Meeting Madness

I have reached a cycle at work were the meetings are starting to stretch and go one seemingly endlessly.  I have been resorting to the sketch/doodle to stay awake and in tune with the meeting.  I will doodle the weird sculpture from Africa in the room or the very still co-worker.  The mechanical pencil works better than the gel pen but, I will use what ever is at hand.

Canyon De Chelly - Maynard Dixon

Maynard Dixon is a Western Artist God.  He spent his entire life doing art and his oil paintings sell for hundreds of thousands of dollars.  His sketches are the often overlooked gems.  If you have ever traveled out to the southwestern U.S. then you get how great the above sketch is.  If you have not traveled out there go soon or now.  Dixon would travel and sketch and paint.  Oh, how I cannot wait to emulate him and do the same.

Cloudy Valley - Franklin Booth style

Franklin Booth is an illustrator/artist from about 100 years ago.  He did these amazing ink drawings which are almost like engravings.  He did them free hand because he did not realize most were made on metal plates or were done craved into wood.  Since he was self-taught on his initial techniques he became very well known for this style.  This was my attempt at capturing the things he would do with a pen and ink.  I did this a few years back and I have improved but still I am not up to the Master, yet.

Rocky Mountain Pine Trees

This is another of cool Pen and Inks to capture the view of the Rocky Mountains.  It matches the past few days of posts and is still a great way to uniquely capturing a scene.  It makes up for crap regular work.

Mountain View in Pen and Ink

I am continuing to post some experiments in capturing the high mountains of the Rocky Mountains.  I am not sure the artist but I liked the style and put it into my sketchbook for future reference.

Rocky Mountains

This is another example of a sketch with pen and ink of mountains.  It is always useful to be able to analyse a scene into lights and darks.  This is not my original but is a style I liked and it is similar to what the well known artist and teacher Kevin MacPherson recommends as a pre-painting sketch to plan out your painting prior to starting out.  

Sunset and backlit Oak

I started this oil painting today and blocked in the basic tree shape over a subtle sunset sky.  I will further refine the "sky holes" where the sky and the light peek through the foliage.  I plan to also add some subtle toned blue, green, and darks as a way to add depth to the foliage of the tree and to its trunk.    This is a good start after about an hours work.