Recently I took my mini-Moleskin sketchbook on a sketching “expedition” to Fort Greene Park. My goal was to hunt out potential locations or views for future paintings. Not too much time was spent on any of these, just enough to get layout ideas and general composition possibilities. No color notes were taken.

Outta the bunch I have already selected one and begun a painting. I will post progress on that soon.

Early November: North Greenland – Rockwell Kent 1933
Just got back from a breathtakingly beautiful vacation up in Boothbay Harbor, Maine. One of the suprise highlights was a quick stop in at the beautiful Portland Museum of Art, where I was delighted to find a huge Rockwell Kent exhibit. I don’t know if it was all the salt in the water that I swam in or too many lobster rolls, but this show just floored me.
The first images that come to my mind when I hear Kent’s name are the amazing black and white ink drawings of Moby Dick. I had always kept him firmly in the camp of the great American pen and ink illustrators of the early 20th century. This show completely enlarged my view of his work, and of his amazing life. This fellow was a grade-A swashbuckler, travelling to the world’s most spectacularly desolate and awe-inspiring places, and surviving any shipwrecks that nature threw his way (at least one that I am aware of).
His glowing landscpaes of Monhegan Maine, Tierra del Fuego, Greenland and Alaska are meant to remove the viewer’s self-consciousness, and just revel in the marvel of the scene. He was quite a modernist as well, producing playfully cartoonish shapes, yet preserving their deep cobalt blue glow and blindingly bright snowfields.
I’m looking forward to reading his wild tales of adventure as he sails to Tierra del Fuego in his book Voyaging. If you happen to be up in the area near Portland, ME be sure to check this show out. It runs until October 16th.
Amazon: Rockwell Kent: The Mythic and the Modern
Amazon: Voyaging
Link: Portland Museum of Art

I’m working on this illustration right now, and I though I’d show a few frames of how it is evolving. I always loved reading Step by Step Graphics magazine, and I feel that tutorials are really one of the best ways to learn. I plan on doing some more in-depth tutorial stuff in the near future….I’ll update this animated gif with a new frame when I complete it, which should be very soon…
In other news, The Lambkins, (my first book cover) is now on store shelves.
UPDATE: I have added the final frame.

Recent sketching from the subway, on an airplane, east river park and robert moses beach.

I found this guide to reproduction online a few years ago, and I was glad to see that it’s authors have kept it up to date. Written by Ron Rege Jr, Dave Choe, Brian Ralph and Jordan Crane, this handy guide is described as “A Primer on Xerography, Silkscreening and Offset Printing”.
Print this out and keep it in your studio, as it will come in very handy one day. It has a great listing of specific brands of materials they recommend for each type of reproduction as well as where to order them from. I am gearing up for a super-secret Invisibleman project involving one of the aforementioned forms of reproduction, and no doubt this guide will be referred to frequently!

Link: Re: A Guide to Reproduction (PDF) 3.7mb

Wow. Everything just came together for this show. The weather was perfect, Sam Beam of Iron & Wine was a surprise guest, we had amazing seats and the show was FREE!!! Fellow invisbleman Kurt joined Julie and I for this rockin’ show. Kurt’s camera is a bit nicer than mine, so I’ll just post the above image…
If you haven’t heard Calexico before, listen to some samples in iTunes.

This unfortunately shaped inflatable jungle gym contraption was spewing out children at an apple-picking farm in the Catskills last fall.

I work down at the World Financial Center. I walk past Ground Zero on the way to the office. It’s a pretty antiseptic desolate stretch of concrete on the south side of the pit.
Each day throngs of tourists pour through there taking their pictures in front of…nothing. I understand why they come to see it. But they come and walk through this corridor desperate for some scratch of tribute, some artifact of sympathy. There’s almost nothing there. A few keychain lanyards, a few old photos duct taped to the wall, and scattered about…some crappy high school poetry. And this is what the tourists deem picture worthy.
To be clear, I am not poking fun at the grieving teen who may write said poetry. I am just commenting on the absurdity of taking a picture of it. The good news is that the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation just announced plans to open a “Tribute Visitor’s Center” next to the firehouse on Liberty Street. I think this will go a long way in giving these people something worth seeing.