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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Lately, I’ve been in a bit of an art re-visitation phase. I have been back into the drawing hobby for over two years at this point, which doesn’t seem like a tremendous amount of time on its face, but feels significant to me. The style of artwork and techniques used have changed a lot, and in my view, continue to
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I still feel that overall I am improving as an artist, which is nice to realize after two years of becoming re-involved in this hobby. As I’ve mentioned before, I took a (mostly) ten year break, so it makes me happy that I’m still at it and still learning. It’s not a rapid improvement and I don’t really experience any
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I try to be as forthright as possible on this blog about my experiences with art. The site didn’t really start with a focused goal in mind, but over time, writing has become as much about sharing the struggles as the victories when it comes to this hobby. I hope it helps someone else to see my learning process along
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As I scroll through Amdall Gallery’s main page, I can’t help but notice how my drawings have changed. Not everyone may agree, but I believe there has been an improvement over time. From August 2017 until now, after about seven months of practice, these sketches seem more confident to me. Especially when it comes to color; skin tones seem more
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Back in February, I did a couple sketches based on clothing ads I saw online. A couple weeks ago, I was flipping through my daily pile of junk mail and came across a small postcard ad for some local dentist’s office. I took a glance and thought, “wow, those might be the happiest people I’ve ever seen.” I guess that’s
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The next sketch on tap, as I mentioned in the last post, was another “hometown series” sketch. I’ve done a football huddle scene, and one with some old friends chatting. The next sketch I started with was a close up of a couple of guys, but I realized it once again featured my buddy who was already in the first
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Continuing on with my “hometown series” of sketches, here’s part two. In the first drawing, I included a few of the guys I used to play football with. It feels like it wasn’t very long ago, but we are closer to measuring that as a decade ago than just a handful of years! Part two features a couple of buddies
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It’s been about seven years since I moved from the ol’ hometown, where I spent the first three decades of my life. During my 20s, I spent a good chunk of that time hanging out with a great group of people. I had a blast with this crew, and have great memories of all the typical “hey we’re finally adults“-type
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This is sort of a part two from my post Friday night about drawing my wife, and the challenges of art involving people you are close to. Basically, the goal I’m striving for is to get some more accurate sketches of my wife, since several I’ve done in the past didn’t quite look like her. The first attempt I
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I have drawn four total sketches of my wife. From what I can see looking at these previous drawings, I don’t think I’ve ever quite captured her accurately. Years ago, I did one of me and her together, and it wasn’t bad. I also did a rough sketch I used for my proposal, which looked like her but was no
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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,
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What’s the most commercial inspiration for art you can think of? Maybe a series on Walmart groceries? The magic of broken shopping carts? Or perhaps drawings about Applebees would fit the bill. I think someone could argue convincingly that the Gap would be a great choice for a generic corporate entity. Well, if suburban commercial-inspired sketches happen to be in
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Last year, I did a sketch tribute to my favorite basketball player of all time, the king of the one-legged jumper, Dirk Nowitzki. That first drawing was from one of my favorite moments in NBA history, when Dirk led the Dallas Mavericks back on the road to tie the 2011 Finals series against the Miami Heat. The Mavs were down
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I mentioned in a post last week that video games sometimes inspire my sketches. I’m not great at drawing from my imagination, but if I get a spark to do so, it often comes from video games (books play their part too). Previously, I’ve done sketches inspired by Final Fantasy and Warcraft, but another favorite is an old Super NES
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