Jamie Alana at the Fishing Pier (2009)

Sand Beach Boulder (2009)

Watercolors

I've always had mixed feelings about painting in acrylics outside-- I don't enjoy painting small, it's tough to carry around all of the supplies you need to some cliff edge or beach, and the paints dry too fast when the weather is sunny. But I have really enjoyed painting with watercolors on a sketchpad this year. In the past I haven't felt that the "shorthand" of sketching in watercolors serves me well when doing a final acrylic painting. But this year I feel like I am seeing a bit better my goals in a particular painting by rendering it live in watercolor first.

Window Box

I arrived in Maine this year to find that the annual Sunbeam Fair was in a couple of days. I found some watercolor paper already attached to a board from some prior year's activities, and painted a sketch of the window boxes my sister in law had planted. I hadn't realized, but my brother had also painted some nice watercolors for the fair.

Robot Visiting with Triceratops

Astronaut with Godzilla

Dinosaur and Cow

Pseudo Lomography

I'm not sure this is going anywhere, but recently I have been playing around with optics and digital photography. All of this emerged out of a curiousity about lomography. And giant robots. I got some plastic lenses from a science surplus site, and I've been recombining them to make myself a holga webcam with horrible lens distortion. Hmmm... trendy, interesting.

Frog and Deep Sea Diver

Yesterday I sent off this postcard of my little deep sea diver. I played up the negative space a bit more than usual because I thought it was a particularly nice shape and helped offset some of the compositional problems of cutting off the frog. The diver guy has a real copper helmet, and that blue around the ear is actual verdigris.

Stonington Houses (2008)

Still Life with Dinosaurs

I'm up in Maine on vacation, explaining the recent resurgence in landscapes. But out back on the porch I found a trunk full of large dinosaur toys, and I love the expressions on them- scary, but almost comical. In the evenings I've been trying to sketch them. Then yesterday I went to a little local fair and came across an old deep sea diver toy. Without delving into the psychological ramifications, as a kid I always wanted armor, a wet suit, or a deep sea diving equipment. So, in the evenings after chores, poking around, and painting all day, I've been setting up a little still life to do some ink sketches. I could do this for a living.

Warner Point (2008)