colorful meditation

Playing in the journal. Playing with paint frees you from the mind, too.

Any focused concentration on an activity can work for that, not just traditional meditation methods.

Acrylics and poster paint pens.

drawing interiors

I'm fascinated by the artists at urbansketchers.com who can do such small, accurate and detailed interior scenes. And drawing in a crowd of people, too!

I'm working on simple doors and walls, for now. Just getting them in relatively correct perspective and proportion is a big improvement compared to where I was 3 years ago.

Pencil in the journal.

trying new paint mixes

I got out tubes of w/c paint I seldom use, colors that aren't in my favorite palette mix, and started playing.

I never use white in watercolors, but this time I mixed it with indigo, which is otherwise too black for me, and got this interesting blue.

The orange is Winsor orange, and the green is the orange mixed with Prussian blue. Very autumnal, so I had to draw a pumpkin.

W&N w/c on Canson 90# paper.

drawing a Zombie

This was an experiment that worked out better than I expected. I drew a face with a Pentel brush pen on slightly rough paper, getting a drybrush look.

Then I misted it with a spray of water, and the black ink bloomed!

I love the intense black/white effect. Instant Zombie!

Ink on 140# w/c paper.

Hyatt Regency elevator(s)

There are 4 glass elevators in the hotel. Great view, pretty lights, but they can't handle many people per car.

If you hold the door open with your hand, the elevator breaks, as in--won't go up or down anymore. A simple reflexive action causes frustrating delays and great irritation!

They have big signs everywhere about being ve-ery careful with the elevators. These poorly designed cars are a royal pain with hundreds of people going up and down to 16 floors of sessions, meals, rooms, dealers, and activities.

Next year Arisia will be in a different hotel, so this was my last chance to draw the flakey elevators.

Pencil in W&N sketchbook.

faces and backs

More Arisia people, audience and speakers.

Lots of heads

Practice, practice, practice. Arisia offered lots of that.

pencil in the W&N sketchbook

Listening to Gardner Dozois

For 20 years he was the editor of Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine. He had a lot of great stories to tell, interviewed by Allen Steele.

Pencil in the W&N sketchbook

Arisia 2010 again

Catching the panelists and the audience members was my main goal in attending Arisia this year. The recommended titles and information I picked up for a year of exploring is just a bonus.

All Arisia drawings were with a pencil, sometimes a Prismacolor water soluble one (undampened) in a Winsor & Newton sketchbook. About 90# paper.

Arisia 2010

Just back from three days of listening, talking, and watching people at the science fiction and fantasy convention called Arisia, in Cambridge, Mass.

These people were in discussions of the best films of 2009, the TV show Flash Forward, and who is and is not an "early adopter" of technology (personal electronics, dental/medical advances, and more).

the cat, always the cat

He's my most faithful and present living model. And he doesn't mind being painted noncat colors--though this is not far from reality.

Pen and w/c, on drawing paper.

drawing what's in front of me

The brush bucket, painted in later.

Brush pen and w/c

Purple, because I felt like it

A quick drawing to catch the rare sitting posture, then painted in later.

Fountain pen and w/c on drawing paper.

building on a bad start

I painted the rectanges on the left with water color. Didn't like it at all, so I rolled, sponged and stamped acrylics over everything to get the piece below.

What a difference layers make!

The orientation of the second image is 180 degrees off from the left image.