As Promised

As promised, here are some shots from my drawing books of the studies that I've been spending my time on. I've taken a break from my other drawings to focus on the installations. These are meant to get me looking at the spaces more closely, help me to distill the parts out of the images of the spaces better. Hopefully, theses drawings will influence the installations, maybe some of them might become installations. Most of them are from Baroque Palaces and some are from Gothic Cathedrals. I will probably get into some Vegas imagery as well. Using the ball-point pen helps me to keep the drawings fast and to focus on the look of the space rather than the finish of the drawings. I do find myself loving the marks... and loving making the marks, however. These are really meant only to be studies but I could see them leaping onto nicer paper, or perhaps onto the wall at some point. I think the better ones, of course, are the more ambiguous drawings. I'm struggling with adding too much information, and not getting at that "essence" or "glimpse" that I'm looking for.

Below is the diorama that I built last week. I'm pretty friggin' excited about this one. I'm going to use this to work through installation ideas more quickly. I'm also probably going to turn some of these mini-installations into stereoscopic images. It will work as another fold of space. I built the diorama to scale with the working walls of mt studio.

Promise

I think that this is what optimism looks like.

I revel in the feel and look of a crisp, clean new notebook or sketch book. When I sit down to start working in a new book, it feels cleansing in a way. There is an air of possibility that comes with the blank expanse of paper. The clean page clears my head. Potentiality. Setting out. Not much beats that feeling in my art-making practice.

I think that this is what optimism sounds like:

http://www.wfmu.org/playlists/FP

I've been listening to this show a lot. It's pretty great.

Printmania!

In case you were wondering, this is what I've been doing lately. For the most part at least. Nicole and I just spent two and a half weeks of grueling print marathon. We just finished up a set of wedding invitations for a good friend. Running into almost every conceivable problem with the silkscreen process, we wound up replacing most of our set-up at home while problem solving and eliminating variables. After finally finishing the project, we now have to go back and change an address. So...the fun isn't over yet. While I love printing and am extremely excited about getting Nightingale Press off the ground (we are currently working on our first "real" job as well!), this particular project has been a bit of an ordeal and a great learning experience for getting our print shop running smoothly. We've also been able to learn a lot about timing and working with clients.

Needless to say, I haven't been able to get very much art or reading done in over two weeks. Damn. This really threw me off my routine, but I'm glad to report that I'm back on it and feeling pretty good. I'm getting excited about some new drawings I'm doing of architectural spaces/details that I'll post images of as soon as I have a group from which I can select a number of good ones.

These are the direction cards for Erin and Jon's invitations. We now also have a blog up for Nightingale Printing Press until we get the means to make/buy a website.

http://nightingaleprintingpress.blogspot.com

Pen-cil

This is my new pen-cil. I got it at Muji. It is both a ball-point pen and a mechanical pencil and is designed beautifully. I've been using it a lot and have even begun to use it to do some line drawings of architectural details/spaces. The pencil part supposedly takes .5 or .7 graphite (I like.7) and the pen part writes as smooth as butter.

Translucent, so you can see its inner workings.

Here, you can see the pen and the pencil inside the fuselage of the pen-cil.

A turn of the clip at the end makes either the pen or the pencil emerge from the tip.

The Pencil

The Pen

I'm back

So, it's been a while since I posted last. My Internet has been restored to its former glory and I'm ready to go again. Things have been a bit slow in the studio lately. We've been working on some prints for Nightingale Press and other things have been distracting me from my work these days. I should be back on the once a week posts now, however, and am close to a breaking point with the installations I'm working on. Below are the best of the most recent drawings I've completed.

Long Time Gone

It's been a while since I've posted. The main reason is because we haven't had an Internet connection for the past three weeks. It is very spotty, and right now I am utilizing a rare window of connectivity and I have no idea how long it will last, could be 2 hours, could be 2 minutes. As soon as we get our connection fixed, I'm going to resume the once a week posts.

Not much work has happened over the last couple of weeks. My parents came to visit, then I had to go out of town for work, then Nicole and I got really sick. So, lately it's been about how to deal with stretches of time without being able to work at all. I think it's important to keep your momentum going. As long as you still have that excitement about the stuff you're working on, it can even help to break. Lately I've been chomping at the bit to get back to work. I finished two drawings yesterday, which turned out really good. I'm very pleased with my latest drawings, I'll post some images soon.

In the meantime, take a look at these dioramas. I took these images when we visited the American Museum of Natural history. I think they are good things for me to think about.

New Drawings

I wanted to post this on Monday, however, our Internet connection as been spotty at best. So, I'll take this rare moment of connectivity to throw this stuff up here.

These are my favorite of the new drawings. The images could be better, I'll replace them as soon as I get a chance. I've been really happy with the drawings that I've been churning out lately. I've been spending a lot more time on each drawing and they have become more complex in terms of mark-making. I found a really nice image in the Spanish version of "Bazaar" that has been yielding quite a few drawings. I intend on mining this image to death. Maye be I'll throw that image up here as well, once I'm finished with it. I've only done one large drawing, but I'm excited to do two more. In the finished one, I worked from a finished small drawing, which made the large one lack energy and it became boring for me to work on. So, in the next large drawings, I'll be working right from the image. I'll have to deal with the prospect of wasting a large sheet of expensive paper if the drawing doesn't work.

I'm pretty close to resolving my current two installations. Hopefully I'll be able to post images of them in a couple of weeks.