Summer ends. Hmmmm. I'm not thrilled with the idea. I have my samples about ready to send out to publishers, (and I include a few photos with this post) but so far I haven't drawn a thing this summer. I handmade these half-size books with a box to hold them that fits a postal mailer box. I will be enclosing a letter from Mark (Lindamood-author) and myself as well as a cd of my artwork within the box just to cover as many bases as possible. Hey if anyone knows a children's book publisher, let me know. Odd summer. While I don't feel I have achieved anything artistically, I did manage to survive a colonoscopy this week. Maybe in the next two weeks I can manage a painting and rescue the summer free time to paint. we did get to our nephew Justin's wedding to Julie, a lovely event and Hannah leaves for university in about three weeks so I guess life moves on somewhat smoothly, and Hey, no colon issues!! Woohoo! But now it is time to start building another group of paintings toward a new show (and sell some of the old ones), but hey, why am I writing this-no one's reading it anyway!

Catch-up

Well, it has been much too long since I wrote anything here. I am sitting in my office at school on a Friday afternoon while my daughter is outside playing pick-up soccer with the boys' soccer team. Ten days from today we (the girls' team) begin practice in earnest and in about three weeks we have our first game. This will probably be my last foray into soccer as a participant. I don't know how many years I will coach-maybe just this one. I have just recently taken down my show at a restaurant in Lynchburg and for the past few weeks I have done nothing art-wise except teach. The image here is one of my newest paintings. The experience has caused me to begin reading some books on egg-tempera painting and I think I may try to do some egg-tempera painting this summer. In school lately, I've been teaching my students how to draw a hand. I have noted over the past five years that a number of students have brought in drawings to show me and invariably they will have the hands tucked into an armpit, or tucked away in pockets or held behind the back. So I decided to have the kids learn to draw the hand. This is one of the hardest things to learn, but my logic is, if you can learn this, you can draw anything. I actually came up with a short formula for drawing the hand and they get it rather easily. Then I ask them to draw a hand grasping something and that is when the wheels come off the cart. Actually that is unfair. They did an exceptional job transitioning from the formula to simply finding simple shapes and measuring. So after a couple weeks of hands we will move on. I also had some advanced students working on portraits of our school board members and they did a wonderful job. I now have a small select group illustrating a children's book written by my brother in law. I had to take a class to recertify as a teacher and I was lucky enough to get one in Children's Book Illustration online from the Academy of Art University. It was hard work and is one of the reasons I haven't done anything here but I asked the kids, who had been watching my progress, if they wanted to try it and almost had to do try-outs it was so many willing participants. If I can find my pieces from that class I will post them here. I will also try to add the school board portraits my kids drew. Why? I don't know and you're right to ask why? Nobody reads this anyway.

End of summer-end of summer?? Cmon!

Has it been an entire summer? I thought I certainly would write in this space more often than I have. So what has been going on to keep me from writing? Let's see, refinancing the house, buying a new car (48.7 mpg-gotta love that), doing lots of graphics for my school, Lori and I caught the train to Washington DC to visit her brother and sister in law and we all went to see Michael Franks at the Birchemere. Wonderful show by the way. If you ever get the chance to see this poet sing, do it. We got there expecting to see just him and they had a lead act. Beth Neilsen Chapman. What a treat! She was superb. Michael Franks did a couple of songs I never expected to hear live and the rest was just wonderful. Then we got to sit in the train station on Sunday for about three hours past our scheduled departure (and sit is a euphemism for stand and wait because there were entirely too many people for seats available). Last week we spent a few days at the beach and had a lovely time. Very warm, but nice place, good food and we didn't move the car until the night before we left. Everything we needed was right there at the hotel. Tomorrow it is back to school for freshman orientation, but we don't return full time until next week. I have a show coming up in January at a restaurant just up the street (Magnolia Foods), a class I am hoping to take this fall (affording it is the issue) for re-certification and I also have to take a class in coaching as I am Hannah's soccer coach this year at our high school. So, busy, busy, busy is the description for me right now. I'm also trying to get inspired to draw more, but that hasn't happened much this summer.

Oh, the car. We had a Jeep Liberty which we thought was just the thing for Hannah to learn to drive in as it was more or less like putting her into a small tank. I mean the thing was a beast. It weighed more than 4000 pounds after all. But gas prices got so high we actually had a monthly bill of over $400 and hadn't been anywhere notable that month. Just driving around town. 4000 pounds means protection but it also means less that 20 mpg. Anyway, when we paid that huge gas bill we looked at one another and said, "we could buy a high gas mileage car and use what we save in gas costs to pay the car loan." I mean, it seemed stupid not to look into it. So we looked and we bought a new Honda Insight hybrid. we have been averaging around 48 mpg and it doesn't seem to matter whether it was on highway or city roads. A very cool little car. Certainly not the small tank we were driving but our gas bills are already much lower.

Reading. I've read about six or seven books this summer. The best were: two books by a spanish author, Carlos Ruiz Zafón. The first is named "The Shadow of the Wind" and the second is "The Angel's Game" and they are both superb. Two of the best I have ever read. I also read "The Lion" by Nelson DeMille, "61 Hours" by Lee Child, two or three books from the Lake Wobegone series by Garrison Keillor and have been re-reading Peter Steinhart's "The Undressed Art; Why We Draw" a wonderful book about the connection between not only artists and models, but also drawing and the human psyche-he examines drawing as a necessity for human communication and expression. He writes, "I know I'm thinking, but what I want to do is in a way that language cannot describe. I want to let the unraveling line push all the burdens of the day out of my head." In other words, he is looking for an altered state. "All the time, I am trying to get an impression of the gesture, the mood behind it, the sense of connection I feel with it. And I'm thinking about where it will go on the paper, where the center of the interest will be, how the trailing limbs may draw attention from the corners of the page back to the face or whatever is the center of the drawing's focus." "There's no bigger rush," says Ann Curran Turner, an artist interviewed by Steinart. "All of a sudden it's beyond you. You have no control over it. And there's nothing more exhilarating." A superb book about why we make art and why we as humans are driven to the practice. There are animals who spread paint, but (with the exception of Koko the gorilla) none who express through drawing. It is a purely human experience and I find it hard to believe anyone has written a better book exploring the why and how of the drive to do it. And so I read it again. But why am I telling you this? No one is reading this anyway.

So, here we are, three days of students left, one exam down, four to go. The bell is about to ring and the two students I have had hanging out drawing with me for the last two hours are about to go home.My drawing students are going to do something they have never tried before, as an exam activity. I borrowed plaster casts of facial parts from our Lynchburg Academy of Fine Arts and we are going to draw cast drawings using charcoal and white chalk. I thought something academy-like might be a good way to draw a long year to a close, so we are going to try it. Here's a sample I did today using a 2H pencil, a HB pencil, a white conte stick and a white stick of soft pastel on some cheap, cheap chipboard. It was actually fun to do but really requires the artist to keep his/her focus on the model. This is one of the first times I have tried to draw from a cast, but it won't be the last. Hannah is in her math exam for about two more minutes and as soon as the students leave the building, we will leave for lunch. My printmaker has sent me a link to all the prints he has done for me. They are beautiful. You cannot tell them from the real thing. Check them out here. http://www.tetragraphicsinc.co

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Just e-mail me if you are interested in any of them. So far, end of semester is going very well. I think this will be a short comment today, not really feeling the need to blast anyone but BP ("Beachy Petroleum") but why bother? No one's reading this anyway.

Well, only about eight days of school left. I'm going to miss this group. I must have 35-40 seniors leaving this year and they have produced some truly beautiful artwork. I have a few still trying to find their way, a few really in love with art and one who decided to detour into a GED program, but all in all it will end up a pretty decent year in the classroom. The kids have won some awards, a few have reached outside their normal comfort zone to try some things I'd have said they weren't ready to try, but which have proven to be excellent efforts in new media for each of them. I think I am looking forward to graduation as much as my seniors are. Today I had a visit from Marco Mosely, a 2008 graduate who is now a member of the USMC. Marco has visited Germany and Iraq in his two years out of school and today he just wanted to sit down and draw with some of our students. What a fine young man in so many ways. I hope he is protected during his tour of duty. He is one of Heritage's hidden treasures. well, enough of this, no one is reading it anyway! 

First Series

My first series of watercolor paintings is begun. I have always intended to  do a series of related theme paintings but have never been able to do it for some reason. Upon completion of my new painting "Puddle Jumpers" I have finally completed a second painting within the same theme. Will there be more? I'm not sure because I am a little tired of umbrellas (hey wait, that may be why I have never completed a series of anything...) but I won't say no. I have more resources within this idea so it very well may come about. Prints will soon be available of both of these. Kindly contact me if you are interested! I must be crazy-no one is reading this anyway!

Well it is May 16 and we have about three weeks of school left. Yesterday Glenn Beck got his first degree, an honorary one from LU in return for spreading some fear at their "graduation". Soon we will be honoring real grads as they leave the system and head to college or jobs. Hopefully they won't waste time being educated at a place that brings in media darlings to offer less than meaningful words to send them on their way. But as the year winds down and we think of how this year has passed, it has been pretty good for us. Hannah changed schools, has found a home with nicer kids and better teachers and as a family we are beginning to let some of the ugliness we have experienced at the hands of stupid, self-important kids from the "good" high school in town pass. They managed to make our daughter miserable for 5+ years, but not any more. So we look at summer as a sort of rebirth with less concerns about who is saying what about whom. Hopefully this will lead us right into Hannah's college days and she can heal and forget. But who is reading this anyway?