Wednesday, July 30, 2014

These Things I Draw

I find that I naturally draw people or creatures of some sort and I've been doing that as far back as I can remember.  Sometimes I think I should be channeling this into some sort of comic strip or graphic novel which of course has the result of keeping me from drawing because I'm feeling like I should be doing some other kind of drawing.  I wonder how many other artists have these kind of internal battles?
Here's two recent sketches of people, not characters in a story as far as I know, not members of some ensemble comic strip, or at least not yet… just drawings.

Wednesday, July 9, 2014

Just Drawing

I believe it is good to just draw something, anything every day but its hard too.  What do I draw? I keep working on it and hopefully breaking down judgements on what to draw, or what's the point? Here's a sketch from today.

Sunday, July 6, 2014

Memes as art?

I recently watched an interview with my greatest teacher Pete Seeger.  As always he was full of ideas and energy.  Whenever I had the opportunity to work with him in person I was always filled with the feeling that there were unlimited possibilities to tap into, you mostly had to be open to finding them.  I recently discovered memes as a creative outlet.  I've seen thousands online in recent years, some stick with me, some are quite disposable but they all the potential to be shared instantly with the world.  For better or worse or any of the many shades in between we live in a world with instantly is the new normal.  The fact that I can write and record a song in my home and within a week sell a digital copy to someone in Japan via iTunes or some other service is incredible.  The fact that there are tens of thousands of other artists, writers, singers, etc. all doing the same thing is fairly overwhelming.  A wise teacher once said to me that fear and excitement are the same thing, when you stop breathing, when you're tense that's fear and when you keep breathing and riding the wave that's excitement.
So I've jumped onto the meme bandwagon, or more accurately I've added another tool to my creativity box.





Friday, July 4, 2014

Art is Everywhere

I was giving an interview recently about my music primarily but we discussed art in general as well.  I was trying to explain that to me the world occurs as one large piece of art, I see the world around me as primarily colors and shapes.  For the most part I have also incorporated the importance of certain shapes and colors like the octagonal red sign at the end of the block.  Sometimes the world as art is more obvious.  I saw this collection of shadows, light and reflections on my bedroom wall at 12:20 this afternoon and having a camera handy, as a good artist should, I took a quick picture.  Of course being an artist means you can also manipulate what you see, I did process the photo slightly to bring out more of the shadows.  Of course anytime to photograph, record, draw, paint etc. you are manipulating reality and that's okay, its what artists are supposed to do.

Thursday, July 3, 2014

Photos of the Monster

Here are a couple of pictures I took at the Monster Bash International Film Conference in Pittsburgh a few weeks ago.  The man under the make up is my good friend Todd Spidle and he was made up by the folks from Reel Magik.  I'm using Snapseed on these photos which is a free google app that I recommend for creative photo work.