Monthly Archives: October 2010

Hawaii Shots

Back on the Mainland

If you check this blog regularly, you may have noticed a certain lack of posts for the past week or so. This was entirely due to the fact that I was on vacation. Maryanna and I had never traveled to the Hawaiian Islands before, so a few months back we booked tickets to Kauai, the Garden Island. It was a vacation in every sense of the word. No computers, no work, just a week of island style relaxation.

The landscape and brilliant colors of the foliage were awe inspiring. To be honest the two drawings pictured above were the only ones I produced on the island. I felt it was best to just soak up the beauty with my eyes and camera in hopes that the natural beauty would inspire great works later back on the mainland. The first I drew on our second trip to Hanalei Bay, the beach there being our favorite on the island. The second was drawn poolside at our hotel, so many palm trees to draw!

I’m excited to get back to work and regular updates on this blog here. Hawaii may be beautiful, but Portland is looking pretty great decked out in fall colors.

Not visible for much longer

As we creep further and further into October, a sight that’s unfamiliar for this time of year lingers in the sky. The sun typically flies south for the Winter midway through September, leaving us to hole up and work on our art through the rainy season. The bright orb has decided to grace us with its presence for a little longer than usual this year, most likely to make up for a lackluster August performance. I really have no complaints, as the crisp air is much better for afternoon bike rides.

I’ve been spending as much time outside as I can. It’s amazing how accessible Portland is by bicycle. One can get most places in town almost as quickly as by car, quicker during rush-hour. I do know that this weather can’t last forever, so I’m gearing up to be able to ride through the rainy winter months.

Playing with light

I had a realization over the weekend, a culmination of something I’ve been thinking over the past few weeks. I need to focus a lot more on light. I tend to color a lot of my images as though they are a 6 color screen print. The fact is I have more than a million colors at my disposal. I also have quite a bit of processing power at my fingertips, so I can play around with lighting effects and whatnot.

This piece you see here is a sketch I pulled from earlier this year that I pulled out of my sketchbook. I worked in many layers of color and light to give it much more emotional depth. I’m playing around with different effects I can achieve with a color treatments. Expect to see a few more experiments of this nature in the upcoming weeks.

Sunday evening – looking into the kitchen

Floating neighborhoods

This is one of those images that came to me in a dream. It was a surreal dream, and I remember seeing a poster on a wall of a floating neighborhood. The neighborhood was comprised of a combination of chunky geometric shapes. The image had a certain tranquil simplicity to it. Yesterday I started to transcribe the image from my dream memory into my sketchbook. The drawing actually turned out pretty close to what I had witnessed in my dream. I treated the color in a way that I hope to use much more in the future. I’m trying to move beyond fields of flat color into a more painterly, emotionally evocative style; much closer to the tangible colors of the dream landscape.