A disposition in time…

Disposition or dat position…

My current John Singer Sargent series is challenging… I may have mentioned that before.

Normally, producing the piece for the day doesn’t pose a problem… sometimes, I anticipate a problem and just get up earlier (yes, for those that know me, it IS possible).

This morning, the stress of a series of out-of-my-control problems began to make my eye twitch. Dealing with the problems cut into my iPad time.  Consequently, today’s Sargent Series piece… of me…was taking longer than I budgeted for. I thought of delaying the post or just skipping today… but I decided to finish it as much as I could and post it like that.

Kinda glad I did. The stress of the morning… and really the last few months is evident more in this unfinished piece than in anything I’ve done so far.’

When you don’t know when to stop, stop… you may already be finished.

Categories: art

The best part of waking up…

The best part of waking up…

is the morning moments I spend on creating a FAMILY SERIES piece. Today is Linus –  John Singer Sargent style…

This one surprised me. I really wasn’t feeling to great this morning… lots of stress around other aspects of my life, coupled with needing to get a ton of other tasks done over the course of the day. So, I didn’t have high expectations for today. 

I just wanted to get something done.I was 99.87650% sure whatever Sargent style piece came out, it wasn’t going to be an absolute winner.

Out of that came this image of a Linus. From sketch to save took a little over an hour.

Holy crap… I think if I wasn’t stressed and hurried and took my time my original low to no expectations would have been achieved. Lightning struck.

Never know what you can do until you do it… or not think about it.
 
There’s a lesson in all this somewhere but I’m too stressed to figure it out.
I’m just going to look at the Linus piece a little longer and then dive head first into the shallow end of my day. Don’t bother saving me…i’m already lost.

Categories: linus process

Old school complication – new series

Old school…

For the next series I was looking to complicate my life a bit more… so who better to visit  for that added complication than famed portrait artist John Singer Sargent?

I first met Sargent not in art class, not in art history class, but in my 8th grade American history class. My class was doing a unit on the beginning of the 20th century and the presidency of Theodore Roosevelt. There were numerous photographs of Roosevelt in the textbook, but the one image that stuck out for me and my 13 going on 14 year-old brain was the painting of Roosevelt… the “official White House portrait”. There was some super small text in the corner: JOHN SINGER SARGENT.

It’s not often that you see a barely teenager in the school library looking up John Singer Sargent…

Categories: art bob

In a certain time and place…

This certain time and place…

Taking a pause on the GI JOE style series today.

The idea of this self-portrait was staring me in the face.  Specifically, the rear view mirror in my car. I’d just left the grocery store, loaded all the bags, clumped myself down in the drivers seat and looked up.  I hadn’t moved the mask off my face yet. There I was. It was me… along what the times dictated I be.  Not a requirement… a suggestion.

My mantra in regard to what I create has always been to tell a story and invoke an emotion. Words help, but they’re not always needed. If you can show a beginning, middle and ends with a single image, you’re better than you think you are.  Years from now, someone will see this somewhere and wonder how we got through it… how some managed and some did not.

As of this writing, nearly 55,000 people in the U.S. have died because of COVID-19. A month ago, that number was just a bit over 2,000.

My family does everything it can to protect ourselves and others. I’ve washed my hands so much I think I washed some of my fingerprints completely off.

We’ll never be the same… and ultimately, that’s probably a good thing.

It’s tragic. It’s scary. And… it’s equal opportunity… if you inhale and exhale you can get it. I hope that the fear I feel every single day is evident in this image.

I don’t like that fear… but at the same time I never want to forget that fear.

Categories: art coronavirus