President of Stars

     I finally broke down and took the time to install a photo editing software on my computer. I'll start working on cleaning up some past entry's and reposting them. Today's project was done on the computer. Turned out to be more challenging than I anticipated. I think I missed the mark, not quite elaborate enough for a playing card. I might work on elaborating on it some more later.

Also, here is the secret woodwork project I've been working on for a while.

Some friends of mine are having a baby, and I made some toys for the baby. They are carved from cherry wood and varnished with a natural linseed oil and beeswax finish. I think I might make some more to sell on my Etsy store.

Curving Caricature

The eyes have it.

Another quick eye. Same eye, different reference, about 10 years younger I believe.

A quick eye

Just a quick sketch tonight. I've got a secret project I'm working on that I realized needs to be done soon....

Quotes

Shapes

A little experiment tonight with drawing in enclosed shapes instead of lines. I made two attempts. when I'm feeling brave and ambitious enough to get out my paints I might retry this  as a modern painting...

Doodles

nothing in depth tonight. The top one was done all in squiggles, the bottom was all done without lifting the pen.

Another day

Flow

   I often feel tense while drawing. I want things to be perfectly in place right away and sketch in short strokes that i can shift and adjust without much effort. I really want to create a sense of flow, and feel that flow while I'm doing it. I've always envied the flow of my friend KI's work. When we would draw together in college, I often had the feeling that her drawing style was like downhill skiing, while mine was like clumping along in snowshoes. She would put a free-form abandon in what she was doing, while I aganozied over every line. It seemed effortless. At least to me. I'm sure she would disagree, and like any artist, she's highly critical of her own work.

I tried to work with a little more of that flow and abandon on this piece. While it came out more of a caricature than anything like KI's work, I felt more at ease as I drew it..

Angular

More Lines

Not quite how I envisioned it, but I like it enough to try again with a different reference, and maybe a ruler.... He doesn't look much like himself unfortunately. I think next time I'll try a more iconic one with the beard.

Lines

Dats a lot 'o Dots....

     Woo- this one was tedious, but I like how it came out. It's all done with layers dots for shading (I did cheat a little in the all black areas and just colored in the center)

Weekends are too short...

O'Lincoln

Happy St. Patrick's Day

References

I feel like I'm running out of reference material latley. Either that or I've just been too tired to focus . Not too pleased with today's piece. It doesn't much look like the reference, but at least it looks like Lincoln. I was making too many proportion errors early on, and I was in serious doubt it would be anything I could post with any sort of dignity. (edit: 4/3/12 I couldn't stand all the spelling errors with any sort of dignity either and corrected that mess.)

Sketches

Other Artists....

VERY tired tonight and heading to bed early, so I'm going to share with you the work of some other artists on Etsy.

None of the work listed is mine, but I'm sure they'd like it if you looked around their shops.
http://www.etsy.com/treasury/MTU5ODIzMzd8MjQ1MTA4NTM3Mw/abraham-lincoln

Why the long face?

A little bit of a caricature tonight.

The hardest part....

...is coming up with titles everyday if I don't have much to say.

Oops...

Somehow yesterday's post completely slipped my mind. I don't have much to make up for it today, but I was busy creatively in other ways. I'm working on a surprise for a friend so I don't want to give it away until it's in their hands. I worked a little more on my Lincoln carving, cheating a little and using a dremel tool.

to the Ages...

GothDrama?

Another rush job and the marker was running out again. I'm going to need to stock up on those. However I don't think I'll continue this one....  For a while before I added the lines and mole on his face, I couldn't see anything but a certain teenage sparkling vampire....

Doodles

Just some quick doodles tonight. I have a feeling before too long I'll be able to do a decent rendition of Lincoln from memory. The sketch on the right is with out a reference. The three long sketches are rough plans for another Lincoln carving. A little simpler and closer to my current skill level....

More Lincoln carving

It's a sad statement to my physical fitness that after playing Kinect game for 20 minutes, my arms are sore. I tried working on my carving again, which sore arms made a more difficult task. My Dad made these look so easy. I spent about 45 minute on it and it hardly looks like I made a dent. I worked on rounding out the back of the head tonight.

Meh...

Even with an extra day off, I still feel the draining essence of Monday. That and a bad headache result in unmotivated minute sketches, that I eventually forgot to time. I'm more motivated to work on a wood project. If that goes well, perhaps I'll also work on my Lincoln carving tonight too.

A relaxing night

A little late tonight, but having the next day off put of any pressure to hurry. i really like how it turned out.

The Camera Sees All

I don't know what it is, but I've noticed that when I take a picture of my work, I notice proportion problems or alignment problems that I didn't notice when looking at the finished piece. I look at the finished piece and think that it turned out pretty darn good, then I snap the picture and suddenly all these errors become glaringly obvious to me. I still like it, but I see what I would change.

Friday

A long week done. I'm glad it's Friday and I've got a three day weekend ahead of me. Work can leave me feeling so drained that it's hard to find the energy for anything creative. Hopefully I'll get ahead on some other practical matters at home as well as some of my artistic projects over the long weekend.

Lincasso

Down to the wire and another late night. Here's another Picasso style portrait. Not as thrilled with it as the last one.