Don't Mind the Arrow

Wednesday Inspiration - Nick Bantock

Better late than never with the Wednesday Inspiration, right? Morgan and I went to the Museum of Outdoor Arts in Englewood to see the Nick Bantock exhibition that they currently have. He's most well-known for his collage art, particularly the books in the Griffin & Sabine trilogy. He does amazing work creating faux postage and ephemera.

But the exhibition also had a number of graphite drawings. I had no idea he did that sort of drawing. In fact, I tried to find some examples online but didn't really come up with anything. Anyhow, the graphite drawings were very inspiring to me. When I looked at them closely, I saw that they were done entirely (almost entirely?) with lines slanting in one direction. I really wish I'd been able to find a photo online, because it was gorgeously done.

I left the exhibition, came home, and immediately started work on a graphite piece. It was pretty slow going, but it's done now. I'll share it with you tomorrow.

Shorpy

Do you like old photos? I'm addicted to them. I can spend (and have spent!) hours looking through the Flickr Commons. The Library of Congress, the Smithsonian, and other institutions from various countries post their old pictures there. 

Recently, I stumbled across another site, shorpy.com. The photos there are a mix of the contributors' own family photos and photos mostly from the Library of Congress that have been restored. It's great, because the photos on Shorpy are posted in more manageable chunks and they're also available in much larger sizes.  I love to look at the largest size on Shorpy and be able to really explore the scene - see people's faces and clothes, read the signs, get a good look at the buildings and cars. 

One photo that caught my eye was this one:

It's such a bustling scene, full of so many people just going about their business. After scrolling around in the photo, I settled on a couple of women to draw. If you click on the photo above, the large version of the photo will open and you should be able to find the two who I used as reference for the drawing below.

It was so much fun to do this drawing that I can't wait to start on another one!

 

Wednesday Inspiration - Tahiti Pehrson

I have been intrigued by the technique of papercutting for a while. I've done a few things, but I'm not sure I can even aspire to anything near the work of Tahiti Pehrson.

Detailed and multi-layered, the work is just amazing. You owe it to yourself to peruse the gallery, and if you want to see some incredible 3-D work, check out the installation section too. It almost makes me want to get out some paper and try some more involved work. But I think that'll have to wait, since I still haven't finished my wedding stole and the big day is only 4 days away!

Wednesday Inspiration - New Pencils

Normally my Wednesday Inspiration posts are about other artists I've run across on the web. But today, my inspiration is something that arrived in the mail.

I've been doing a lot of work with colored pencils lately, and I've been doing it all with slightly over 12 colors. I say "slightly" because I had two sets of 12-color tins, and while each set has the same general distribution of colors, there are some variations. One has Spring Green, the other has Apple Green. One has Dark Brown, the other has Burnt Umber. But they both have Canary Yellow, Crimson Red, White and Black. I also recently broke down and bought Goldenrod, Peach and a gray. But those are all the colors I had to work with. It wasn't the end of the world; my opinion on art supplies is very similar to my opinion about cameras. That is, you can learn to do a lot with limited tools, and some people have entirely too much expensive equipment that they don't get much out of because they don't know how to use it.

Nevertheless, I often found myself wishing I had a real pink, or more gray options, or a few other things that are more difficult to fake. So I spent an Amazon gift card I got for Christmas on new pencils. I went from the above to this:

This is the 72-color set. I spent 10 minutes just turning all of the pencils so I could look at the color names. Instead of one gray, I now have a 20%, 50%, and 70% in each of warm, cool and French gray. I have pinks, purples, numerous shades of yellow and blue. I cannot wait to sharpen them up and start putting them to use!

 

 

Wednesday Inspiration - Vintage Valentines

In the past couple of days, I've seen a couple of great sources for vintage valentines to use in projects for your own valentines.  One came from the Intimate Weddings blog: a Flickr set full of wonderful, brightly colored cards.

The other comes from the Happy Honeybee blog. These are special because they come from her husband's family. I love old treasures like these!

I wasn't planning on making any valentines this year, but these lovely images are tempting me just a little.

 

Wednesday Inspiration - Ryan Woodward

I saw this on Notes to Self earlier this week, and it's really beautifully done. This is the sort of thing that makes me momentarily entertain the idea of trying my hand at animation. Then I remember that it takes a lot of work to make just a few seconds' worth of footage and I decide to just admire it instead.

Wednesday Inspiration - Keira Rathbone

I saw this on the ModCloth blog yesterday, and I couldn't resist re-sharing it. Artist Keira Rathbone uses a typewriter to create her works of art. 

What a cool idea! It makes me want a typewriter (well, okay, I already wanted one, really). I'm not sure I could achieve much success with this method, but it would be fun to try. 

The video below shows Keira at work, and practice definitely makes perfect - she makes it look so easy!

 

Wednesday Inspiration - Mark Khaisman

What can you do with packing tape? Apparently, if you're Mark Khaisman, just about anything. His art is made up of layers of packing tape on acrylic. Backlighting enhances the light and dark areas. I think I'm going to try to do something like this, on a much smaller scale. Should be interesting!