Category Archives: Round Up

Weekly Roundup 26AUG2012

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The Art

 With all the craziness that comes with my beautiful, young bride’s school starting back up (she’s the art teacher) and me leaving for a week of training in Houston, there hasn’t been much activity on the Artistic Biker front, nor on the Oasis Gallery & Studios front.  We did manage to get a little arting in, but mostly it was about staying sane and not killing anyone.  While I was in Houston, I stopped in to the Ragin Cajun Oyster Bar and Grill and had TWO DOZEN OYSTERS!!! I love oysters and these were the awesomenest.  Those with six hushpuppies, dirty rice, two Blue Moon pints, a slice of bourbon pecan pie and a cup of spiced rum coffee and I thought they were going to have to roll me back to the hotel!

The Classroom

While we’re on the subject of sketching and painting in public, this week on The Classroom, I believe I’ll demonstrate and talk about the pros and cons of inktense over watercolor pencils.  That’ll be Tuesday night 7p central time at http://www.ustream.tv/channel/oasisgalleryok and the password is “arting”.

Daddy/Daughter Breakfast

Girl2 has really taken to drawing these doodle tangles that look like flowers, dragons, cats, owls..  Sometimes she colors them and sometimes she just scribbles something.  I encourage her to use her imagination during this time and she’s doing GREAT.  I have been getting a touch bored with drawing spoons and coffee mugs, so for the second week in a row I worked on the plastic flower.  My coffee mug is almost never empty at this cafe because the waitresses are all eager to see what we are doing each week.

The Video

Several weeks ago, I made a new art journal on The Artistic Biker Live.  Believe it or not, I finally got around to producing the You Tube video.  You can watch that here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dnOPG2k9_2A

 Everything should get back to normal this week with the classroom, the show, and the progress on the studio.  There’s a lot still to do and a lot still in store so be sure and tune in each week for the craziness.

Sunday Roundup 22JUL2012

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Me in front of a Van Gogh

WHEW!  Things are FINALLY starting to get settled around here again.  It has taken practically an entire week just to get back into some sort of routine.  As you may or may not be aware, the wife and I went on a whirlwind tour of Virginia, Maryland and Washington D.C.  Well, we didn’t really tour Virginia and Maryland, but we stayed with some AMAZING friends there (Hi Charro, Mr. Bill, ShaNayNay, Mr. Alex, Uncle Em, and all the young’uns!).  While the wife was busy with her conference, I made a point to whizbang all through the DC museum scene.

Since I did quite a bit of Urban Sketching that week, I thought we’d talk a little about tools and techniques in The Classroom this week.  You can join in on Tuesday night by going to http://www.ustream.tv/channel/oasisgalleryok.  The password shall remain “arting” until further notice.

new book

Also, this last Thursday night on The Artistic Biker Live!, I finally got around to making a new book.  That means we get to start it all over again so be sure and tune in on Thursday nights from 6:30-8p central time for The Artistic Biker Live!

Sunday Roundup 17JUN2012

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In The Classroom last week and on The Artistic Biker Live! I showed off some photos I had taken during my lunch break at work.  They were of several tarantulas crossing the road.  During the discussion I was reminded of the journal entry from last year where I captured a spider web on the page and painted over it.  Many people were intrigued by the concept so I thought I would demonstrate it this week on The Classroom.  You can watch the video from LAST YEAR’S spider here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADSKaFZuCvQ

In preparation for this week’s episode of The Classroom, I made a PDF for you to download and share with whomever you please.  Capturing a Web

 

The little girl was having difficulty drawing stuff Saturday.  She said, “What’s the point? I’m not very good.”

Wholly Crap if I only had a nickel every time I said those same words, eh?  We had a long talk about practice if you want to get better and about just doing it for the fun of it.  Letting The Process be your result, not the Product.  She got it and ended up having fun free drawing.  I’ve been doing hands every night as part of #100DaysArt.  If you follow me on Twitter, Facebook, or Google+ , you can get a nightly update about the progress of those.  However, judging from Saturday’s sketch, I think the nightly practice has already begun helping me.

Sunday Roundup 10JUN2012

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100 Days Faces

Both the 29 Faces challenge AND the #100DaysArt 5 min faces have officially come to an end.  I am still drawing faces every night, however.  I’m still drawing 5 minute nudes.  NOW I’m starting 5 minute hands.  Once you start, it gets very hard to stop.  Anyway, I did a flip through video and a quick demo of the 5 minute face.  I also answered a few of the questions that came up from viewers and twitterers.  You can see the video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qyoP0luC6Wo

Last week on The Classroom I finished up working on a painting of a large face.  26×37 acrylic painted on an expired wall calendar.  Inspired by the hot young lady at The Dollar General that winked at me, I named it “Winker”.  If you’re the hot young lady and you’re reading this… Girl, I’m old enough to be your much older brother….  <grin>

This week on the classroom, I promised to do a step by step on how I draw heads and faces.  We’ll cover the basic rules and why I don’t usually follow them.  I’ve made you a VERY basic PDF so you can follow along and share if you like.  You can download it here: Drawing the Basic Human Head

Daddy/Daughter Breakfast Sketches

The little girl and I are becoming quite popular at the cafe.  All of the folks file by to see what she’s drawing.  I guess it’s more accurate to say that SHE is becoming quite popular…  I’m just the guy that steals her bacon.

Weekly Roundup 10MAY2009

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EDM 114: Draw a shopping cart or basket
EDM 114: Draw a shopping cart or basket

Or, A Good Excuse to Sleep In…

Wow, another week in the tubes here at The Artistic Biker.  I picked up quite a few subscribers this week, mostly through Twitter.   If you are not a twit who tweets on twitter, you are just not hip.  Of course, I don’t think hip people say “hip” anymore.  Mostly that’s because these younger cats aren’t cool enough to pull it off.

To those of you who saw the super-secret thank you page buy following the “donate” link, I can’t thank you enough and I am very glad to know that you are enjoying it.

Monday Discovery

Pushing the Darks!

This week’s Monday Discovery, I published a lovely letter from Jeanette Jobson congratulating me on my new site and giving me some valuable constructive criticism to help me continue to improve.  I also coaxed a lesson out of my beautiful young bride, the art teacher, on emphasizing depth with shading by Pushing the Darks.

…My DH (Dear Husband) has a habit of getting the basic shapes down and then making up the shading as he goes along, never looking at the object again. The artist in me says, “Wow, cool!” The teacher in me screams, “Wrong, do it again!” (Just like Pink Floyd.)…

Tuesday’s Challenge:
Hierarchy of Love

Meeting Illustration Friday’s theme for the week, I posted The Hierarchy of Love.  This challenge inspired a ton of other ideas I hope to be sharing with you over the next few months!

…If you stick around this site long enough, you will hear (read) me go on and on about love. Brought up by hippie-wanna-be parents in the ’70’s I was || close to being named Starshine…

Wednesday Figure Drawing
Oklahoma City Colored Pencil Society

No, the OKC Colored Pencil Society of America did not have figure drawing.  I normally meet my figure drawing group on Tuesdays and tell you about it on Wednesday.  However, on the last Tuesday of the month, the OKC CPSA meets and I go there instead.

…We watched a video demonstration on layering and using watercolor pencils to lay down a base wash. I thought that violated the rules, but hey, I’m all for that anyway…

Thursday’s Net Challenge:
Colored Pencil Challenge

Inspired by the meeting of the OKC CPSA, I looked into a colored pencil challenge for the month of May over at Wet Canvas.  I found a neato photo reference of an old truck headlight.  I thought I might work that up large scale and post it as a WIP.

…take some time with this one and post my *WIPs as I go along. Maybe I’ll
even get it done by the end of the month deadline…

Friday Critique:
A Budding Young Artiste

For Friday’s Critique, I shared with you some of Girl2’s recent works.  She’s quite the painter for 3.

…Yes, it’s evident that she is well on her way to being the ballerina,astronaut, veterinarian, biker, artiste, queen that she is destined to become.  I wouldn’t mind applying for that job myself…

Saturday’s Sketchbook:
Saturday Sketches

My little family and I took a trip to the OKC Zoo on Saturday.  We had a great time and even got to wear Girl2 out on the paddle boats.  We closed the place down like college kids on a pubcrawl!  Also posted EDM 13: draw something ugly that you love.

…Take for instance a nasty, greasy, old, chicken leg fried in week old
shortening… with a tasty batter of 11 secret herbs and spices cooked to sweet and salty perfectio…

Weekly Mailbag

Last week I posted an open invitation to participate on Friday’s Critiques.  I have one opening left for May if someone is interested in meeting me online for a chat about it, please contact me.

I sent an email to Jeff of http://jeffknecht.com, inviting him to participate in Friday’s Critiques.  Here is how he responded:

Jonathan/Blade:

Thanks for sending me this note.  Sorry I haven’t responded sooner — I’ve been swamped with work and home projects the past couple of weeks and am just now getting caught up on my email.  Also, I wanted to give your proposal the thought it deserves.

So, yes, I would be very interested in sharing critiques and experiences.

How would you like to do this?  Do you just want to point me to a few specific drawings on your blog?  Do you want to send them over email?  Something like gotomeeting.com?  Some sort of conference call?

Of course, I would like your feedback too — though, I’ve got to get my stuff out and actually DRAW something for you to look at
:)

Anyway, let me know what you’ve got in mind.  Hopefully, we’ll both get something out of it.  If nothing else, it should force me to get off my duff and draw a little more often.

Thanks again for getting in touch.  I really look forward to continuing the conversation.

Jeff

After a few more notes back and forth we finally decided on a forum, but the timing was a bit difficult.  He posted about this on his blog.

We ended up meeting online this morning at 10:30am.  We had a GREAT chat and critique.  We are working out the editing and we will both be posting part of a two part chat session some time this week.  With any luck, it’ll be in time for Friday’s Critiques seeing as how that’s what it was meant for in the first place.
;)