Yin/Yang Climbing Tree

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8x10" oil on canvas, en plein air, 1996. Following are some photos from just the other day.

Are we all getting broader, and losing limbs...?

No photo of it, but it's hollow inside too...

Had a strange psychological experience when I first saw this and the next one. A flood of information that seemed to cover about the last 24 hrs. or so, like a gate opened up, and it was like waking up from a dream sort of, where certain images or aspects really grab your attention and then there's more and you can't hang on to it and then, what the hell was that? Shortly thereafter I became nauseous and nearly passed out. Like I said, strange...

Did I inadvertently photograph the tree's aura? Something weird there, kinda like psychedelics...

Anyway I finally...

...made my way around to the light again.

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My Hat

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6x8" technical pen, probably a Faber Castell UniBall, over pencil on bristol board. The background is from a photo I took of the Post Office in Jonesboro AR. The hat is from life, one of mine. The rest is made up. Why I did this escapes me, but I really enjoyed it.

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Backyard Studio

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12x9" oil on canvas, 1993. The only time I've ever had a studio space that was not an extra bedroom--it was half of an unused storage shed out back of a house I was renting. Barely big enough to get my stuff in and set up, I found it really focused the mind, maybe because there wasn't room to do anything else in there but paint/draw.
My day job was on the afternoon/evening shift so I'd get up early and walk out in the back yard to my "studio" before going in to the job.
This piece is one of my best on location, or en plein air paintings to date. I just turned around from my usual orientation and did the view out the door--the only door--across our and the neighbors' back yards. By "best" I don't necessarily mean composition 'cause being too literal I included the slanted door facing, but on execution of observation I'm really pleased with it.

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East P'gould

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"I'm not lost for I know where I am. But however, where I am may be lost."
-A.A. Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh

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Yeah, Don Quixote...

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My mind was too much in "adventure" mode yesterday to settle on a subject, so this turned out to be more of an exploratory exercise with the Pilot Precise V5 extra fine rolling ball pen. I guess technically that makes it a ballpoint sketch. 'Cept not really. It ain't no Bic Stick, although I was trying to use it like one.

 This is page one in a new sketch book, 8.5x5.5" made by Daler Rowney with 80 sheets of 65 lb. paper.
 And you get the full width for drawing as it's attached to the book by a 3/4" strip with perforations.
 Cool huh.

And here's some eggs I drew in pencil in another book a long time ago.

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Speaking of fantasy...

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 Some old drawings and one painting:

This is ballpoint in a small sketchpad. I was driving back from Dallas to Garland one day, stopped at an intersection when a shadow crossed the windshield, I looked up and...!!!  If you google "pterodactyls in Texas" you'll find people who would believe that. THAT'S a true story.

Deep in Edgar Rice Burroughs' Pelucidar series.

Dreaming of flight...

...a study for the above figure.

Alas it never became a painting. Yet.

Snort

Mainline

Jungle Queen. My pencil after The Master Frank Frazetta's painting.

Mushroom Fairy, 24x18" oil on canvas. I used a photo by a friend--which had a frog on the toadstool--and a figure from a book of action photos for artists.

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Light and shade

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3.5x5" ballpoint, sketchpad. Below is just about actual size in the book. Sat in the van for about an hour yesterday, looking west from the Walmart parking lot toward the slope that leads up to the Dixie Cafe.  Touched up a little after.

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Some fantasy, some reality...

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 5 more in more or less chronological order from the mid 80's

This first one, one of my few acrylic pieces, 12x16" on canvas, was derived from my own black and white photo of the mausoleum at Linwood, with a little fantasy color thrown in for... feeling.

I think this is a 12x16 as well, oil on canvas panel. Limited palette study--burnt umber, pthalocyanine green and titanium white. only, from a photo I took down 8th ave.

From a black and white drawing by the French comics Master Jean Giraud, aka Moebius.

24x30" oil on canvas from my photo.

20x24" oil on canvas, from photos and sketches of a street corner in Jonesboro. Apparently I was too far up into somebody's yard while doing the sketches as they called the cops and had me run off. True story.

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Some drawings from 1980

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Page from a sketch book, I think. Pencil of a trash can in a woodworking shop or sculpture studio...

Graphite on a large sheet of drawing paper. I lost it somewhere along the way...

Another pencil in an 11x8.5" sketchbook. I sat on the porch of my apt. across from this to draw it. In the glow of streetlights, or whatever you call 'em when they're in the yard.

All the rest are pencil in the sketchbooks. This one was for a design project involving horizontals and diagonals that wound up being replaced by the big graphite piece above.

Taking a break from painting the outside of this house...

For some reason Blogger loaded the pics in different order than I selected, but it worked out because now the best was saved for last.

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Is it the full moon yet? I can't sleep. Oh, I feel the sun coming up...

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Golden Hour on East Vine

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Yesterday and today...

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Um, actually the "Yesterday" is about 30 yrs. ago, and the "today" is...well, yesterday.

First is a ballpoint sketch in my little 3.5x5" sketchpad, made yesterday at approximately the same spot as the following oil painting, which was made back in the 90's from photos I took back in the 80's.
The tree out in the field in the painting has been replaced by an 80 foot power pole in the sketch, and in the painting where there's a break in the mid-distance tree line, showing more distant trees down by the creek where as a kid I hunted rabbits and stegosaurus, in the sketch has been replaced by, on the left there, a bypass going right over the creek.
"Progress." It is a nice lonely stretch of road, skirting the south side of town, which if I have time I'll try to capture some of, before it gets all commercialized.

I don't know if you can tell but the larger painting (18x24") was done during my "Bob Ross period," ;) using mainly his tools and methods. I struggled with this scene for months and then knocked it out his way in about 2 or 3 sessions. I still want to do it over in my own style though...


Afterthought: 8x10" oil study of the tree break, done just before the above painting.

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