I surprised myself a bit following my last post by jumping immediately into another project. I hadn’t planned to do so, but I found myself just sort of sitting around Sunday afternoon while my wife and kids taking naps. The previous portrait was a request from one of my co-workers of his dad and two kids. It wasn’t especially taxing,
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My free time has been pretty well monopolized recently, first with writing a book, and then with figuring out the ins-and-outs of independent publishing. Now that the book is out and that’s mostly off my plate, I hope to have a little more time for drawing. Because I have been somewhat less active on the artwork front, I’ve accumulated a
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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
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Over the last week or so, I’ve been dealing with a fairly tough cold. As is usually the case, the kids and I all got sick, while my wife’s superhero immune system spared her. This one really kicked my butt, and I had a few days when even sitting upright sort of wore me out. It was pretty pathetic. Anyway,
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Since getting back into drawing in 2017, I’ve generally been under the impression that most of my artwork has been of my family. I also had a feeling that the most frequent subject was probably my wife. Because data is fun, I decided there was no point in just assuming or guessing – better to crunch the numbers and find
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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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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
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Welcome to part two of this series of sketches based on Pinterest art prompts. In part one, I discussed some Pinterest basics and how useful the site can be for generating drawing ideas. This weekend, I decided to finally dive into my art prompts Pinterest board and try a few subjects. I selected some expressions/photo series of Shaquille O’Neal, John
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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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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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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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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
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I haven’t been drawing much lately, which is pretty apparent looking at the site’s front page. It’s kind of an odd coincidence, but right around the one year anniversary of getting back into this website, my inspiration to draw started fading. I’m really not sure why…did I burn myself out? Do I need a new challenge, like trying a new
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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
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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
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