Yesterday, the sketchbook lost in the work-time triage to the new painting. Ideally, this wouldn’t ever be an issue, but chances are that while my schedule is as it is now, the days I get a chance to paint will also be days I don’t sketch. Today, however, I do have a new drawing to post:

Back on the easel, since I blocked in the sky on Saturday, I have been able to get in maybe 7 hours of work refining the cloud-forms and general palette of the sky. I am approaching the cloudscape in three general sections in order of proximity to the foreground. On Monday I was able to complete the deepest layer, the blue sky and wispy, diagonal striated clouds in the top-right of the composition (though, obviously, I never got around to posting an image). Yesterday, instead of sketching, I concentrated on the more structured clouds between the horizon and the background buildings. I decided to incorporate some terraced, horizontal elements into the geometry of these clouds to play of of the design of the buildings. Here’s what I came up with:

The next step will be to paint the buildings, and then the nearest clouds.

Here is a fascinating article in The Guardian’s art blog about the high cost of publishing artwork.  A couple of excerpts:

 ”… when I edited the Oxford History of Western Art (735 plates), the choice of illustrations (and thus of the visual shape of the history) was significantly shaped by costs. As one of the section openers I wanted one of Picasso’s versions of Velasquez’s Las Meninas, having used the original to open an earlier section. But the Picasso estate charges monstrous fees.”

“…The other nonsense was the operation of the Design and Artists Copyright Society (DACS). Living artists whom they represented were too expensive. So we dropped most DACS artists. Given the choice of a fee or representation in major reference books, I think I know which most artists would prefer. ”

It’s interesting to me that getting something as simple as a good arts education or at least a good survey of the arts would be limited by reproduction costs.  Are art history books skewed more to what their publishers can afford and not necessarily what is comprehensive?  How do living artists gage their reproduction worth?  Does that work in our favor for being included in textbooks since representational art is so much out of fashion?  Is it cheaper and therefore more likely to end up as a plate?  I wonder how the reproduction costs of a Bougereau or a Millais line up with a popular Matisse or Kandinsky.

Hello all,  

  We’ve been receiving an ungodly amount of spam in our old comment logs over the past three weeks so I’ve disabled them for any posts earlier than the last three weeks.  Sorry, but we won’t have comments enabled for anything older than that in the future.  On the plus-side, I’ve changed our settings so that, if you have successfully commented here in the past, you will be able to comment in the future without waiting for moderation.  That’ll be nice.  :)  Thanks again for all your interaction.  It sure makes things a lot more fun.

Here is today’s sketch…a quick little study of Asher playing in the sand.

As for the big ol’ canvas currently dominating the studio, I actually have a nice little block of painting time set aside this afternoon.  Theoretically, this means I should be able to bring you images of some sort of progress on the clouds later today.

It seems like way too long since I was holding a brush instead of a charcoal pencil, but finally, it’s happening again. I blocked in the first colors of the sky today.

There is a ton of work left to do before this cloudscape is finished, but it feels good to have the general idea on the canvas. Not that you can really see any significant detail in this wee image, but this is just the most rudimentary geometry of the clouds. The blocked in section is so rough that there are actually large areas of primed canvas showing through the painted areas.

I don’t know how many of you have ever experienced a winter temperature inversion in Salt Lake, but basically it’s like having your city built snugly inside the business end of a tail pipe. I haven’t actually seen blue sky for so long that I felt a little like a surrealist putting so much blue in the sky.

First of all, here is today’s sketchbook entry:

Next, as you may recall, I didn’t post Tuesday’s sketch for ‘personal reasons’. Basically, the drawing was intended as a late wedding present for Quent and Linda Cordair (yes, of Quent Cordair Fine Art) and I wanted to wait until it was delivered before publishing the image. In theory, UPS should have done it’s thing by now, so you get a bonus sketchbook entry today.

Finally, a few items directed at the miscreants, ne’er-do-wells, and other various gnat-swarms-in-the-face-of-civilization that have begun cramming their spam into our comments section. First, if I or any of my readers decide we need help re-sizing any portion of our anatomy while instantly shedding an undisclosed number of pounds in a dating service on board a cruise ship headed for Chance-of-a-lifetime-business-opportunity island (or whatever other shady service you may have available), we will employ one of the myriad available search engines at our fingertips and track you down. Second, you are most truly false knaves.

Alright, If I manage to finish writing this post in the next twenty minutes, then this update will indeed come “Later Today” (as promised…who loves you baby?) rather than sometime in the wee hours of tomorrow morning. The canvas is sketched, with the exception of the still-to-be-designed pattern on the stonework left of the figure. These images are so poor, it seems almost stupid to post them. However, I hope you will indulge me, break out the reading glasses, squint really hard, use your imagination if needed, and enjoy.

First, an attempt to show the whole canvas. Keep in mind: it is 60 inches wide by 28 in height.

Next, here is a closeup of the face:

And a variety of other, somewhat-self-explanatory detail shots:

You may notice that the grid has been, for the most part, erased. It is an extremely useful tool for transferring the general proportions of a drawing onto a large canvas, but I find it enormously distracting while sketching in the smaller details and while painting. So, I draw the grid in watercolor pencil, and the cartoon in oil pencils. A quick wipe-down with a damp cloth takes care of the rest.
Hey, look at that…11:55 PM…I just made it.  Now all I have to do is paint the thing.

Another sketch from additional scrap taken along with that intended for ‘The Letter’.

And later today: an update on the canvas-sketching progress. Stay tuned…

During the recent scrap-shoot with the model for ‘The Letter’, I was also able to get quite a bit of good reference material for future figure paintings.  Today’s sketch is one of maybe ten additional poses that will eventually find their way into painting form.

As for ‘The Letter’, I hope to have the canvas completely sketched and ready to paint by Thursday evening.

There is a sketchbook entry for today, but for personal reasons, I can’t post the image until Friday. Until then, Cheers!

(’Crumb: Brewer, Patriot’ a Sam Adams spoof featuring a children’s book character from my brief stint in the illustration department at Utah State University)