Random Art Posts
20 randomly selected posts about art from Amdall Gallery’s archives. These include normal graphite pencil or soft colored pencil drawings by Jon. Enjoy!
Amdall Girls Painting – First Solvent Use (10/17/2022) - A few weeks ago, I finally made the leap to attempt painting for the first time. I've long admired the "painterly" look across the different mediums, particularly the textures and qualities produced by oil paints. It's been a long term goals to learn, but had always seemed like something I'd try some far-off, unspecified day. So, I surprised myself greatly when I suddenly got a wild hair to just go for it. The first result was surprising in many ways; first at how much pencil blending skills translated to paint, but also in how much I actually enjoyed it. I… Read More
Figure Poses and Light on Fabric in Oil Portraits (1/11/2025) - Sometimes I just paint without any specific reason or goal, but with this piece I actually had a couple specific things I wanted to practice. I was talking with some colleagues about my appreciation for John Singer Sargent’s paintings, particularly Lady Agnew of Locknaw. I love the way Sargent captured the nature of light on fabric, and a nature instinct is to see if it’s something I could practice. I also wanted to work on natural looking figure poses - particularly the back’s curve and how limbs might rest. These are both things I want to return to, but I… Read More
Wedding Present for Some Friends (12/25/2017) - This Christmas, we were excited to attend an additional event beyond the usual family get-togethers. My wife's close friend for the last two decades was getting married, and she was the Matron of Honor. Also, our oldest got to be the flower girl. My wife and her friend met in high school, and they've been like family since. I decided to do a sketch of my wife's friend, her now husband, and her little one: I never know how these drawings are going to turn out, especially the most recent ones. There have been a few that turned out well, and… Read More
Composition and Color in Portrait Painting (3/12/2023) - With this post, I want to talk a little bit about painting composition and color. At the point in time when I did this painting, which was a couple months and almost 30 paintings ago now, I was watching a massive amount of videos from expert artists to try to learn more. I kept hearing the word "composition" thrown around in painting videos...and I'll be honest, I had to Google it to study up on what specifically it means when it comes to painting. Such is the life of an amateur trying to fumble his way through the learning process.… Read More
In Memory of Javier Garcia (4/21/2022) - This post is written in memory of Javier Homero Garcia. Javier, my wife's father, recently passed away. We were fortunate that we were able to travel to see him shortly before he passed, and my wife was able to spend a solid week with him and say her goodbyes. She was close with him and loved him dearly, so healing will certainly take time. Naturally, experiences like this are never easy to navigate. But I think her being able to see him, along with the incredible support received from friends and family, have helped to smooth the difficult road ahead.… Read More
Three Year Painting Anniversary (10/10/2025) - It's hard to believe it's already been three years since I started learning to paint! I first picked up a brush back in September 2022, and since then I've painted 260 portraits. Although my pace has slowed considerably from that somewhat insane first year pace (averaging more than 10 a month), I'm glad I've continued to steadily continue this hobby. The fact that I paint alla prima and finish most of them in one session really helps - it keeps subjects fresh and lets me get more repetitions on certain things I want to practice. The featured painting in this… Read More
Book Status, January Giveaway Portrait (3/28/2019) - Although it doesn't feel quite so long, it's been over a month since I've written a post. I have actually been furiously writing away elsewhere though - as I mentioned last month, I am writing a book. It's primarily about my experiences getting back into art after being away from it for over a decade. My hope is that the tips and techniques I have learned over the last year or two might help another amateur artist. In other words, pay forward the last two years' trial and error (and advice from other WordPress folks). I'm still not entirely sure… Read More
Mark Hearts and Kids at the Dentist (5/18/2019) - In my last post, I discussed using Unsplash images as inspiration for artwork. Although I have a ton of backlogged ideas now, and many of my sketches in the near future will probably be related to Unsplash, I decided to take a brief detour. If you follow this blog already, you are probably aware of how frequently I draw my kids. My family are my favorite subjects, and it's been a few months, so I thought I'd do another kiddo portrait. Also, our oldest just finished her first year of school, so I was extra motivated to get her into… Read More
Improving with the Tablet and Sketchbook App (6/7/2019) - In the previous post, I discussed my purchase of a Samsung Galaxy Tab S4 and decision to try digital artwork again. My first experience with a tablet designed strictly for drawing in conjunction with a computer screen (XP-Pen Deco 01) did not go smoothly, and I pretty quickly abandoned the experiment. This time though, I felt much more comfortable using this Samsung tablet. As I mentioned in the last post, I think this is primarily due to the immediate visual feedback from pen to tablet screen. Since I've already discussed the basics of my impressions on using the new tablet… Read More
Well, I’m no Albert Einstein (11/7/2018) - 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 you mean "smart." That seems like the pinnacle of notoriety, where you're so well-known that your identity is embedded into the language. I wonder if people 100 years from now will still consider Einstein so identifiable. Probably so, but what… 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
Scenes from a Mr. Bungle Concert (5/7/2020) - Welcome to the part two continuation of this Mike Patton-related discussion! In the first post, the write-up was centered around musician extraordinaire Mike Patton and his bands, with a drawing of Patton himself. This post is specifically about a Mr. Bungle concert in 1999 that still ranks as one of the best shows I've ever seen. Originally, this Mr. Bungle concert write-up was going to be an all-encompassing post, but it became to large and disorganized, so I had to split it into two. As I mentioned in the first post, I was introduced to Patton's music by a group… Read More
New Home, New Desk, New Art (3/20/2021) - 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 months more than we thought it would. But we did finally find a place (it was our sixth offer I think), and we've had a chance to settle in a bit. We're mostly unpacked and, after about a month, it's… Read More
Underpainting Practice – Andre the Giant (11/26/2022) - As I discussed in my last post, I'm making an effort to push myself more when it comes to artwork. A huge part of that obviously is trying oil painting for the first time around two months ago. But I am also trying to flex some artistic muscles that I haven't used much. I described this in some depth already; although I enjoy drawing, I can see that I had become somewhat stagnant in a sense. Yes, I was getting practice. But I really wasn't trying to learn anything new with it. I had a process that worked for me,… Read More
Poseable Drawing Figure Research and Testing (10/9/2019) - I am often thrown for a loop about the passage of time. I've written in many posts here about such and such amount of time flying by since drawing something, and how it never feels like so long ago. I've had a similar feeling when I started writing this one. Although it seems like only a couple weeks ago, it was actually back in August when I first started thinking about drawing figures/models. Primarily, that write-up was about some cool Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles figures. But I mentioned a couple times how I stumbled upon an ad in my Instagram… Read More
Ernie Hudson and The Crow (2/12/2019) - Last fall, I did a sketch of three of the four Ghostbusters. I included Peter Venkman, Ray Stanz, and Egon Spangler...but unfortunately I ran out of room. Due to my poor planning, I couldn't find a place for Winston Zeddemore. This has bothered me since I shared the sketch; first, actor Ernie Hudson is awesome and I was disappointed that I didn't include him. Just as important though, an argument can be made that Winston is most important Ghostbuster. It sounds provocative (I know Venkman has the love story so is probably the main protagonist), but hear me out. I… 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
June Portrait Giveaway, the Resulting Artwork (7/15/2018) - At the end of last month, we wrapped up a custom portrait giveaway with some pretty solid participation. The winner sent me a photo she liked, which seemed to be a good candidate for a portrait scene. I started the outlines of the sketch as I normally do, but ended up having to travel for work for a bit. In my normal routine, I probably would have wrapped this portrait up the weekend after the contest ended. As I couldn't really do much without my full set up and supplies, this took a bit longer than I thought it would.… 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
Long Term Goals and Sketch Impulsivity (2/6/2019) - At the end of my last post, I mentioned off-hand a few ideas for what I might draw next. I talked about finishing a Dallas Cowboys drawing of Dak Prescott and Ezekiel Elliot (which I lost interest in when they were bounced from the playoffs by the Rams). I also tossed around the idea of another Dallas Mavericks sketch, since they just had a huge franchise-altering trade. Or some focused practice on scenery or mouths/teeth (both areas of weakness for me). Over the weekend, another idea hit me from out of nowhere - I should work on something featuring my… Read More