This time of year is always ridiculously busy, especially when there is an Asher-type-person involved. The triage has left the sketchbook to gather festive, holiday dust for the past week or so, but I did get a chance to do a quick oil sketch of ‘The Kyle’ as a sort of white elephant gift for his better half.

Step one: a quick bit of sketch work in burnt umber and black :

Step two: a dash of color:

Serious work resumes in the new year, but until then: A happy holiday judo-chop to one and all!

Yes, it’s Damon’s birthday, the lucky 13th of December.

Cheers, Damon!

Due to the loss of Asher’s regular babysitter and her immediate replacement with a biblical-plague-quality cough and fever instigated by a flu shot, I spent most of last week administering children’s Tylenol instead of painting. Even so, I did manage, after some very late nights at the easel, to finish the painting of Grace. This image is as good as it gets: scanned from a professionally made 4X5 transparency. Click on the thumbnail below for a larger version. Enjoy.

I am tentatively thinking of calling the piece ‘Sun on the Water’.

A sketch like ‘The Kyle’ wouldn’t be complete without a proper nemesis. But how do you compete with both Judo-chop and mutton-chop? By combining the subtle anonymity of dark glasses with diamond-shaped chest hair. And is that a cybernetically enhanced hairdo?

Incidentally, if you invite your artist friends to your costume/70’s theme party, beware the unguarded moment. These new-fangled cameras are so small they almost defy detection, and you never know what pose will end up in…THE SKETCHBOOK.

Certainly, many of you are familiar with ‘The Kramer’: the infamous portrait of Cosmo Kramer that so nearly moved an old couple to tears on Seinfeld. Well, in that spirit, both to continue the sketch journal and to, hopefully, move some of you to tears, Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you…’The Kyle’.

I am also pleased to announce that Quent Cordair Fine Art in Burlingame, CA will be organizing an Arts Cruise (yes, on a ship) in January of 2008. There will be music, there will be Theater, there will almost certainly be food and beverage, and there will be two 90 minute ‘lectures’ given by yours truly on art related topics yet to be announced. You can get all the information you could possibly desire about the event as well as sign up (if you are so inclined) on the gallery’s website: http://www.cordair.com.

HA!  I’m so used to getting our blog comments as emails that I didn’t guess that Wordpress wouldn’t do the same.  My apologies to anyone who has commented and then felt neglected by our moderating.  *sheepish grin*  Your comments are now official!

I am sorry to report that there are no new sketches to post. The last few day’s precious few work hours have been devoted to the painting of Grace (still not officially titled) which has enjoyed a little too long a stay on the easel.

As usual, the camera tends to simultaneously exaggerate contrast and ignore subtlety, however this is a reasonably good image of the painting. At this point the water, which represents the bulk of the work put into the piece since the 28th, is finished. As was the case with the water in ‘By the Fountain’, I couldn’t help but think how tedious it would be to be an abstract painter. The only difference is that when I step back a few feet from these seemingly random colored squiggles I expect to see ripples and reflections in water. Hopefully that’s what you see too.

The hair, as you may or may not be able to tell, is not finished. All that has been painted is an under-coat to lay out the basic shapes and colors.