I started out with a flat ochrey beige colored background for the sand with slightly darker shadow areas. It looked ok, but I wanted something with a little more depth…something a little more exciting for the eyes. I fumbled around for awhile until I came up with this process. I start by scumbling in a darker color over the flat areas. Like so…

Then, I smear a base color back in around the scumbles, leaving enough variation in the texture and value range so that it looks lightly mottled.

Then I go in with the little tiny brushes and add single sand dots in a variety of colors and values over the top of the smeared area. Enough tiny detail so that the eye is fooled into thinking it sees a lot more than is actually there. Less is definitely more here. Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot is the master of that trick.

Here’s what it looked like in process…

And after.

Now some detail images of the finished piece.

I feel really great having wrapped this one up at last. Cleaning out my studio, then on to the next one!

Oregon Art Beat, a show on OPB television recently did a spot on one of my professors from PNCA, Paul Missal. He helped to teach me to paint in school and was my associate at Blackfish Gallery for five years. The program highlights his love of teaching. It made me nostalgic, check it out.

My friend Ty Ennis was also spotlighted during the same show. He talks about storytelling as a driving force in his drawings and introduces his solo show at the New American Art Union.

Also, I just read my friend Laini Taylor’s new book of young adult fiction, Lips Touch Three Times. She wrote it and her husband Jim Di Bartolo illustrated introductary preludes for each of the three short stories in the book. The drawings are set up in a wordless sequential comic book style, preceding and energizing the text of the stories. Each of the stories are distinct, but linked by their tone and their subject, kissing. They mix the creepiness of old fairy tales with a contemporary pop sensibility in a way that manages to be completely charming. It is now a finalist for the National Book Award. I am very proud of both of them.

First I set up a small model of a driftwood fort in a sandbox I constructed in my studio.

Then I drew the outline of the structure on paper and filled in the wood areas with a light wash of gauche.

Using charcoal and pastel pencils I begin to flesh out the color and texture of the structure.

To go from this…

To this.

You can see the shadows of the easel and the sandbox to the left of it in the last photo. I’ve got my ipod in there playing books on tape during most of the process. For this drawing I listened to “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” and the first parts of “The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire”. Time really flies by in here. Four or five hours into the work it feels like I’ve just sat down.

So, if you look to the upper left part of this picture you can see the white sheet that separates my studio from the rest of the living room. It’s kind of tiny, but it’s what I got for now. I like it.

Some of you knew my cat Oscar. He died of complications of being an old obnoxious brawler on Thursday morning. I’m gonna miss his scruffy cat ass. Rest in peace dear cuddly jerk-cat. Maggie has some more Oscar related memories here

The space isn’t very big, but It’s large enough for the present. I won’t be making any large scale paintings for a while. The white sheets around the space are great for cutting out any distractions. I’ve just started working on what might turn into a new series….more on that later.

The ducklings hatched in June. They got bigger and today we took them to the country.

Abby was there at the door when we arrived to take the ducks.

She put them in their new pen.

She filled up a kiddy pool for them while Maggie and her grandma watched.

The ducks are getting adjusted to a new home.

Next to their pen is a little pond with Koi swimming in it…

…and behind their pen is a creek…

…which flows out of this pond…

…and when they are ready, they can go anywhere they want.

Maggie and I went home and watched some Star Trek.

I decided around the begining of August to quit Blackfish Gallery and move out of my studio.

This was a bit of an agonizing decision but I think it’s the right one. I’d been at Blackfish since 2003. It was a good home for me, having built up a body of work in the two years out of college, it was one of two galleries in town that took my application seriously. I’m thankful for that, and I’m glad to have gotten to know the Blackfish membership during my stay there.

In the end, I was becoming stagnant and complacent in the gallery. I had a solo show in October of 2008, in which no work sold and I got pretty limited feedback. This was a bit worrying, so I took a sabbatical for the spring and summer of 2009. I wasn’t getting much done, or feeling inspired, until around the end of July, when I started playing with the idea of moving my painting studio into a corner of my living room that had just been a drawing studio up to that point. I did a trial run of it on a wedding commission piece a few weeks ago and it worked great. That was when I decided that moving out was a good idea.

I’m gonna miss Blackfish, but I’m more excited about the new home studio. I’ve got some new ideas for paintings and a good place to work on them.

What more could a painter want?

The Pictures

My paintings in the old studio storage area.

All cleaned out and swept up.

The shelving that came with the studio. Left for the next tenant.

Goodbye studio!

Loading up the Uhaul.

Standing inside the new storage space with a stupid look on my face.

It’s all sealed up with plastic. Hope it keeps out the winter rain.

What your reading is the second time I’ve written this post. I went to upload it the first time and it got erased because my login timed out. I did some cussin and learned a lesson.

I have a little show up at a bar called The Know, located at

2026 NE Alberta St
Portland, OR 97211
(503) 473-8729

Get directions

More information

Open Mon 12am-2:30am, 4pm-2:30am
Tue-Sat 4pm-2:30am
Sun 4pm-12am.

Bit of a dive but I kind of like it. There are two new paintings up in it, plus a number of works from my solo show from October at Blackfish Gallery. So if you’re in the neighborhood after 4pm, slum on by and have a pint. It’ll put hair on your chest. Sexy

The cops show up as I reach the dispatcher. Other people have already called. Two cop cars at first. One officer trying to figure out who saw anything while keeping the stabbed guy lying still. The stabbed guy wont stop sitting up and rolling around…acting drunk. Like he sortof feels it but doesn’t know whats going on. I hear him moan something about a ceasure. One young black kid on a bicycle is yelling “Send an ambulance! He’s dying man! He’s dying!” The stabbed guy says he cant breath and slumps on the ground. The cop tries to get people to stick around but a bunch of them leave in the confusion when the ambulance and more cops show up. The kid on the bike leaves…even though he was right there when it happened.

The paramedics work on him. Hook him up to an ekgish thing. Start CPR. Stop CPR. Unhook him. I hear a paramedic say “Already too far….” to one of the cops. I ask a blonde officer, “Excuse me officer…Is that man dead?” She looks kindof like she doesn’t know what to do and an older cop tells me that everything will be explained later and could I please step over this way for right now. So I do…with a few other people. A cop takes my info and interviews me briefly. Then they tell me I need to go wait on the bus. I go wait on the bus. For four hours. The detectives interview me about 2:30 in the morning. I am exhausted. The body is still lying on the pavement uncovered when I step back into my house. I’ve never seen anybody die before.