Brenseph aka Joeden

This is freaky. I started out painting two-year-old nephew Brendan (quite adorably wearing his hiking gear), but by the time I was finished, he looked like a mini-Joe (my husband). How could that happen?

Ape - linocut

Dad's always been a Tarzan fan, which is why I like apes and the old Ape Man himself (Tarzan, not Dad). Here's a linocut printed on Rives BFK, 3" x 3".

I was inspired by Andy Warhol's screenprint which is mostly purple, yellow, and brown, 3' x 3', and much better executed than this poor wide-eyed guy. But the charm sometimes lies in the flaws, in my opinion.

Drawing of Annie in Elevator

This is a drawing of Annie in her elevator at work, photograph courtesy of Todd.

9"x9" Conte pastel pencil on pastel paper

Judith

A pen and ink drawing (Micron pen) about 5" x 3" ...
after Klimt.

Illustration Friday - "SAFE"

This is my post for Illustration Friday. The topic is "safe," so I've chosen to paint a man's hide-away-wallet where he hopes to keep his cash safe. Not terribly original, but I'm trying!

EDM Challenge #82 - Draw Your Art Work Space

This week's Every Day Matters challenge is to draw or paint your space where you do your artwork. I drew mine with ink and markers. It's a bit cartoon-ish, but that's the mood I was in! My space is bright yellows, purples, greens, pinks (especially) and all those beautiful colors we're supposed to have outgrown, so I enjoy them in my own room!

EDM Challenge #81 - Draw a Streetlight

For my Every Day Matters group, we are challenged to draw or paint a streetlight this week, Challenge #81. Mine is a pelican sitting on a lamppost on the Santa Barbara Pier. I took the photograph about two years ago, and painted it as soon as I got home, using soft pastels.

EDM Challenge #80 - Draw Something You Love

This is Challenge #80 for my Every Day Matters Group, the subject is "Draw Something You Love," and I immediately thought of my cat, Andy. This is a drawing of Andy asleep on the couch, being drawn by me.

Here's the one of the sites for Every Day Matters: http://www.dannygregory.com.

You Are What You Search

This is definitely off topic, but AOL apparently released to the public what search terms its users entered, and there's a funny article on the subject. (One search term was, "i hurt when i think too much i love roadtrips i hate my weight i fear being alone for the rest of my life".)

Here's the URL: http://www.slate.com/id/2147590/?nav=tap3


And while I'm here, I'll post a pen and ink drawing of the old casino at Avalon, on Catalina Island. It's still in my sketchbook, as you can see. I kinda like that frame. If you click on it, you'll get a larger version.

Three Monotypes and Class Ends...

Here's a monotype of an eccentric artist, Egon Schiele, a crazy dude. He lived only 28 years, dying from the flu epidemic in the early 1900's. The image part is 6x9".

Next is a drypoint etching of Joe's mother on the porch of Yellowstone's Lake Lodge. This was done by scratching an image into a clear plexiglass plate, spreading ink into the scratches, wiping the surface off, and printing it onto damp paper. (same size)

Finally, a drypoint etching of a fishing boat in Marina del Rey called the Mona Lisa. This one's larger, about 14" tall.

Today was the last day of this Printmaking class, but I'm taking a course that's basically the same, which starts in just 3 weeks! yay!

That was a really challenging, stimulating, satisfying class.
Can't wait to do it again. On the final day of class, we exchanged prints, so I got one print from every student in the class, and they got one from me. I'll post it later; ta ta for now.

Printmaking Class

I'm taking a summer school course called "Fundamentals of Printmaking" and thought I'd post a few of my projects. First is a monoprint: I rolled tacky black etching ink on the zinc plate, then removed varying amounts of ink to create the image and ran it through a printing press (with a roller that applies 1,700 pounds per square inch to print the image onto slightly damp paper). This is a 5x7" of my neice Emma with a walrus statue.

Below is a "ghost" (second) print of that same print, which I watercolored.


Next is a collograph: I took a stalk of grass and rolled paint over it, arranged it on a beveled plate and printed it. This one is 11x14" with a 2" border all around.





Next is a monoprint of my grandmother, circa 1940. This was popular in my class today! The print is 5"x7" but I gave it a wide 4" border all around.













And finally, a small blue monoprint - this time of three terns. This print is only 3"x4" plus the border.

I'm OK, She's OK

I don't know who this girl is. And I painted her from a photograph two, maybe three years ago. Still, this girl with her direct stare and thin, translucent skin tends to haunt me. I still haven't worked through why I feel a connection to her. She seems to know something.
Is she . . . me?
Is she the daughter I never had?
Nah. She's just some kid.

This is a watercolor I just finished of a Japanese koi.

This fish is a resident of Fisherman's Village in Marina del Rey, California.

I worked on the docks at Fisherman's Village just a couple three or four years ago -- ya know, during and after high school -- giving harbor tours, renting out small boats, etc.

My 1970's

Me, 1974, pencil sketch.

I'm in a 70's kind of mood. Yesterday I stumbled onto the website of a guy from my high school class who posted pictures from the neighborhood. He is now a LMU professor; the LMU campus was my childhood backyard, a prime lizard-hunting site for my brothers and me. We usually went on campus to slide down the giant concrete "L" (for Loyola) on the hillside.

This is a photo of Dad and me, 1973, with B-1 bomber at Rockwell Aviation, where Dad worked.

Hippie pen & ink drawings...

There were dozens of huge, vacant, unfenced lots in the Westchester in my youth, owned by Howard Hughes or his companies. These vacant fields were our windows into nature up-close, gave us mental elbow room, places to play, romp, explore. They including the acres of mustard fields and wetlands owned by Hughes that became Playa Vista (I miss that formerly open area very much). The name Howard Hughes was a constant presence in the Westchester of my youth. My father witnessed the Spruce Goose's single flight; my oldest brother worked at Hughes Helicopters as a young man. Signs bearing Hughes' name were everywhere.

Pencil sketch of Leo DiCaprio portraying Howard Hughes in the film Aviator (I paused the DVD long enough to sketch this).

Cute Chick

I photographed this mallard female and chick in Santa Barbara last weekend. She had four chicks. I cropped the photo down to one chick so you could see it better.


Then I made a small etching out of a similar photo in my printmaking class:

Denbug on Harmonica

This is a watercolor painting of one of my brothers, Dennis, in 1964 or 1965. Grandpa played the harmonica (as did Dad and lots of men back then). We have several photographs of Dennis and Grandpa looking pretty serious about this harmonica-playing business.

Texanna Gro

This is an oil painting I painted from a photograph taken by my maternal grandmother in 1966. We're not sure where "Texanna Gro" was located, but presume it was in Texanna, Oklahoma, where she was born.
I did some finishing touches on this painting in a rec room at a senior citizens center, and the painting got a lot of unexpected attention from the seniors there. So many of them expressed how much it reminded them of an old country store they used to know. It seemed to evoke a lot of sentimental feelings. That made an already important image even more meaningful to me.

Block prints, decidedly raw

The Rambler is in the Garage

It's a Small Small Small Dog World

My Rock Obsession

But first, I just came across this quotation that made me laugh:
"It is not necessary to change. Survival is not mandatory." --W. Edwards Deming

Ha!

On to my rock obsession. It used to be that I couldn't hike or just take a walk outside without stopping every few yards to check out a rock. Sometimes I tested Joe's patience, but most times he was ridiculously patient with me. I'm happy to say the obsession is over, and now I have quite a collection of rocks: striped, colorful, spotted, you name it. It's not for everybody, I know.

This painting is a small watercolor. Joe filmed me hunting for jade one late afternoon along the San Simeon shore, on the Central Coast of California. I liked how he caught the bright sunlight bleaching the colors right out of the edges of my clothes, from my green bandana down to the edges of my brown jeans, and I decided to paint it.

P.S. On another topic: I'll go out on a limb and say my iPod has changed my life of late. I have rediscovered my love of music. I've loaded about 120 songs onto my iPod -- songs that move me, that I love, and no others. So with each song that plays, I get that exciting, anticipatory feeling you get when you hear a song's first few notes on the radio. Except I get it every 3 minutes! As that famous New York socialite Carrie Bradshaw said, "Me likey."

Money vs. Renown

"O painter, take care lest the greed for gain prove a stronger incentive than renown in art, for to gain this renown is a far greater thing than is the renown of riches." --Leonardo da Vinci

Was daVinci right? What should matter more, money or renown? Is one more noble? More moral? More likely to be satisfying in the long run?