Amdall Gallery

20 randomly selected posts about art from Amdall Gallery’s archives. These include normal graphite pencil or soft colored pencil drawings by Jon. Enjoy!

Sharing Multiple Drawings – Another Geralt and Ciri (1/8/2022) - My habits when it comes to artwork typically involve sporadic bursts of motivation. I often tackle one drawing at a time, spending a couple of hours on the project before I move on to something fresh. Sometimes though, I become so inspired about a topic that I work on multiple pieces concurrently or in succession. There are quite a few examples of this: The Fifth Element (Leeloo and Zorg), Stranger Things (Steve/Dustin/Robin and Hopper/Joyce), The Princess Bride (Fireswamp and Castle Walls), and even previously on the topic of The Witcher (Geralt/Vesemir, Geralt/Triss, Ciri fighting, and Ciri chatting). Well, once again… Read More

Starting 2019 with a Portrait Giveaway (1/21/2019) - What better way to start 2019 than with another portrait giveaway? Well, actually there are better ways...winning the lotto comes to mind. But, it would be fun to do another one of these custom drawing giveaways. This will be the fourth giveaway on this site, and the third that is exclusively for artwork. We've seen pretty solid engagement previously, and I've felt pretty good about the resulting portraits (here and here if you're curious). It seems like a fun idea to start the next flip of the calendar! If you participated in previous giveaways, this work basically the same way.… Read More

Tiny Art Show Opening at the River Oaks Arts Center (11/18/2017) - Way back in September, someone told me about an art show in Alexandria, Louisiana that featured only "tiny art." All entries for this show had to had to by 5" x 5" x 5" or smaller. It sounded interesting, and I had just gotten back into drawing; I figured I may as well enter something. Tiny art is definitely a unique challenge, and I discussed my experience drawing and going through the "call for entry" process in previous write-ups. Fast forward a bit, and I ended up getting one of my entries accepted for the show! Friday evening was the opening… Read More

Inspiration from Twitter, Historical Photo Account Part 1 (4/22/2018) - It seems I'm always on the search for art subjects lately. And since I can be somewhat creatively limited when it comes to drawing, the best resources have been people I actually know and famous people (athletes, musicians, etc). I can't help it; I can draw a portrait of a real person, but ask me to create a character out of thin air? It's probably not going to be that great. Anyway, I recently came across a cool Twitter account called "History Lovers Club" (@historylvrsclub). This account basically posts various photos from recent history, many of which seem to be… Read More

Oil Painting Portrait of My Wife (10/29/2022) - Lately I've been discussing my recent journey into the world of oil painting, having shared my first attempt, a portrait of my kids, and an effort to use up excess paint. Now, we come to my 5th painting, in which I attempted to paint a portrait of my wife. I say "attempted" because I did experience some challenges along the way, which I'll talk about in a bit more depth. The short version is that I had some difficulty bringing out contrast with this painting, and also somehow made it look like a "Glamorshot" from the 1980s/90s. It's one I… Read More

Random Art, One with Madmartigan from Willow (2/21/2018) - I've got some random recent sketches on hand, so I thought I'd just combine a couple unrelated ones into a single post. My favorite of the bunch is a drawing from the movie Willow. If you haven't seen the movie, it's a fantasy-genre movie from the late 1980s, starring Val Kilmer and Warwick Davis. It was directed by Ron Howard, and produced by George Lucas. In my opinion, Willow is a really underrated movie. It's an enjoyable adventure, with an entertaining cast and fun banter - especially between Davis's Willow Ufgood and Kilmer's Madmartigan character. I was a kid when… Read More

How to Make Progression .Gif Images (11/15/2019) - If my "archive categories" widget is to be believed, at this point I've written 115 art-related posts on this website. That's pretty surprising to me, but I guess they add up over time. Through all of that text about artwork, it seems I've developed a pattern to my writing. I hope it doesn't come off as robotic, but I do have certain marks I try to hit in a standard post about a drawing. Typically, it goes something like this: Topical introduction, possibly referencing the last post.Discussion of something I thought was interesting. Sometimes it's directly related to the artwork,… Read More

The Laundry Basket Girls (12/7/2018) - I've been all over the place lately with my sketches, jumping around to varied subjects like Ghostbusters, memes, Pinterest, and Einstein. I always come back to my favorite portrait subject though; my family. I haven't done a full accounting of people or types of artwork I've done (which would be a fun spreadsheet to make), but I'm sure my wife and kids have been the most frequently drawn people. A couple days ago, I felt like doing another one featuring the kiddos. It's actually been a while since I last sketched them, so is it possible they've grown/changed a bit… Read More

Almost a Sketch Request, Sam Carrying Frodo (4/20/2018) - In the comments of an Instagram post I made on my last sketch (Fezzik and Inigo from the Princess Bride), one of my longtime friends responded with "Sam and Frodo." This comment was pretty exciting, because I thought it was a request for another sketch! As it turns out, he was joking (which should have been obvious in hindsight), but I already had in my mind to move forward with it. I responded by saying that I would do a sketch featuring the true hero of Lord of the Rings, Samwise, carrying that lazy hobbit Frodo up a volcano. And… Read More

Crowded Restaurant Drawing (3/24/2020) - 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 of the social, educational, and entertainment gaps. Still though, in normal situations, work, family, and hobbies keep me from experiencing boredom for the most part. I think we've done a pretty decent job so far of battling against boredom. My… Read More

New Kids Book ‘Robot Family Adventures’ (4/5/2020) - Apparently, the beginning of April is book publishing time! Last year, I released a book called Pencils and Process. That one took months to write, and was a 150ish page personal account of my experiences returning to art after having been away from it for a decade. This year, my April book release is a kids book called Robot Family Adventures: Moving to a New Home. Right now, it's only available on Amazon (ebook and paperback) because it's the easiest and least expensive path available. I also want to get a hardcover distributed to other retailers like Barnes and Noble… Read More

Poll: How do you digitize your artwork? (12/5/2022) - https://poll.fm/11253040 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 have progressed, I think those art photos have improved thanks to technology. Although there's still significant room to improve, I think I've made strides in terms of choosing better lighting conditions as well. The challenge I've bumped up against… Read More

Lost Dinosaur Timeline (7/28/2018) - When I was little, I absolutely loved dinosaurs. I know most kids do, but I was sort of obsessed with them. I was all about any book or toy I could get my hands on that featured dinosaurs. During our early elementary grades, my sister and I were in a Montessori school. If you aren't familiar, the Montessori model basically let's students learn in an open classroom, working on projects and assignments on their own or in small groups. Around 1st or 2nd grade, I started drawing dinosaurs. My memory is a little cloudy going back that far, but I… Read More

Unfinished Art and an Unposed Portrait (9/9/2019) - I had to double check because it didn't seem possible, but it looks like it's been almost a month since my last drawing. Time really flies sometimes. Okay, not sometimes - pretty much all the time. My last post was about using models and figures to help with portraits, which in my case was some Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. As I mentioned, the Ninja Turtle thing inspired me to research actual human drawing models. I was able to find a good candidate, but I went through eBay...which was a bit of a trial. I have what I hope is a… Read More

The Greatness of Mystery Science Theater 3000 (6/11/2018) - One of my favorite shows as a kid was Mystery Science Theater 3000 (MST3K). If you're not familiar with it, MST3K was basically a show about people making fun of terrible movies. There was a rudimentary plot about a janitor (Joel Hodgson and later Mike Nelson) being banished to a space station, then forced by a made scientist to watch the worst movies ever made. To keep their sanity, Joel and Mike were joined by a couple robot pals named Crow and Tom Servo. MST3K ran these bad movies in their entirety, with the crews' silhouettes at the bottom. Their… Read More

Fixing Mistakes and Redoing Artwork (1/29/2023) - This post is all about messing up artwork, which is something I have a decent amount of experience with. I'm going to share some of my thoughts on fixing mistakes in drawings and paintings, and redoing artwork when it's just beyond the point of repair. And to go with this discussion, I've got a great example of a painting that I just couldn't fix - the perfect candidate for a complete do-over. As Kenny Rogers said, "you've got to know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em." But how exactly do you know? That's kind of a difficult… Read More

Profile View Portrait, Large Drawing (10/7/2017) - I spent some time drawing yesterday evening, partially inspired by a desire to clean up an older sketch. This portrait of Julia Roberts isn't new, but it's actually one of the largest drawing I have ever done (around 2' X 1.something'). I think I've actually improved on some of my pencil techniques, so I went back to this one and fixed some areas I viewed as weaknesses in the piece. I know that's a dangerous thing to do with art, and probably not something most artists would recommend. But I figured; why not? It was just sitting around anyway! I… Read More

A Family Portrait from New Orleans (7/23/2018) - It seems like I haven't posted much lately, which is confirmed when I look at the monthly archive counts on my sidebar. Over the last year, I think I've averaged 9-10 posts per month, with some peaks and valleys. But June and July have been huge valleys, with only six and then three posts! This does make sense though; summer is a really busy time, and it seems like we're always up to something. With the lack of website activity the last two months, it's been a little while since I've done a family portrait. So, I decided to dive… Read More

Drawing from Stock Photos and Memes (10/11/2022) - 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 often slightly exaggerated or made to convey an obvious intent, which is quite useful when you are still trying to learn how to portray specific emotions or actions via pencil drawings. Some expressions are quite subtle and difficult to capture,… Read More

Big Kid and Her Apple (10/20/2018) - Wow, has it really been another entire month since I've drawn anything? Sort of a surprising realization, because it feels like I was just writing about how I hadn't drawn much lately. But that wasn't last week...it was last month! Once that thought hit me that October was headed towards its Halloween conclusion, it was enough to push me into action. In my last post, I mentioned my intention to continue drawing occasionally to keep myself in the habit. Essentially, I don't want to drift into another long period without art. So, why not keep myself rolling with one of… Read More