City Kitties Hit the Country

Some recent personal work I've been chipping away at. I have a good grip of sketches from the last year I'm trying to build up into a body of work about life during the pandemic. City people have probably never engaged with the outdoors more than they did this past summer. I thought the neon cats I have been making over the last few years would lend themselves well to this idea.

I've also been really enjoying drawing grass with colored pencils and crayons this past year. It's very meditative and has been a soothing activity to help deal with all the noise in the world. I could imagine covering a whole wall or room with it someday.

Scroll down for the process pics.

 

Virtual Workshop Time

Touchstone Center for Crafts has just released their schedule for the Spring/Summer 2021 virtual workshops and I'm there in the mix with my class "Creating Narratives in Portraiture". The class will be on April 20th from 6:30-8:30pm and there is a complete list of materials for anyone that would like to work along with me as I explain how I create my pieces and some techniques that I use. Link below to view entire class schedule.

https://touchstonecrafts.wordpress.com/virtual-workshops/

 

Swillburg

Recent commission all wrapped up for the ultimate fan of American Graffiti, The Outsiders, classic horror movies, sunsets, and a triangular shaped 20 block neighborhood in Rochester, NY. Really hoping to stop by the Highland Park Diner and eat too much food and drink too much coffee in a hopefully near post-covid future.

Unfortunately, The Cinema Theater announced in February that they will be closing their doors indefinitely. Hoping someone jumps in and saves the day, especially since they've been a functioning movie theater since 1914, one of the longest running theaters in the United States. 

Details and process pics below.

 

A Series of Johns

John Lurie

Since my steady Soul Clap & Dance-Off poster gig stopped abruptly back in March 2020, I haven't really been drawing a lot of people this past year. I was given the opportunity to teach a few afternoon art classes about portraiture/caricature recently and I decided I should brush up on something that is (was?) a big part of my career: drawing faces. 

I got going on this trend of drawing people named John accidentally and then after I noticed there was about 3 in a row in my sketchbook, I just rolled with it and did a few more until I felt sort of burnt on it. I've included each John with their full name below.

John Cooper Clarke

John Cale

John Carpenter

John Goodman

John Bonham

John Waters

 

Putting The Pieces Together

Haven't really felt too psyched about engaging with social media much these past few months but it felt like a good time to drop a little update. Still working on more pieces for my quarantine crew right here. Trying to get enough new pieces assembled by the summer or fall to hopefully put together a show since I had to cancel all of those plans for 2020. I've also been working on some commission work as well along with drawings of buildings from my hometown region that I have some sentimental attachment to. I'm trying to figure out a way to incorporate them into the quarantine work but they may just be for something else. Guess we'll see. 

 

Faces of 2020: "Refreshing My Anxiety"

First portrait in the series that I started right around Election Day. Man, that first week of November was a wild ride, huh? I had this paper towel I was using to clean the paint off my brushes while working on another project and I kinda liked how it looked when I was done working, like some human head twisting and coming apart. Kinda how I imagine a lot of people felt glued to their tv's, computers or phones back in early November. 

 

Faces of 2020: "Static Sensations"

Second portrait in the series. Along with George Romero's "...of the Dead" series, David Cronenberg's Videodrome has been on my mind a lot as well. It's one of those movies where you can understand if audiences viewed it as some far-fetched science fiction in 1983 because watching in 2020 feels like it was made for our current relationship with technology/media.

 

Faces of 2020: "I Can Almost Taste The Freedom"

First piece I'm posting in a series of portraits I've been working on the last month. I watched all of the George Romero "...of the Dead" series over the summer and a lot of the ways he critiques rampant consumerism in the form of a zombie apocalypse has been on my mind a lot lately. I think, just short of eating people alive, we came about as close as possible to resembling the zombies in Dawn of the Dead this year.