Buried at the end of my last post, I posed the question, “How do you digitize your artwork?” I embedded a crowdsignal poll with some options that came to mind, which actually represent things I’ve considered. Since I started back into the art hobby about five years ago, I’ve been taking photos of portraits using my smartphone. As the years
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I’ve talked about my affinity for stock photos on many occasions. In previous posts, I’ve written about royalty free images, photo spamming on social media, and my general love of memes (which tend to lean heavily on stock photos). I just find these images to be very appealing from a portrait study perspective. The facial expressions and/or subject positions are
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This post is about my very first attempt at oil painting. Well, really first ever attempt at any type of painting, which to my surprise was actually done this past weekend. I feel like I’ve been talking about this for years, but I’ve had “learning to paint” in my back pocket as a long term goal for quite sometime. It’s
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The question of what to do during a long flight is much easier to answer than it used to be. Our kids have been on planes a few times, and we’ve been fortunate that they handle flights pretty well. Of course, we have to thank the existence of kids’ tablets and the practically unlimited number of apps, games, and shows
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I am often amused by the strange processes that seem to govern how I decide what to draw. Personality-wise, I tend to be a planner and a creature of habit. I like routines in life and in drawing, and tend to seek a predictable path to art however I can. That’s probably noticeable just from browsing through any sample of
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In conversations with acquaintances, colleagues, and other various newly-met people, occasionally my drawing hobby comes up. Although not everyone is particularly interested in art, usually I can expect a follow up question or two; something along the lines of “what do you draw” or “using what?” People are usually somewhat surprised to hear that I consider my comfort zone to
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Well, it took quite a bit longer than I anticipated, but it seems things are finally settling down for me and my family. Last year, we started the ball rolling on a move from Louisiana to Texas. We made the move last summer, but the pandemic and an unexpectedly insane housing market made our transition to a permanent home take
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In a couple of ways, I consider this post to be somewhat of a do-over. Months ago, I shared a YouTube video on my relatively new channel covering some details on outline sketches and measurement. Although I was happy with the discussion portion, I was not very satisfied with the artwork that resulted. I wanted to make another outline/pre-drawing video
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It feels like it’s been a while since my last post, but when I looked back, it’s actually only been a couple of weeks. Time during a pandemic sure bends in mysterious ways. Anyhow, in the last two weeks or so since my last post, I’ve actually been pretty busy with Amdall Gallery related stuff. The biggest thing has been
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As of today, Amdall Gallery’s new YouTube channel is live! Its main purpose is to share some progression videos; if you’re familiar with my typical posts, I often include still frame .gif images to provide a small window into how my portraits come together. Some people find these .gifs useful, but they usually aren’t more than seven or eight images
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I’m entering a very unusual artwork and post writing phase. If I’ve ever been in this situation before, I really can’t remember.Essentially, I have now completed multiple drawings and haven’t shared them – a backlog of finished artwork. Normally having art that’s done is the limiting factor, not the writing side. I think the reason is twofold; one, I’m just
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It’s only been about a week and a half or so of social distancing/self-quarantine where we live, but somehow it feels a lot longer. Not that we should be complaining though; we’ve got shelter, food, and the apparently highly valuable commodity known as toilet paper. We are also fortunate enough to live in a time where technology can bridge some
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Writing about artwork during a global pandemic really isn’t something I expected to be doing at all. Yet here we are in an escalating health and financial crisis and I’ll probably be sharing some art over the next few weeks. I have lots of thoughts on this situation, but I’ll try to keep them somewhat organized. My wife and I
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It took longer than I thought to finish this write-up, but welcome to part two of a series I started with last week’s post about drawing my way through a setback. Without retreading the all the details, basically there is an art show that I found to be inspiring early in my return to art as a hobby a couple
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I wrote a couple of months ago about an art show called the River Oaks 5x5x5, which I often refer to as the “tiny art” show. It’s one that I entered two years ago and surprisingly had a sketch accepted for the exhibit. That was really early in my return to art, and the quality of what I was doing
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