Sketching and Writing my life away...and loving it.

Since my last journal entry my life has been busier than a swarm of hornets over the last month. I thought I was going to find some time to draw but with AP projects, the art club, final exams, the closing of school, finishing up my responsibilities and spraining my ankle this has become a miserable time for me. Normally, this would be the end of my story and I would go sit in my corner and brood as an antediluvian beserker looking for a massacre.

However something has crept into my dark world to cheer it up. I received two commission pieces. Out of the blue a guy at my school has asked me to create two pieces of work for his fraternity’s 20th anniversary party. I almost told him, no. What I said was, “I’d do a couple of sketches and show them to you later.” At the time I could not believe that I was going to add to my workload.

I realized the only time I had to work on this commission would be in the morning before I go to work. Instead of going to bed at 12 a.m. and getting up at 5:30 a.m. I would have to get up at 4:30 a.m.
In two day’s I showed him the preliminaries and he like them. I will post them later. But that wasn’t the coolest thing, a relative asked me to do a commission of her son as a present for his birthday.

You would have thought I was given a shot of adrenaline. I was flying. I plan on posting the preliminary sketch tonight.

Who cares if I finish my school work on time I’m drawing again.

I’ve seen them out of the corner of my eyes just as the sun is setting. My friends say its floaters in my eye but I know different. So I sat down and started sketching the one I clearly saw. As I was sketching it out one flew up to the window. Then a few more showed up. I was shocked at first but then I realized that they just wanted me to draw them correctly. Not only are Dragon Sprite’s good looking but they are smart as well.

There is no picture this week, instead a tribute to one of my favorite entertainers and one of my personal heroes. Harvey Korman along with Tim Conway are the reason I love comedy. They made comedy look easy. I use to make sure that I was home every Saturday night for every episode ever made of the Carol Burnett show just to watch Harvey play his great characters; later when Tim joined the show they made me howl with laughter. I didn't just want to watch the show I wanted to be with them on stage.

Below is a link to one of my favorite Harvey Korman moments. In this scene he plays a dentist's patient and Tim Conway plays the Dentist. Harvey is cracking up through most of the scene. Enjoy this short tribute.

Harvey you will be missed.

There is nothing noble in being superior to some other man. The true nobility is in being superior to your previous self. -- Hindu proverb

Ray Wise has been one of my all time favorite actors. No matter what role he plays he always seems to have that look in his eye that says, "I know more than you do...ha,ha,ha,ha"

This is my first attempt at drawing Mr. Wise but it won't be my last. I made a lot of mistakes initially which I don't think I solved but I really enjoyed drawing this picture and I know I will do better next time.

During this time of year my students prepare for their AP exams. I review with them after school, before school and during lunch. I find I have little or no free time for myself or drawing and even my art club must meet in the back of my room so I can help those students needing assistance. I start my day at 4:30 am and usually get home between 7 and 8 PM depending on the number of students who stay after school. Some students play sports so they can not join us till 4 or 5 PM which acts like a second wave of students. Generally I  work no more than two to three hours (with different groups)and I am so exhausted that when I get home I eat dinner, spend a few minutes with my wife and go to bed. Thank goodness for my duty period. Every teacher has a duty period in which they give up some of their planning time to oversee areas of the school to make sure students are  where they are suppose to be or greet visitors to the school or help in various other jobs.

My duty is at the front gate from 10:40 to 11:15. I greet visitors directing them to the main office and making sure students don't leave without permission or people do not enter who should not be at the school. Generally, this is a boring job but I have found a way to make it bearable. I take my art pad out with me and sketch. I have duty every other day so I am beginning to enjoy this time. I've even gathered a small following.

These three pictures are the small progression of my work for last Friday, this Tuesday and Thursday. This sketch is based on characters I am creating for a web-cast I hope to finish by next year.

Drawing one is the heroine, this was Friday's picture, Tuesday, I added her two friends and Thursday I added two more characters. My students recommended I give her hair.Hopefully this Monday I will finish coloring the picture and post it as well.

  A quick sketch inked at home.

This week I finally broke down and fulfilled a promise to start an art club at my school. When I first arrived in south Florida the school I was hired at had four fine art teachers. That was four years ago. Now we have only two and they are stretched to the limited with massively over sized classes. They are also required to teacher a variety of classes such as Drawing I, II,III, Painting I,II,III, pottery, photography (regular and advanced), Advanced Placement(college level equivalency courses) classes which were once shared by four teachers. Next year they will add graphic design. (Side Note: We have two excellent Fine Arts Teachers)

The governor and legislature of Florida over the last 8 years continues to cut (gut) funding to school districts which are in turn forced to excise teachers either with limit experience or in classes that are elective in nature.

Unfortunately some students who might want to take art classes find their schedules overwhelmed by state standards and criteria that keeps them from taking electives for their schedule. They also have to deal with limited class selection, for example, an art class may be offered only at the time an Advanced Placement class is offered that they feel they need to take for college or take a class that is required for graduation.

Soooo, I had played with the idea for an Art Club for most of the year. Last Tuesday our school announced the first meeting of the Visual Art Society of D___________ (school Name). Visual Art as in …sketch art, photography, sculpting, graphic design and more. At our first meeting three students showed up but at least a dozen students who seemed to be interested came by before the meeting to explain that they had after school activities which should end next week. One student a petite brunette in my Advanced Placement class(World History) came to the meeting and shared a little of her work. Dear lord, she had drawn a flawless portrait of the TV character "House" played by Hugh Laurie. I was ecstatic.

The Club it seems is a go and other students have come up to me to let me know they will be at the next meeting

Though I am not a portrait artist, I was inspired to try my hand at it. The picture is a sketch (poor attempt) of Nokolaj Coster-Waldau who stars in the TV show New Amsterdam. His nose was extremely difficult and if it was not for my seven day deadline I might still be trying to fix it.

This is the next to last stage in my Gaea series. I first started with just line art. They I colored it in with water-colored pencils and the next to last step has been to paint it with water colors.

The final stage will have to wait. I will paint it  in Photoshop. I want to wait till I do more work with Photoshop because I want to add clouds over the earth.
My biggest problem with Photoshop is understanding how the layers work and how to use them. I will learn in time.

I have added several Photoshop podcasts/videocasts to my iTunes to watch and learn different techniques. Unfortunately, none of the really explains how the layer process works. Usually they just want to play with changing the way photographed pictures look.

..."look no red eye in the photo"... goodness gracious, give me a break, all I want to do is learn how to paint and color in Photoshop.

I have always had a thing for older women. Gaea is no exception even if she is a little over 100,000 year old.

This artwork was created for Dianae's art contest, with the theme : Gods, Goddesses and Mythology at [link]

This is the preliminary work that I had started in pencil in my "Mead" sketchbook 14 x 11 Acid free, ligin free until it began to smear. I could believe it. I don't know if it is the pencils or the paper but I needed to transfer the picture to a different medium. So I choose vellum. The I inked it.

So far this is the result. I plan to paint it, in two ways. Watercolor and then with gimp or Photoshop... at a much later date I will do an oil rendering.