Clear Choice

...that's the title I've chosen for this new work.  Layers of transparent color built up the image of the face.  I like its strength.

Nice spread in Oriental

The Village Gallery in Oriental invited me to display work there, and as I blogged before, they accepted quite a number of pieces for their new additional space.  Today they called to tell me there was a nice write up in towndock.net  -  they did a nice job - check it out.

Here's one of my latest paintings that I just took to New Bern Artworks...

21.5

...that's the number of miles I covered in yesterday's Neusoik trail run.  We were up at 5am and arrived at the Pine Cliffs Recreation Area on the Neuse river by 6:30am.  Michael and I have been training by doing long runs once a week for the last month, but I hadn't gotten over 13 miles yet... luckily though we had covered all sections of the trail, so I knew my way around.  I had resolved to run the first half and then briskly walk the second to try to finish it under the 6-hour time limit.

I've often mentioned the trail in this blog - as a source of inspiration for paintings and as the site of plein air sessions.  But we also run sections of it several times a week.

The morning was cold (36 degrees) and the trail was wet... but the sky was clear and when the sun came up we set off.  I pretty much stuck to my plan and finished in 5 1/2 hours.   Michael ran the whole thing and finished just under 3 1/2 hours!

Here's a link to the "Map My Run" program from my phone which shows the route/time I took, in case you're curious.

Today we are barely moving - sort of like these folks from the day after the marathon...

This was the dawn on the Neuse River that morning:

Beau Geste

Happy New Year!

I had fun yesterday doing some semi-blind (where you try not to look at the paper while you are drawing) contour gesture drawings.  Here are a couple I did of the squirrels and our bird feeder.  It reminded me of a quote by Kimon Nicolaides, author of the excellent book "The Natural Way to Draw."  He wrote:

“You should draw not what the thing looks like, not even what it is, but what it is doing…Gesture has no precise edges, no forms. The forms are in the act of changing. Gesture is movement in space.” 


(Remember you can click on an image to make it a bit bigger).

Christmas Commission

Here's the commission that's been occupying my time for the last few months.  The gal who commissioned it as a surprise for her husband for Christmas gave me permission to post to my blog after the big day... so here it is!

She wanted my bright fun colors with the double portrait.  This is painted on a 4 x 5 foot canvas!  We delivered it on Christmas eve - she was thrilled with it... we are a little sorry to see it go, its got good energy, just like her ; )

New Toy...

I treated myself to a new Artworks toy... errr... tool.  I got one of the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 tablets that includes the "S" pen so you can make sketches on it.  It is going to be so useful for taking notes and making quick sketches for my art projects.  I got this over the iPad because the pen is much more sensitive.

It just arrived, and this is one of my first attempts at a sketch using one of the free apps.  Amazing where this new technology is going.

Season's greetings to all of you on this day of the solstice.

Culinary arts...

I've been busy the last few weeks working on another big commission - this one is 4' x 5' and is a surprise for a spouse for Christmas, so I can't post it to the web yet... So to have something to show you, here's a shot of the garlic I was chopping the other night for dinner.  This is the late fall light falling across the chopping board in the late afternoon.

Michael and I both like to cook (and to eat well!).   I often think it is an art as well.  You have the palette consisting of aroma, flavors and colors.  And with the fresh seafood outside our door and local fresh veggies, we have great "substrate" from which to work.

bon appétit!