Back to basics

I love working with charcoal.

Vine and compressed.

No smoothing sticks, just my hands.

A kneadable eraser.

A pad of newsprint.



Basic...basic...basic.



Ya gotta love it!

Technical issues

Wow, what a stressfull couple of days. I was updating the last blog entry and then all the images from the previous posts disappeared! Needless to say, I had to go back and re-link/re-upload everything previous to yesterday. Very time consuming. It isn't perfect as far as image size and text line breaks, but I only have one more post to fix that is completely screwed up.

Whoever guesses which post it is gets a FREE years subscription to this blog! Just leave a comment so your reply is time stamped.

On a better note, I have installed a few freeware programs for my MAC and now can photo edit, create web pages and create vector drawings. FINALLY!! Now maybe I can put together a more visually pleasing front page and header for the blog.

Until next time...

Misc items and thoughts materialized

I have seen shoes with pinstripes SEWN on, but thought that I could do this myself and I was very pleased after an hour and a half. The hardest part was getting the designs mirrored first of all and then identical from 1 shoe to the other.






















Little Red Riding Hood and Paul's Girl (a sort of mad St. Pauli's Girl).


A couple of tattoo designs (rough of course).



Cosmo-naughty and Mrs. Frank



And I cut some slices of a tree trunk that a friend had cut down, sanded and stained and sealed. Now I have some "canvases" to work with. They are about 8" across at least.

Illustration Friday - Garden

The topic this week is Garden. I "dug" deep for this one and found it "buried" in my sketchbooks from the turn of the century (it just sounds cooler that way). Hopefully you can appreciate the "fruits" of my labor. After letting this topic "bug" me, I finally remembered this piece.

Sorry for the puns. I'm feeling kinda weird right now.

- ink over a pencil sketch

More hand studies

Yet more hands. All were done with pencil. I kinda like this little exercise. I always despised hands, but I never really took the time to try and understand them. Rest assured kiddies, kittens and daddy-o's, there are more phalanges, tarsals and metatarsals to come!















Not too bad. I'm a little disappointed with the index finger. But overall, not too bad.












I tried to just place my hand naturally on my knee and see how it works.


I just watched the movie 3:10 to Yuma and got the gunslinger/western kick.