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
Read more
This is going to be yet another piece of artwork dedicated to Dallas Mavericks legend Dirk Nowitzki. Considering this is now the fourth drawing I’ve done of Dirk, I guess it’s safe to say I’ve long been a huge fan of his. I grew up watching the Mavs, and especially remember watching those difficult 1990s seasons with guys like Jamal
Read more
In my last post, I wrote a bit on the fact that my posts are often a bit delayed from when the artwork is actually finished. As I said previously, it’s probably a fairly common phenomenon for many artists to delay sharing something by a month or two. But there have been times when those delays stacked up quite a
Read more
I am often slightly backlogged on writing blog posts. It’s something that I’ve mentioned previously and is probably fairly common for many artists who write about what they do. Not anything too crazy, but it’s not uncommon for me to share something I sketched a month ago, or to be writing about something that isn’t even my latest drawing. In
Read more
I’ve finally beaten Elden Ring, which feels like quite a milestone for someone who isn’t a particularly skilled gamer (I can’t tell you how many times I’ve accidentally rolled myself off a cliff). Since I’ve finally beaten the final boss, or really “bosses” to be more accurate, it’s given me some space to reflect on the full experience Elden Ring
Read more
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
Read more
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
Read more
Buried deep towards the end of my last post, I posed the question, “which style of time-lapse drawing progression is your favorite?” I embedded a crowdsignal poll with some options I’ve used. I have long struggled trying to figure out which is truly the “best.” The slideshow-style .gif images are the easiest to make, but it seems like videos are
Read more
Just recently, I rambled on and on describing my approach to sharing multiple related drawings. Over the course of several paragraphs and almost a thousand words, I philosophized about how much I prefer to see drawings split into several posts so I can come across them again individually on the shuffled front page. And yet, here I am with a
Read more
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
Read more
Every once in a while, I find it’s nice to attempt a self-portrait. After all, what face are you more familiar with than your own? My kids and wife are surely very close, and I’ve drawn them all many times. But drawing my own face is kind of a nice pulse check; a way to see if (and how) my
Read more
It’s been quite a long time since I’ve done a portrait giveaway – somehow, the last one was more than a year ago! It’s hard to believe it’s been so long since I did one of these artwork raffle/sweepstakes. The two I did in 2020, which resulted in “The Boo Crew” puppies and some fun beach portraits, were really great
Read more
At the moment, I am quite backlogged in terms of both finished portraits I haven’t yet written about and ideas for future drawings. I’ve written about my tendency to get behind on this sort of thing, to develop a backlog, but this feels like the most extreme it’s been in a long while. I currently have four finished drawings that
Read more
One of the early pandemic projects I started was to transition from progression .gif slides of my drawing process into full time-lapse videos. I created a YouTube channel to host them, rather than take up my precious WordPress hosting storage space with large video files. I’ve had the YouTube channel now for about a year, and in that time, I’ve
Read more
Earlier this summer, our family finally made a much-discussed leap to adopt a little fur-ball. If I haven’t already mentioned our new cat offhand in another post, I am certain he’s at least made some brief cameos in art progression videos as he walks right across the drawing space! As this is our first family pet, there has been a
Read more