Illustration Friday.

Lately, I've been doing fun stuff. This is an illustration for a site called Illustration Friday.
Every week they have a different subject and this one is for "Eyeglasses"
I"m enjoying doing little sketches and not agonizing about the results. Also, it's fun to change the colors in Photoshop!

I've been having fun with the Art House Co-Op projects. This one was an infinite scroll on the subject of monsters. To see the whole scroll go to The Art-House Project's Tumblir page
What made this fun was changing my entire color scheme in Photoshop.

Bat drawing

My class on Bestiary drawing at the Observatory gallery in the Gowanus section of Brooklyn finished a few weeks ago. It was a great class, taught by Saul Chernick.
This is my completed drawing of a bat. One complication I had was that I worked on the drawing with the bat right side up but I really wanted to display her upside down. However, I just could not get the composition to work that way. So I changed her 'thumbs' to allow her to be hanging right side up. A little odd, since it means she is holding on by both hands and feet. But new mother's are often overly cautious.

Bestiary Class

I'm taking a class at  the art space called The Observatory Room in the Gowanus area of Brooklyn.  There you will find  the Morbid Anatomy Library which is a fun place to look at a lot of strange and interesting things. The class is called drawing from the bestiary and it's run by the artist Saul Chernick who does a lot of great paintings  in a fascinating style.  I chose to do a bat and the first assignment was to create the bat's skeleton using bristol board and these teeny tiny paper brads, so that the joints can actually move. Here it is. Now I'll be on to step 2, making an actual drawing of the bat.  Toying with some   ideas. 

 I accidently stumbled across the Sketchbook Project in Williamburg. Went in, got a 'library card', looked at some sketchbooks and decided to become part of 2013's Sketchbook project, which will travel around for a year and then settle down in the same sketchbook project library.
At first it seemed so simple! But then, for some reason, existential angst took over. People looking at my unadulterated sketchbooks seemed like strangers going thru my underwear.
I started off with a bang: A big serpanty critter in the style I often paint in. but then I realized I really didn't want to keep up all that sturm und drang  for a whole sketch-book.  It's all part of that inner/outer stuff. That public/private thingy that I found so boring to listen to but here I am, trying to sort it out. Because let's face it, a sketchbook IS underwear.

Sometimes You Have to Ride...part 1

A new painting I'm working on, maybe called: Sometimes you have to ride.

It's from a dream I had.

I've been wanting to work smaller, but the painting ended up being 4 feet long.

Ayako's Flamenco Painting

Ayako is a young woman in JoDe's Flamenco class at the Y. She recently had to return to Japan and I made her this little painting to remember us by....

9/11 Mural at BWAC Fall Show

As part of the montage for BWAC's 9/11 tribute, I have submitted 4 works on paper.

The first two are part of the series, "Fallen" and the last two are part of the series "Ashes".

This is my first time submitting digital works. The originals were pen and ink, watercolor and acrylic ink. I later created variations of the colors using Photoshop. They are all 8 1/2 X 11 inches or slightly smaller. They will be in the BWAC Fall show, Tales of Breukelen

Divine Intervention

This was the other entry in the BWAC Black and White show. "Divine Intervention is a Bitch" is the caption at the top. Meaning....leave well enough alone.
Oh, by the way, neither piece got into the show. Boo Hoo.

Mystery Play

This is a not very good photo of a new painting, Mystery Play. As in medieval mystery plays.
I'm submitting it to the BWAC Black and White show which will run this summer at the Pier in Red Hook.

Moment of Truth

The final version of Moment of Truth. It's at the BWAC Spring 2011 Pier Show. And it's part of a fun 'group' display which includes works by my sister Andrea Fagin and my brother in law, Warren Alexander.
The Bull and the figures were inspired by my trip to Soria last year.

sketch for Bullfightingpainting

For the next BWAC show: the Spring Pier show, I'm doing a bullfighting painting to go with my sister and brother in law's themes: all bullfighting. Here's the outline. A lot of the drawing was inspired by my trip to Soria last Sept.

Wide Open Show at BWAC

I was selected to be in the juried show at BWAC which opens on March 12, 2011 and runs every weekend till March 27th.
It's a big honor and I'm submitting two other pieces to the show.
http://www.bwac.org/future_exhibition.html

Bull Inspired by Sorian Trip

After a hiatus, this is my new painting: Sorian Bull. Maybe I'll get a better name for it. But it was inspired by my trip to Soria with a great tour called Spanish Footsteps: http://www.spanishfootsteps.com/

I saw imagery like this at the Numancia Museum in Soria. It's from a Celt-Iberian Design. I added design elements and color. The funny thing was that I spent hours at this museum, sketching the designs. I ran out of steam near the end, where these bull images were. I thought to myself: I'll find them in a book or I'll Google them. But really: there was very little to see online and no books that I could find with the images. Guess I'll just have to go back to Soria.

Portrait of Uncle Miley

Finished this small portrait yesterday. It's oil, 9"X12".

Weighing Souls: work in progress

Just adding the final details to Weighing souls. Heard about Uncle Miley this morning. So I added him on the lower right, hiding behind the column.

Uncle Loo's Famous New Year Dinner...For One

I decided to try to make Uncle Loo's famous New Year's Dinner...but just for me. During the winter there was the holy trinity of meals: First Mama's Thanksgiving Dinner, then Mrs. Frances's Christmas File Gumbo and finally , on New Years, this wonderful two part meal: soup followed by all the meats and vegetables that made up the stock. I started with the meats. I used one chorizo, two chicken thighs (I bought the organic kind) and a slice of ham, about 10 oz. I boiled these for 1 1/2 hours in 32 oz chicken broth (4 cups) and another 6 cups of water. A little salt (the broth wasn't low sodium) and some pepper.

Here's the other ingredients. Yes, I added some carrots and a couple of parsnips I had in the fridge. No big deal. And I used canned garbanzos, including the liquid. I only cut the onion in half and quartered the cabbage. I left the carrots and parsnips whole.

I added the veggies to the pot and a tiny pinch of saffron. I bought my saffron at Despanya and I noticed it was much better quality. I really only needed a pinch. The pot needed a cup or two more of water to cover the vegetables enough.

After less then an hour all the veggies were cooked , so I put the meat and veggies in a large shallow pot with some broth to keep it moist and kept it warm in the oven (250 degrees) while I made the soup.

I just added another small pinch of saffron and some thin thin noodles and cooked for about 20 minutes till the noodles were soft.

Here's the finished soup. Ok, because I didn't use as much meat, it didn't have the extra layer of fat on the top to keep it scalding hot...but it was plenty hot enough...and DELICIOUS!!!

Here's the final plate of meat and veggies. Oh yeah, guys, I left out the potatoes...but you can add them in. I gave myself the same amount I remember getting as a kid: one slice of chorizo (I think there might have been a slice of morcilla too), a little bit of chicken, a small slice of the ham and lots of veggies.
It came out great, it was very filling and it was really easy to make. I think it's more like Dinner for three but you get the idea.

Too many Angels

After almost a whole year, I finally finished Too Many Angels. Having taken so long and kind of lost my way with it, I changed the color schemes several times. I finally settled on this palette.
I would have liked to have called it Poking Angels, in honor of my new interest in Facebook (I still don't know what poking is) but I'm sticking to my first choice for title.
A sad song by the same name, sung by Jackson Browne:
Too Many Angels

Before and After Wallpaper

Last week I had another Wallpaper job. I thought I'd show you what before and after look like. The two panels don't line up on the left and here's my corrections on the right. This was an easy job because the design was blobby to begin with. I call it a mamogram design. It wasn't all just black and white though. I had to mix in some raw umber to get a warm grey and in some places (not shown) add a dark thalo blue.
I love my job...WHEN it goes well.

Some Wil pictures

I decided to do some drawings of Wil is his last week. Here's a 'realistic' one, done using a graph from a photo.
But I think I like the rougher painting sketch that I did. Here I've given him a centerpiece as if he was a medieval statue with a relic in his chest.