Category Archives: Featured Posts

Working Through a Misfire by way of the Backlog

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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Welcome to Flavortown

Is it Flavor Town or Flavortown? I’m actually not sure. Unfortunately, I don’t know Guy Fieri, so I can’t ask the Mayor of Flavortown about the preferred spelling. Regardless, this is a post about my favorite wild-haired, sandwich-tasting chef on television. For the most part, people know Guy Fieri from one of his shows on the Food Network; the one

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A Dark Tower Redo, One Year Comparison

At the start of 2018, I finished what has become one of my favorite fiction novel series; The Dark Tower by Stephen King. If you’re not familiar, the story follows Roland the Gunslinger on his quest to fix a ruined world. He gains some great companions along the way, and has to make difficult choices that will affect his world

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Ron Swanson, The Simpsons, and New Parents

My most recent drawing is sort of a random one. I guess most of them are, but this was a very spur-of-the-moment thing. I was watching TV and saw a commercial or something featuring Nick Offerman. It may have been something about a syndicated rerun of Parks and Recreation. Whatever it was, it got me thinking about how funny that

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Self Portrait, Shadow and Contrast Struggles

I came across a really interesting article a few days ago called How to Be an Artist – 33 Rules to Take you from Clueless Amateur to Generational Talent (or at Least Help you Live Life a Little More Creatively). It’s a crazy long title, but basically the article has some detailed practical advice for artists from an art critic

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Art Prompts from Pinterest Part 1

When I started sharing artwork on this site, eventually I decided to create social media profiles for Amdall Gallery on any platform I could think of. I haven’t gotten traction on any others near the level I have on the WordPress Reader, Facebook, or Twitter. But I figured I should at least try to have a presence on elsewhere, just

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Well, I’m no Albert Einstein

This week, I worked on a sketch of legendary hair model Albert Einstein (I hear he also dabbled in some science-related stuff). As I was sketching him, I kept thinking about the phrase “He’s no Albert Einstein, but…” The idea of being so universally recognized in society for a specific thing is pretty amazing; you say Einstein, I immediately know

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Art from an Internet Meme

The Millennial generation is known for many things, including craft beer, skinny jeans, and “destroying” seemingly every industry (if you believe cynical clickbait articles). As someone who straddles that zone between Generation X and Millennial (i.e. “Xennial“, “Oregon Trail Generation“), I have traits of both. I really enjoy one development from the first “digital native” generation in particular: Memes. If

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Three-Quarters of the Ghostbusters

Back in May, when I was in the middle of a flurry of sketches, I had an idea to draw characters from some of my favorite movies. I started with the Karate Kid, did a couple from the Fifth Element, then sort of abandoned the idea. There are a few additional movies I wanted to explore, like Caddyshack, Office Space,

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More Throwback Practice Art

A couple months ago, I did some sketches that took their inspiration from the many “historical photo” Twitter accounts out there. One was a not-very-accurate Jimi Hendrix, and the other was a solid drawing of Ann Margret from Viva Las Vegas. It was a fun exercise to gain some drawing inspiration. Since then, I’ve read some well-deserved criticism of this

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Back to Basics, Paper Sketch of the Kiddos

This weekend, I made my first clumsy attempt at digital art. And over the last couple months, I’ve been almost exclusively drawing fictional characters from movies, athletes, and performers. That’s been a significant change from earlier in the artwork timeline on this site, when I pretty much always sketched my family. I mentioned months ago I needed to diversify my subjects,

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The Fifth Element – Gary Oldman’s Zorg

Welcome to part two of this run of drawings from The Fifth Element. In the first one, I covered some basics from the film and shared a drawing of Leeloo Dallas and her treasured Multipass. In this second drawing, we’re going to talk about the main antagonist of the movie (aside from the evil planet), Jean-Baptiste Emanuel Zorg. One fascinating aspect

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The Fifth Element – Leeloo Dallas Multipass

Last week, I did a sketch from one of my favorite movies, the original Karate Kid. I like how the drawing turned out, but the best byproduct of it may be ideas for more art. I made a list of favorite movies (Ghostbusters, Caddyshack, about a dozen others), and decided to draw something from each one of them. I don’t

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Mr. Miyagi and Daniel from the Karate Kid

I’ve been home sick for a few days, and felt a bit like drawing…unfortunately, I couldn’t think of anything, so I just lounged around instead. Last night I finally had an idea, inspired by my previous sketch of Fezzik and Inigo from the Princess Bride. The Princess Bride is one of those all-time favorites that I watch pretty much any

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