The last handful of posts I made were “back in time” topics (1, 2, 3), sharing some old sketches. An observations from this series was that my drawings were a bit more creative and off-the-wall back then. Many of my recent drawings have been portraits of real people, mostly my family and especially my kids. Don’t get me wrong; I
Read more
Welcome back for part three of the “old sketches from Jon” series. Previously, we looked at my high school drawings and some study aids I used in college. This is the last “old sketch” phase, covering the time after high school until age 20 or 21. Around then, life started giving me more stuff to do and seemingly less time to
Read more
In part two of this series on art time traveling, I’m going to look at some study materials I put together. Although, I can’t remember if I made these for college or graduate school. It really could have been either; I was a Biology major as an undergraduate, and my Master’s was in Biomedical Science. I took a bunch of
Read more
I was doing a little website housecleaning, and saw I had uploaded a bunch of old sketches but never made posts about them. They mostly consisted of sketches from when I was in high school and my late teens, before I took a 15 year break (wow, sounds bad when I say it like that) from drawing. The photo image
Read more
As I continue with these sketches, I’m trying to make sure I’ve got most of the configurations of family portraits covered. Even if some of them were newer and in color versus older black and whites. I’ve got the full family, me and my wife, our two girls together, me and each girl, me and both girls…one glaring omission is
Read more
To my amazement, we actually had a real snow event in Louisiana this week. I think we got about 2-3 inches of actual snow, and it was even cold enough that it didn’t melt immediately! It’s been unusually cold this winter, which is a really nice change of pace. My wife would disagree, but I actually liked the winters at
Read more
I’ve given significant sketching time to the heroes from the Dark Tower, but haven’t done anything on the villains. Actually, maybe villain isn’t quite the word for all of them. Certainly, the Crimson King is villainous, but Mia is more of a single-minded, selfish antagonist. Anywho, I decided to do a series of drawings for some of these folks working
Read more
It’s been a couple weeks since I finished the Dark Tower series, and I still find myself thinking about it. I suppose that’s a good indicator of a fantastic story; that your mind wanders back to it even after you’ve put it aside. Although I’m sure I’ll read the series again some day, for now at least, the books are
Read more
Now that I’ve gotten my first attempt using colored pencils down, I decided to jump right back into the fire and try again. I think I learned a couple of things from the first attempt, so I figured it would be good get right back into it while the lessons are fresh. For round 2, I wanted to start with a
Read more
This may be a little surprising, but I’ve never really worked with color. Well, back when I was a kid in school I’m sure I painted something. But, in terms of art as a hobby, I haven’t branched out at all from my basic graphite pencil. Exploring other websites via the WordPress Reader has really opened my mind to it
Read more
I finished the last mainline book in the Dark Tower series yesterday, and my head is swimming with thoughts and feelings about it. If you haven’t read the series and plan to, I recommend abandoning ship on this post! I’m going to talk spoilers from the last book and throughout the series, and some thoughts about the finale. I also
Read more
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
Read more
Around 1999, as I was finishing high school, some guys I started hanging around with (who would become lifelong friends) introduced me to Faith No More. I had heard the band before; most people are familiar with the song Epic, and at the time a couple singles from their 1997 album were getting radio play. But these guys were major
Read more
When I was a kid, one of my favorite shows was Star Trek the Next Generation. The series landed right in time to entertain a certain nerdy little kid, with new episodes airing between the time I was six to 13 years old. Outside of the Next Generation series, I actually don’t really care much about Star Trek. I’ve never
Read more
Despite the fact that the Dallas Cowboys have consistently rewarded fan loyalty over the past two decades with a hefty serving of mediocrity, I am a lifelong fan. I grew up watching the Cowboys, and because they were winning Super Bowls when I was young, I sort of thought that would keep happening. Well, I was clearly wrong about that…but
Read more