study on "the beer drinkers" by the master Edouard Manet
gouache on paper - 35x50 cm
From the editors inbox:
Carbon County Cultural Project’s Storytelling Workshop in Words and Pictures is a week long event for figurative artists interested in storytelling, taking place in Jim Thorpe, PA on June 22 - 28, 2009. Attending artists will find themselves in a 19th century town nestled in among mountains that have served as inspiration for works ranging from the writing and illustrations of Audubon to contemporary graphic novels. Surrounded by landscape thick with legacy, artists will have the opportunity to work with legendary painters and illustrators through a series of visual storytelling exercises.”
You can read more about this workshop and download an application here.
Joining forces to teach this intense weeklong workshop will include Marshall Arisman, Anthony Freda, John Mattos and resident artist Victor Stabin. Together, these accomplished artists and educators represent over a hundred and thirty years of image making experience and are prepared to share their unique insights into visual storytelling with you.
Writing about visual work is often a key to its success. Jim Thorpe, formerly known as Mauch Chunk, provides a setting rich with historic and visual inspirations. Artists will make observations of the town in the form of a written travel journal. This personal journal will provide the foundation for pictorial concepts. The inherently personal act of writing will inform the picture making, enabling artists to get closer to developing a more personal approach.
As I mentioned before, I did another study in acrylics that I'm sharing here.
I've been working on this because (1) I need practice with the acrylics, and (2) it's part of the project I'm working on for my Saturday Community College Illustration Class. I won't go into too much detail about it at the moment, but I'll give you a little insight.
The project is sort of a memoir of illustrations based on several single words that I've chosen to represent different time periods. It took a lot of thought, a dictionary, and a thesaurus to pick the best word to describe each period. It's kind of an Illustration Friday approach to a project.
The word that inspired this particular study is "Green" - definitions used: not mature or ripe; young; lacking training, conditioning, or experience; undisciplined; unschooled.
I hope the nurturing adult, a child at the moment of discovery and wonder, and the springtime colors have captured the idea. The previous study used the same image, but the colors were darker - it didn't express the more joyous and carefree nature of youth very well. Instead, it seemed more solemn and dreary.
This was a challenging word to do. Again, I'm trying to loosen up and explore a more painterly style with the acrylics.
these are the compositions we had to draw today. in the last one i couldn't supposedly use shadows, only lines, so i used a 8B pencil (sort of conté) instead of charcoal but couldn't help adding some (shadows). i also used some cream-coloured pastel pencil to enforce the light. these are all big sketches of about 60x80cm., big for me at least that always drew in small formats...=)
we started working on this still life several classes ago (painting class), i think i'll have it finished by next week, then i'll have to paint a new one but using some colour.
another one that hadn't been blogged
Libraries Connect Communities: Public Library Funding & Technology Access Study 2006-2007 Report is out today. I haven’t looked at it yet and was waiting for it to hit the website. The URL for the actual 6MB file is here
http://www.ala.org/ala/ors/publiclibraryfundingtechnologyaccessstudy/finalreport.pdf
If you bookmark the page the document is linked to it will appear as “ALA | 2006-2007 Report” on your bookmark list. While I continue to make the point that tech/web savviness is going to be an important part of being useful relevant libraries in the 21st century, we still put out documents intended to be widely disseminated in PDF format, not HTML This assures that it will be shallowly linked and quoted, if at all, and those links will be hard to track and learn from.
The one news article that I’ve read referring to this report — an AP wire article that I read in the Las Vegas Sun — “Despite Demand, Libraries Won’t Add PCs” is a weird mess of statistics and odd conclusions (won’t add PCs? how about can’t add PCs. Who did this study again? Oh right The Gates Foundation… gee I wonder what their solution to this involves, it better not be Vista. update: the geeky artist librarian agrees). It discusses how popular technology in libraries has become, but also what the limitations are that libraries are facing. The whole article is tailor-made to support a roll-out of the Gates Foundation’s next round of funding which I’m sure will nicely sew up all the loose ends that this article pinpoints.
Except for the fact that more computers means, or should mean, more staff and more space, neither of which get a lot of lip service from technology grantors who would rather give away last year’s software for a hefty tax writeoff. You’ll note that this article says that libraries are cutting staffing so they can afford more computers. I assume then that this is supposed to imply that getting more computers means more freed up money to hire staff. However, we all know, at least out here in rural noplace, that funding remains fixed as does space and what we could really use is an operating system that doesn’t need a 20MB security update every few weeks and a browser that isn’t out-of-the-box vulnerable to a huge range of exploits that leave our computers barely working. The good news is that we can get both of those things and we don’t have to wait for someone to loan us money to do it. Sorry for the slightly bitter tone, I’ll chime in with some more facts from this study once I’ve gotten a chance to read it.
ala,
funding,
gatesfoundation,
libraries,
publiclibaries,
study,
survey,
tek
Getting back to the basic technical skill of drawing feels so good. The way I like relax is to sketch and my favorite place to sketch people is at Starbucks, sipping a yummy hot latte, mmmmm. This was a quick 5 minute sketch to which I added some color as I loved the red sweatshirt she was wearing from Aeropostale. I love their t-shirts too, especially this Pink Shoulder Script Baby T. They're nice and long and go great with low riding jeans. What do you do to relax?
I need to get comfortable with Zebras.... you know these stripes are driving me crazy!
©GingerNielson2007
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I found a character sketch in my sketchbook that I thought would work for this weeks Illustration Friday theme "unfold" - as in, "how will this scenario unfold?" I want to keep on with the painting practice, so that's my intended medium. 
As I drew out the scene, I realized that this would be best as an interior setting in dim light.
Very beautifully done Martin!
Thanks for visitng Teri. Hugs. Martín.
Me gusta la energia en estos dibujos. Great!