Work In Progress

W.I.P. Whale Dream drawing

Whale Dream is something I’ve been wanting to visit for a while now. There ought to be a few drawings I can pull out of this general theme. This one is the first – 17″ x 23″ finished size.

Just for the heck of it, I’m putting a photo of the piece as it currently sits on the easel in my studio. The clamps that are holding the (well sanded) wood strips on either side of the plexiglass drawing board allow me to easily move my mahl stick to any orientation while I’m working.

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Sky Drop

I had an image of an Earth Mother type figure that acted as the central engine of life. A flow of light and energy and spirit that fills everything, guided by the organizing principal that seems to be what life is, weaving ever-more widely reaching possibilities out of the materials at hand and creating the wonders that we share in as living creatures.

I wasn’t sure just how a painting of this would come together, but I at least had an idea of what it would look like.

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The Boatman W.I.P.

Many, many thousands of years ago there were vast lands that now lie beneath the oceans of our world. Before the collapse of the glaciers and the rise of the waters people had a long time to knit themselves into these places that we now only can visit in dreams or visions. The Boatman guides his craft on a surface that is now hundreds of feet deep beneath the waves and 15,000 years deep in our forgotten past.

Night Toad

I had this strong mental image of the silhouette of a large toad on a toadstool as seen from below. How would that affect the lives, the patterns, the stories of those who lived in it’s shadow? I’ve started the tentative beginnings of a children’s fable, but in the meantime a completely different aspect presented itself to me visually. So I drew it out. Here are different stages of the drawing.

Sky Dancer painting WIP

I thought I’d blog this painting’s progress because I haven’t done a painting for a while (those Tree Dancers keep leaping onto the page) and thought I’d try a different process than one I’d been using recently.

9"x 12" pencil

Passing Glances in 3 steps

I didn’t think to take a photo of this piece until it was pretty well set, so there isn’t a real early stage photo. But it is interesting to see a couple of intermediary steps before the finished look. I didn’t try to make the colour of the stages look like the finished piece. I think that is part of their attraction, actually.

Passing Glances – I knew how I wanted it to look and used an image that was very close to the final layout in order to give me a good proportional drawing.

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Family Round – end game of a painting

This acrylic piece has been sitting on the easel for far too long. I’m including it as part of a juried submission that accepts works in progress, which means it can make it into the Blog as well. I’m betting the end result will not look too different from what I have here, but it will take forever to achieve that small difference. That’s just the way it goes with some work, I guess.  20″ x 20″

I noticed that I never posted a final image of the painting in this post –

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Reflections II

I decided I wanted to do a variation of Reflections, going with the energy and ideas that were still strong from the original. So, working on a larger scale (36″ x 24″) in acrylic, I will be trying extra-hard to make this piece a fully functional painting when hung in any orientation. I’m interested in following up on where I was when painting Reflections.  So while not trying to be cute about it, I’m reflecting upon the reflections of things, the reflected image,

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Art on Deck – February 21,2010

The Song – 12″ x 16″ finished size in micron pens and colour pencils. This is the first stage complete before I colour it in. The show is coming up and I feel the crunch time, so I will see how quickly I get The Song complete. Hopefully there will be a final version hitting the gallery today.

The finished piece – learn as you go when it comes to this particular art board and these pencils and pens I think.

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Art on Deck (What’s On My Easel)

I thought it would be interesting to have a running blog showing what work was in progress. Sometimes art changes quite a bit as it works it’s way onto the canvas or the drawing board. Sometimes the process leads to an evolution that wasn’t expected at all. The review of the art can be a fun thing, and maybe even lead to considerations regarding a variation that would be interesting to follow.

Tuesday February 16, 2010 “Reflections”

Acrylic 18″ x 24″.

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