Colorized Classics

Way, way back in the day there was raging debate about Ted Turner and what he was doing to old movies. He was taking dumb, boring old black and white movies and modernizing and improving them with color. Of course there were those Luddites that were totally opposed to color and wanted to live back in the days before color was invented. Jerks!

Or seen the other way; here was a guy that took films that were conceived in black and white, executed in black and white, and directed so as to take full advantage of black and white for the complete visual experience and ruined them by slapping a bunch of garish, pastel girly colors.


That's what I've done here. Both of those things. I think of these images in black and white but feel compelled to watercolor them afterwards. Who's to say which is better?

Conceived in B&W

Ted Turner-ized

Original Recipe

                                       

Extra Crispy                                       

Family resemblances part II

Here's the part where I tell you of my woes. Many thousands of you will have missed my post on Monday. Because there wasn't one. I will just chalk it up to the fact that I have a newborn along with five other kids and a lovely wife who need my attention. If keeping a blog could be construed as a rather selfish thing to do – especially one that is almost completely about my own artwork – then writing one while life is swirling at hurricane speed most certainly is.

So this is my version of a clip show. All of these are from Family Resemblances just like last week. As I said, I really love that book and want to show you a fair bit of it! (Not all of it, not by a looooong shot!) We have lots of woodcuts, collages, maker and watercolor work.

Bleeding heart tetra

Here's an old one. Sorta. I made this woodcut about 150 years ago back when I was keeping a 55 gallon tank full of fish. One of the fish took a kamikaze out of the tank and wound up on my drawing board. Ever since I cut this block (one of my first woodcuts) and printed it poorly a couple of times, it has been languishing in a drawer.

A couple of weeks back, I stumbled across it and decided to give it one more go. So here you are, a bleeding heart tetra in all his woodcut and watercolor glory.

A fish among the plants

Coloring Pages

There are those who excel at making color prints. They will cut multiple color blocks, plan, scheme, arrange, experiment and print, print, print until they have a virtual painting of a print. Others will do all the planning and scheming but choose to do a reduction linocut or woodcut. This is even more difficult than cutting multiple color blocks. It takes A LOT of forethought and complex mental visualizations before setting out to make a piece.

Right about now you are asking yourself if I, your host and artist, do either of these things. I have in the past. But now I prefer to choose the tertium quid. I choose to color my prints. Watercolor actually. It's a ton of fun and the results can be very satisfying. Since I print my linocuts in oil based ink, it's super easy to break out the watercolors  and paint right over the black ink once it's dry. (This works because, as you know, oil repels water. When I used to work at a grocery store way, way back in my dumb youth, we would use this fascinating principle for evil. We would tell the new baggers that the salad dressings had begun to separate and that they needed to shake them all up until they were a nice consistent blend. Depending on how sharp the bagger was, he could be there shaking salad dressings for a very long time.)

Anyway, here are the results on my chicken print. You know, the print you all have been salivating over and can't wait to buy? (See the Etsy button up in the left-hand corner? Go ahead an click on it!)

Here is the original, the-way-I-always-envisioned-it black and white image.

And...... Glorious Color!

Sunday School Drawings

I have been asked by my bishop to make some drawings for a Sunday school curriculum that he wants to make available to the diocese. This has been an interesting job because I have both the original scripture references to work from and the author's take on them as well. So I don't necessarily have to do a straight illustration of the text. So far, I am about 1/3 of the way through making drawings for all of the lessons.

My initial preliminaries involved lots of digital coloring. Bishop loved it, but we both agreed the time commitment was way over the top. FEAR NOT! This is the moment when Gabriel appears to Zechariah to tell him the he will have a son, John.

These watercolors are the direction we decided to go. They look good (I think, anyway) and they are quick to do. The first one is the parable of the Good Samaritan and the one below that is the parable of the lost sheep.

It turns out that the job requires a designer as well. My wife was a perfect fit! I make the drawings and she makes them look good with text all around them. I normally hate having text foul up my pictures. But I guess there's no way around that when you are illustrating books. BUT, she does a great job and I love the way the finished work looks.

By the way, it's a joy to work with your wife. I really recommend doing it if at all possible!

The Alchemy of Drawing

Many of you out there wonder how it is that an artist takes a blank page and turns it into a fascinating drawing*. Simply put, it's magic. Actually it's alchemy which is a branch of magic. Mostly I just spill some pink or watercolor and wave a few pencils and pens around to make my drawings.

Or something like that. I really do believe it's alchemy, however and don't want to remove any of the magic by explaining my process.

But I'll go a head and explain anyway. I start out with a pencil drawing, but not too tight; I leave plenty of room to improvise later. After the structural details are done, I do all the value stuff directly in pen.

I tend to finish section by section when doing pen and ink work. This is not how I do watercolor or straight pencil drawing.

This close-up is to show how I do hatching and cross hatching. I love hatching to an unreasonable degree. It may be the perfect method of showing value. It builds value, gives texture, and adds interest all at the same time. It's the swiss army knife of drawing.

After the pen work is done, I go in with watercolor. It goes down in transparent washes (as watercolor should) so I don't usually have to touch up pen work after painting over it.

I erase any stray pencil marks and add a few touches of opaque white ink here and there and then I'm finished.

This is how I do a big chunk of my drawings - especially in Dreams and Visions. Now you know.

*"Drawing" you say? Isn't this a painting? Here's the thing, whether a piece is a drawing or a painting is pretty arbitrary. Since I spend far more time on the drawing part than the painting part, I just call it a drawing, or a colored drawing at most.

Florida Swamp Animals

These are some preparatory watercolors I have done for some murals to go on 1st grade classrooms. These images will be printed on dimensional PVC and attached to the walls of the classrooms. My colleague and I will paint backgrounds directly on the walls of the classroom that these will go on. I anticipate putting some bluegills, turtles and trees to go with these animals. That's the plan anyway.

The thing I love about camping is all the nothing that needs to be done during the day. Especially while the baby is napping and someone has to stay around camp until he wakes up. I made these watercolors over a few days while up in the mountains of east Tennessee earlier this month.

As I look at these on the screen, they seem to be a bit washed out. Maybe I should spring for a new scanner?

Ivan Denisovich. This watercolor went pretty quickly and I think I could spend some more time on it now that I am looking at it on the screen. I like it, but I'm not sure if I shouldn't go back in on it and turn the volume up to 11.

Camping Watercolor

Pine Grove Furnace State Park is a jewel. It is quiet, secluded and, incidentally, the traditional half way point on the Appalachian Trail. This is a little watercolor I did while sitting outside my tent waiting for the baby to get up from his nap.