Leda Among the Rocks

Here is a new, large-ish ink drawing on the Leda theme:


Leda Among the Rocks, 2009, brush & india ink on paper, 20" x 16".

With all the silverpoints & small works I've been doing lately, I felt the need to stretch out...

Fata Morgana

I haven't previously touched Arthurian legend, but here is Morgan le Fay:


Fata Morgana, 2009, brush, ink & acrylic on card, 10" x 8".

The piece wasn't quite working until I added the acrylic color washes. Now, I think it's much better.

Fata Morgana (aka Morgan le Fay) was the shapeshifting half-sister of King Arthur. This piece came out looking unexpectedly Pre-Raphaelite, which made me think of Arthurian legends & so on. Maybe I'll do others...

Apparently, a Fata Morgana is also a type of optical illusion or mirage.

Tilted Head silverpoint drawing

I hadn't done a silverpoint on white for a while:


Tilted Head, 2009, silverpoint drawing on gessoed card, 10" x 8".

Done for my upcoming little show. The more I have, the better selection I can make. This silverpoint drawing is a little sketchy, but I think it works, & the faintness of the silver helps to give it a ghostly quality.

Watching Over the City

Another new brush & ink drawing for my upcoming small local exhibit:


Watching Over the City, 2009, brush & ink on card, 10" x 8".

Partly inspired by the drawing I did for today's Ayton Artwork a Day blog, another colossal figure (or head, in this case.)

Head of Leda ink drawing

Another variation on the Leda theme:


Head of Leda, 2009, brush & ink on card, 10" x 8".

Another possible image for my upcoming small exhibit (see below)...

2 new ink drawings of heads

At the moment, I'm generating a series of work to be edited down for a small local show. Here are the 2 latest ones — small brush & ink drawings of heads. Each one is 10" x 8". Whether they make it to the exhibit remains to be seen — I'll select the best ones when the time comes. I have about 4 days...





These don't even have titles yet.

The Oracle silverpoint drawing

Here is another silverpoint drawing possibly for the upcoming show (see post below):


The Oracle, 2009, silverpoint on tinted ground, 10" x 8".

Another in a series of archetypal/mythological heads.

Silverpoint of Narcissus, the Beautiful Youth

Here's a new silverpoint drawing on Mars Yellow-tinted card, intended for my upcoming small show at Montgomery Row in Rhinebeck, along with fellow artist & friend Jim Stevenson:


Narcissus, the Beautiful Youth, 2009, silverpoint on tinted card, 10" x 8".

Ironically, now that I've finished the Silverpoint a Day blog, I can relax, as it were, & really get into the medium, without the pressure of having to create a new piece on a daily basis. My productivity will probably increase.

"Haunting Illustrations"

I just found a review online for Eliot Katz's book, "Love, War, Fire, Wind" that I illustrated lo these many months ago:

http://www3.wooster.edu/beatstudies/pdfs/love-war-fire-wind.pdf

That's from The Beat Review, from Wooster College, Ohio.

The review appears to be mostly very positive & supportive of Eliot's work & worldview. I get the epithet "haunting illustrations" (near the end, it's mostly a poetry review), which I'll take, & keep, & use relentlessly...



The book can be bought on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, & other fine bookstores everywhere.

The final silverpoint is up

I just uploaded the final silverpoint in the series of 50 on the Silverpoint a Day blog:



That's an enloarged detail, of course. You may recognize the image, as it's a copy, something I rarely do. But, since it was for the final image, I made an exception.

Link: silverpointaday.blogspot.com

Ferocity

Here's a new silverpoint drawing of a feral head:


Ferocity, 2009, silverpoint on prepared ground, 10" x 8".

It's drawn on card gessoed with 2 coats -- the first one of magenta, which was too deep & rich to be really useful, the second with a pale Mars Yellow. I like the subtle texture this gives the ground.

Not intended for the silverpoint blog, which is almost done, but possibly for my upcoming show in Rhinebeck alongside my friend Jim Stevenson.

Shadow Bay Chapter 3

The latest chapter in the noir graphic novel blog collaboration is up:



That's horse number 3, Twice Told Tails, who luckily has the same number as the chapter. As usual, the words are by Donald J. Rothschild, & the images are by me. In an effort to make the piece come together faster, we've cut down on the number of images per chapter. This one has 10, as opposed to around 30 for the previous 2. When we publish this, we'll most likely add in some extra images.

Link: shadowbaynoir.blogspot.com

Head of Venus

This is a detail of today's upload to the Ayton Artwork a Day blog:



To see the entire drawing of the Petrified Venus, you'll have to click over to that blog. Tricky, eh?

Silverpoint of a Woman's Head

Here's a new silverpoint sketch:


Sketch of a Woman's Head, 2009, silverpoint on tinted card, 10" x 8".

I mixed the silverpoint ground (a type of acrylic gesso) with a very little Mars Yellow. I like the way it came out -- the pale yellow accentuates the contrast of the silverpoint, which, being a low-contrast medium, is always useful. I'm not going to post this on my silverpoint blog (which has nearly finished its 50-drawing run), but am thinking of putting this piece in a small local exhibit coming up soon.

Status Report

Here's an image from the soon-to-be-released chapter 3 of Shadow Bay:



All will be revealed within a week or so, probably. The first 2 chapters of Donald Rothschild's noir novel about a sports writer with a gambling problem, a dangerous dame, a persistent cop, and some other noirish stuff, were very image-heavy, & therefore took a long time for me to get the pictures done. We're cutting down from around 30 images per chapter to more like 6-10, with the proviso that when we finally publish this, the "missing" images will be inserted...

My other 2, art-for-sale blogs, an Ayton Artwork a Day & a Silverpoint a Day, are coming nearer to a close. The silverpoint one only has 6 days/images to go, so that will free me up a bit. The other one has about 16 days/images to go, then it will be done. Then I can do some larger-scale work...

Here's Looking at You

Yes, Shadow Bay chapter 2 is up.



To aid navigation, I've added a table of contents on the right-hand side, which I hope people can find relatively easily.

Further chapters will probably be considerably less image-heavy so that we can get them up faster. Ultimately, there should be more images, when we do this as a book or some kind of publication.

The Abyss

This is actually another forthcoming image from Shadow Bay chapter 2, but it might become a painting or something on its own:



Chapter 2 should really be up soon, I promise. Maybe tomorrow.

Another preview image from Shadow Bay, chapter 2...

Here is another image from the forthcoming chapter 2 of Shadow Bay (with words by Donald Rothschild):



I'm still 5 or 6 images from finishing the chapter. The above is a pic of David Fisher, the "hero" of the piece, a sports writer with a gambling problem, as he enters a seafood restaurant & comes face to face with a painting of a fierce fish. It will all make sense when chapter 2 goes up...

Earth Days the movie

Just wanted to mention that my friend Robert Stone's new documentary, "Earth Days" is out & is very good indeed. While I prefer his earlier, darker work like "Guerilla: The Taking of Patty Hearst", this is a very upbeat, inspiring movie. It's about the early days of the environmental movement in the USA, & follows its development from the early 60s (Rachel Carson's book "Silent Spring" being a key moment) up through its successes in the 60s & 70s. The movie comes to a halt around the 1980s where the movement hit a road block & became a polarizing force, losing out somewhat to big industry & big oil. Still, a very inspiring piece that indicates quite clearly that the job is not yet done & points the way to the future.

Here is the movie poster:



The movie is a combination of archival footage (some of it darkly humorous, such as kids eating sandwiches at a picnic being sprayed with DDT or similar to show how harmless it was) and contemporary interviews with some of the leading lights of the movement, now in their 60s or older. Stone makes his points without hammering you over the head, but makes them clearly.



As you may be able to hear, the score by Michael Giacchino is also superb.

We saw the movie last night at Upstate Films here in Rhinebeck NY, where Robert did a Q&A session afterwards, then we went next door to Starr Place (restaurant) for drinks & hors d'oeuvres (sp?) with Robert & many other friends.

Here is the web site link for the movie: www.earthdaysmovie.com

It's a great movie & well worth seeing.

Shadow Bay Chapter 2 coming soon...

Here's a forthcoming image from the Rothschild/Ayton noir graphic novel collaboration "Shadow Bay", chapter 2:



The character above is not really a main character — the "hero" is a sports writer with problems, so the football player is part of a story he almost gets to cover. I don't know much about American football, or sports in general, so it's a bit of a challenge, or rather I tend to invent what I don't know to a certain extent...the book/blog is drawn & painted in a monochrome, somewhat expressionist style, which is looser than a lot of what I've been doing lately.

Each chapter has 20-30 images, so it doesn't go very quickly, but I hope to have the second chapter up in a few days time.

Head of Leda acrylic

Small acrylic painted sketch of the Leda silverpoint sketch below:


Head of Leda, 2009, acrylic on canvas board, 10" x 8".

Head of Leda silverpoint

A new silverpoint sketch:


Head of Leda, 2009, silverpoint on toned ground, 10" x 8".

Inspired by Leonardo's studies for his lost painting. Maybe I'll do a painting of Leda someday, I've done drawings before...

Monochrome Boy's Head

New drawing/monochrome painting:


Monochrome Boy's Head, 2009, acrylic & crayon on card, 11" x 8.5".

The Gray

Here is a piece in a more expressionist vein:


The Gray, 2009, crayon & acrylic on card, 11" x 8.5".

I suppose this came about due to my reading an article by Whitley Strieber (writer of "Communion" -- which I haven't read, etc.) online today. I'm interested in the questions a) do aliens exist? and b) if so, do they have emotions?

I suspect the answer to both questions is "yes" (billions of stars, millions of planets, thousands of civilizations I would guess), but as I've never seen nor met an alien, I don't really know. Just conjecture.

Winding down my other blogs

This is a note to point out a couple of things:

1. The Silverpoint a Day blog & the Ayton Artwork a Day blog have both been cut down from 100 days of artwork being made available for purchase to 50 days each. This will reduce the number of works made available, but the prices remain the same. It also makes the works somewhat more exclusive and collectable.

2. I'm spending quite a lot of time working on the Shadow Bay noir illustrated project. The Prologue & Chapter 1 are already up, and Chapter 2 is in progress, & part of Chapter 2 will probably be uploaded soon -- in the next few days.

3. I'm still intending to work on large-scale works, though other projects (see above) keep making that difficult.

Boy by the Sea

I realized I hadn't put a new piece of artwork up here for quite a few days, especially a colored one, so here is a small new painting:


Boy by the Sea, 2009, acrylic on board, 10" x 8".

Painted on an amber-colored ground. Not a particularly large or important painting, it just seems to glow with warmth.