [much like Google] and although it doesn't have many extras . . . well, it's simple and fast!

Here's an even better thing: using Firefox [you are using Firefox, aren't you?] you can install the Dictionary Search extension and configure it to use NinjaWords.com instead of or in addition to the default dictionary site. Excellent, I say. Simple and fast.

switching to linux, part two

switching, part one

part two - the transition

Cold turkey has it's benefits, I suppose. Cut the cord and make it work. My brother, Joshua, did just that at the end of last year. I think, more than anything, he was just ready for a change. After telling him some of the benefits of Linux and letting him play with the live cd for a bit he said something to the effect of, "okay, how do we do this? What's next?" It was so sudden I found myself backpedaling a little, asking him, "are you sure you want to switch?", and going through a mental checklist, looking for any reason he should not go through with it. Finding very little, I relented, and we installed Ubuntu. We did have a small transitional step in there: we had to create a separate partition for all his music files before wiping out the Windows partition and installing Ubuntu. Unfortunately, his Sirius satellite player program was Windows only, and we could find no workaround for this - we ended up reinstalling Windows in a dual-boot with Ubuntu so he could access this one program to transfer music to and from his portable player.

Let me explain the live cd: Ubuntu, like many other Linux distributions these days, comes on a cd that you can boot from to test out the system before installing it to your hard drive. It's quite remarkable (just keep in mind it will run a little slower than it will once installed permanently to the hard drive). I was very impressed recently with the Mandriva 2007 live cd which included the option of activating the new 3D desktop effects - it worked flawlessly, even on my five year old computer with 512 MB of ram.

Back to my transition story. I had installed Ubuntu on my computer well before we installed it on Joshua's system. But I had it dual-booting with - and subordinate to - my Windows installation. Dual booting, I should mention, is the method of installing two (or more) operating systems on a single computer, choosing which to use each time the computer boots. I would occasionally reboot into Ubuntu simply to play its included games and tinker with its configuration, learning about Linux as I went along, but I was always tethered to Windows as my primary operating system. The one thing holding me back from using Linux while I had Windows installed was the simple fact that all my information resided on my Windows partition. Though Linux was able to read NTFS partitions natively, it could not write information back to NTFS - in other words, I was able to see all my Windows files from Linux but could not save anything back to Windows (and Windows cannot see Linux partitions at all). This most directly affected things like checking email and browsing the internet - emails, bookmarks, browsing history and extensions and themes could only be saved in whichever operating system I was in at the time. The first solution I found was creating a separate FAT32 partition that both Windows and Linux could read and write to and then configuring my email client and browser to use this "third-party" partition. This worked okay but every now and then my browser would inexplicably forget where it was supposed to be looking for it's information and would lose all its bookmarks and so forth (until I directed it back to the FAT32 partition). By the time I started using Ubuntu as my primary operating system, I discovered a much better solution that allowed Linux to read and write directly to NTFS (so everything could be kept up with my Windows partition).

In some sense I am still in transition from Windows to Linux. Until I purchase a new Linux-compatible scanner, and until a software tweak in my audio setup or a distribution update to correct my mic-always-on problem (or perhaps a purchase of a new usb microphone would do the trick?) - until these two issues are corrected, I guess I am still transitioning. But 98% of the time these days, I'm in Ubuntu and happier for it. More to come -

switching to linux, part one

part one - the downside

I started using Linux as my primary operating system about two months ago, installing Ubuntu in a dual boot configuration with Windows XP. I had actually set that up several months before when I was still toying with the idea of switching, wanting first to test the waters a bit. There came a time, though, when I decided to make the switch. I had started booting into Linux during the day while my wife was at work, and I honestly felt much more creative and much more productive during that time. Part of this was probably the novelty of it. A totally free operating system with open software and plenty of things to configure (actually, everything to configure). But mostly, it was the freedom of it, I think.

I'll start with the three things I still "need" Windows for (and these glitches apply mainly to my own present setup and could be overcome if I didn't already have Windows installed), in other words, the downside:

1) Scanning - my present scanner has no driver for Linux, so until I'm ready to purchase a new scanner, I'll keep Windows around for that. Incidentally, a little bit of online research will reveal plenty of choices of scanners that work fine under Linux.

2) Recording in Audacity - actually Audacity is working fine, it's just that my microphone, when plugged in, refuses to mute, so I get feedback from the speakers . . . and the only time I need the microphone is when recording in Audacity, so I just reboot into Windows for the time being. This is a problem with a definite solution . . . that I have yet to find. Grrr.

3) Gaming - Linux would play these games just fine if they were only written for linux. Grrr. There are several big 3d games available for linux, of course, but I've got a handful of Windows games already installed that I may still want to play (not that I've wanted to play them since switching, I'm just not ready to part with them yet).

Linux on the desktop is not for everyone, I'll be the first to admit. But it is definitely on par with Windows and Mac machines on most fronts [managing even to outpace Windows and Mac on many other fronts]. This is the only other downside I can think of: it isn't for everyone. If you are not a geek at heart and don't have a geek-on-call to "tend" to your Linux box from time to time, you might want to stick with another operating system. For the most part, Linux doesn't do hand-holding. [On this point, I should stress "For the most part," because there are several Linux distributions that do focus on the new Linux user] Oh, I just thought of another minor downside, and that is the negative press it seems to often get in the media (if it gets any press at all).

That's it. That's all the downsides I can think of. If you have used Linux or have an opinion or a question about Linux, go ahead and leave a comment. Maybe you can help me remember another downside? More to come -

a marathon, not a sprint

Some paintings are sprints, some are marathons. I've been facing this issue head-on for the past few months now. In the past, the majority of my paintings have been landscapes, with pet portraits coming in at the number two spot. And these type paintings, combined with my painting style -- throwing down paint, haphazardly, and then changing it until it's finished -- usually make for a quick and satisfactory painting process. A sprint. Not much room for second guessing, complaining, complicated emotions, or feelings of utter despair and resentment. You know: quick and clean. That's a sprint.

But commissioned portraits, that's another story for me. Here you have a person asking for a faithful, albeit artful, reproduction of [usually] a loved one -- a son or daughter, a husband or wife -- someone important to the person. That's a lot to consider when addressing the canvas [does one address a canvas?]. These commissioned portraits -- as opposed to portraits I've painted just for the fun and practice of it, which are themselves usually sprints -- more often than not become long drawn-out affairs. What's worse: many times I find myself three-fourths of the way into the painting process staring at a stiff, lifeless figure with a stilted smile and eyes too stern to be looked upon with affection. Disaster. That's about the time I put the painting away for a weekend and work on something else. I tell myself it's a marathon painting. I've seen this before, and I'll see it again. A marathon, not a sprint.

I know I'm not a portrait painter, and that's part of it. I have not devoted all my time to perfecting the human form on canvas; the nuanced facial features and lifelike realism achieved by such artists can be a stunning thing indeed. I'm no slouch, of course: I can and do eventually get to a point of satisfaction in a commissioned portrait -- and some don't actually stretch that far into the realm of marathon. Those that do, however, give me pause; make me take a step back and readjust my perception of the thing. This is a marathon, now. Not a sprint. I guess that's just the way things are [is it just me? I don't know] at any rate, I've learned not to see this as a lack of motivation or creativity on my part [which I have, wrongly, thought in the past] but as a perception issue. Could it be that there is a link between perception and motivation? Could be . . .

Anyway, that's what has been on my mind lately. Do you have anything to add? If so, leave a comment [comments can be quite motivating for me].

cereal-mixing

File this one under "and the wife just shakes her head . . . again."

One of my favorite things to eat is cereal. It's a natural breakfast food; it works great as a snack [in milk or even dry]; and if I'm fortunate enough to have extra space in my stomach by the end of the day, it's a great midnight snack. My favorite cereals are generally low in sugar - as a kid I'd douse my Cornflakes with sugar but now I find that Cornflakes and other cereals are actually sweet enough on their own.

For some reason, several years ago, I started mixing my cereal. It all started with Raisin Bran: not liking the overabundance of raisins, I mixed my own Bran Flakes with my own raisins and Voila! But since then it's escalated. My wife laughs when she sees me making multiple trips from the pantry to the counter top to the fridge, carrying armloads of cereal boxes, raisins, peanuts, milk, oats, etc. This morning for instance, it took me three trips to gather all my ingredients [three more return trips after their use].

Ingredient list:
Honey Nut Cheerios
Bran Flakes
Corn Flakes
Nutty Nuggets [Grape Nut's off-brand]
unsalted peanuts
raisins
milk
[and a black coffee chaser]

You may be wondering [as does the wife] "Why mix your cereals?" To that I can only respond, "Because I can. [crunch, crunch, crunch]"

By the way, I usually end up premixing my cereal, storing it in large [empty] pickle jars for easy, one-trip goodness. If you have a favorite cereal or a golden combination of cereals, leave a comment and let us know about it!