friday. Short post.

Just a quick post today. I am trying to get right into the studio for a bit, some training, then back to studio. Here are some recent sketches over the last few weeks. Some fighter portraits and some interior figures that may(?) become paintings. I can't seem to get a good scan of pen on the tinted paper. The scan misses the tonal range that I can get from the pen. Most of the time I have to darken the scan a bit, midtones way down. This is the best I can get them to look. Probably some older sketches tomorrow and Sunday so I can work in the studio.

Hampton Sketches

South Hampton Beach looking west. It was a beautiful afternoon.

This lady walked into my drawing. The dogs are allowed on the beaches and they loved it!

Hey there, been a few days. I was busy working yesterday and had some late night bike racing last night. Enough excuses, here are two sketches from this last weekend. My friend David invited us out to the Hamptons. Thanks man! Did some beach walking, riding and plenty of eating. We also saw some good paintings. In South Hampton they have an obviously well funded art museum. Here is the link  http://www.parrishart.org/ They have a portrait show up currently. What's that? Right up my alley you say? Yes. Agreed. Amazingly enough it has some of my favorite artists. Larry Rivers, Chuck Close, Fairfield Porter,  it even has a small Whistler etching. It was a very nice added surprise to our weekend. I also saw some small paintings that I really liked in a small gallery across the street. I should have taken some pics or at least made a note of the artist's name. But to add it to the blog only just now crossed my mind. I am still getting the swing of this so I will try to add things that I like as well as my own drawings. Links to artists, paintings I like, etc.
If you're unfamiliar with any of the above artists a google search will more than suffice since they are all very well known.

I will also start adding my text at the top of the blog so as to introduce the sketches below.
I told Sam that the next time we make it out to the beaches there, we will bring our plein aire easels and do some landscape painting. What a beautiful area. Once I was there I understood why people flock to the area in the summers. Glad we went after the "season" was over.

hey there, I was out in the Hamptons over the weekend and did just a little sketching while I was there. 3 little beach pencil sketches that I will scan in the morning. Tonight I will continue with previous drawings so I at least post something. Big Thanks to David Bachman for having Sam, Monkey, Cricket and myself up. We had a great time and it is a beautiful area, got some good cycling in both Saturday and Sunday. The beaches are awesome! People, eh.
 So these drawings are from last fall, winter and maybe this spring, some random subject matter but cover a good portion of my life. Only missing music. Also would like to hear what people like or like to see more of. Or even what you don't care for as much. Thanks for looking.

Friday, more sketchbook drawings

 this is screwed up, the blog is reading these 3 images as one.

this is old. ink wash

I really did a lot of crowd, street scenes of NYC when I first moved out here.

i also did subway scene paintings and drawings my first year in nyc. If i can find work that relates to this scene, which i know i have, i will try to link them

red ear slider

These are pretty close to in order, on a yearly basis. Last night I had grabbed some of my older, larger sketchbooks and I really pared down the drawings to, in my mind, the best sketches. As I was putting them back I found at least five more sketchbooks. Three sketchbooks per year is average. I could post five drawings a day on this blog and not have to do any new drawing for the next few years.
I really want to get through this older stuff though and get to the point where I am showing what I made the day before I post. It goes hand in hand with paintings that I am doing but also totally random ideas that I put away for later, or when I revisit those ideas I realize how dumb they are and scrap them.
I sketch with ball point pens for the most part. It is the most prevalent art tool in the world. I can always find a pen, no set up required, don't have to sharpen it, doesn't make a mess. I like that pens also show any mistakes that you've made. I can see how my first instinct for a line was wrong, the wrong angle, length, etc. It helps me to look before i make a mark. Blah, blah, blah. Less talk, more pics.

second post of the day

graham nickson figures, yesterday, Oct19,2011

I think I lost a lot of pics from my original post. Bummed since it took a while tonight to get everything scanned and uploaded. I hope to get more work up tomorrow morning but this is kind of driving me crazy. I think that the posting process needs to let you know how much room you have. I previewed my last post and it included all of my pics with text but when I published it, only half showed up. Err! If I could punch this computer and make it behave I would.

So I lost half my pics and all of my text. No warning or anything.

What I said in my unpublished paragraphs was that I am hoping to re-establish my blog and get it going on a daily basis. I have been following my friend Gil's and it's nice that he is keeping track of races, posting pics and links. I want some cohesive daily journal that I can share with anyone who cares to see my drawings.

when i first moved to nyc, i really started cycling. 2006?

W13th street, NYC 2006-2007?

In my last post(which is all pics now) I explained how I have a bunch of sketchbooks that have documented my life for the past 10 years or so. It brings me right back to the time and unfortunate circumstances that make up my past. The one consistent thing I have always done is make drawings in sketchbooks. No matter what I was doing at the time, I always found some time to make drawings.

re established

This has to be from 2005 or before.

2004 or 05, long haired & skinny.

Even the years I spent like this I managed some drawing.

Bank line

2005 cat studies

once in nyc I started muay thai/jui jitsu training. I stayed with the muay thai.

Florida trip in 2010