Illustration Friday: Theatre

I've been struggling with some artist's block, so I returned to traditional media for this. Brush and ink colored with watercolor pencils. You just can't get that wet in wet action from a computer. I really liked the way it looked in black and white too with just the ink and wash.

Art in Action: Wang Yuan-Ch'i

Today's Art in Action lesson was from the Chinese landscape artist Wang Yuan-Ch'i: Pavilion with Distant Mountain. Today I had a full class of third graders--which went fine. (I usually have half of a combined 2nd/3rd grade class, but today had both sets of 3rd graders from two combo classes. ) The art part of the lesson was about Chinese brushwork--which is something I've studied a little. I have a chop (a stone stamp with my name in Chinese) that I had made when I was in Hong Kong (on Semester at Sea.) The kids thought it was great that I let each of them stamp my chop on their painting to give it an authentic feel.
Shown here is my demo painting (on the right) and my daughter's (who tags along and does the lesson too.)(on the left--I got it correct this time.) My daughter decided to put a lion in her Chinese landscape.

Illustration Friday: Fleeting Space Commander

I think he may have lost his fleet. So this is a little different, a costume design inspired by Mark Mitchell's How to be a Children's Book Illustrator online class. (Don't ask why an illustration class resulted in a costume design--it's complicated.)
I spent many years in Theatrical costuming--a little blaster from my past. Just a fleeting moment...

Illustration Friday: Poise (Art in Action)

A deviation from what I've been working on. I volunteer for Art in Action at my son's school. And my five year old daughter tags along with me. So she does the projects too. Today's lesson was based on Albert Bierstadt's Buffalo Trail. It was about drawing trees and forest animals. The image on the left is my demo, and the image on the right is my daughter's work. Besides the obvious comment on it taking a certain amount of poise to stand up in front of a group of third graders and talk to them about a painting that was created 140 years ago, I'm going to mention the amount of poise it takes to create art in a classroom setting. I take a lot of the creative process for granted. I hadn't really thought about the performance pressure to try something new in front of your peers. It takes a great deal of poise to put something down on paper while others are watching. As simple as my trees are, the kids were wowed as I took the oil pastel to the blank white paper and made a tree. I made sure to point out my out of scale rabbit--that seemed to relax them a little. "See even I can make mistakes. Yes it is okay that your table mate is painting with her sponge like that."

My daughter on the other hand, had no problem laying her drawing down boldly.

Illustration Friday: Subtract

I thought this topic would be really hard, but then I started thinking about subtractive art processes. My process is subtractive. I start with a black field and then erase to reveal the image. Sculpture is a subtractive process. And sculpture led me to thinking about classical sculpture with all the missing arms and heads because many of the statues were found in trash heaps and had been damaged by time and wars and whatnot. (Which leads me to the theme for the Lenten period at my church: Beauty in Brokenness. With the metaphor being beach glass, how it is something once broken that has become beautiful again.) How many of these broken statues grace our museums in places of honor? Time to try once again to let go of the Perfectionism demon. There is beauty in mistakes.

Illustration Friday: Legendary

(I've been working on another project--so I'm posting an older work.) This is Quan Yin a legendary Goddess of Mercy. A legend is, in a way, a stylized story. It has been repeated and honed over the years. But I've noticed we are all interested in stories, and the stories behind things. (like the prevelence of DVD extras--even if some survey I took claims that watching them counts towards being a geek.)


So here's the story behind my painting. It is the ink resist version of a sketch I did while traveling. In 1992 I participated in Semester at Sea. One of the countries I visited was Taiwan. I took a trip to the National Palace Museum where I saw a beautiful carving of Quan Yin. Back on the ship I did a watercolor sketch related to the carving.

Also in Taiwan, some friends and I went to Lion's Head Mountain where we encountered a statue garden that was full of identical Quan Yins. Opening our umbrellas, and posing with one hand up in the gesture of mercy and the other pouring the waters of life from our water bottles, we had another friend photograph us.

So that's my legendary encounter with Quan Yin.

Illustration Friday: Instinct

This started as a watercolor pencil sketch a few days ago. The kids and I went to a park, and of course they wolfed down their lunches and headed for the playground while I still had half a sandwich left. Then my daughter came running up telling me my son was stuck. I set my sandwich down and went to go investigate. I pulled my son down from the bow of the playground ship and returned to my picnic table to find a flock of seagulls dismantling my sandwich! Now there were a few misguided seagulls in Colorado that were very stand offish and never more brazen than the squirrels. Squirrels will at least give you a few minutes before they invade your lunch. I have to get used to a whole new set of wildlife picnic rules now that I live very close to water in California. This flock of seagulls had a leader with killer pirate instincts that knew to hone in on my sandwich and steal the ham first!