Mount Hood Village Sketches

Recently had a two night camping trip with the Goldbeck woman and children. Took a few sketches.

Mount Hood Village Sketches
Ink on Paper
8/17/11-8/18/11

Meadow Sketches

Meadow Sketches
Acrylic on Paper
4/28/11

More sketches from the meadow. I quite like these.

Meadow Portraits

Meadow Portraits
Acrylic on Paper
4/28/11

Lovely evening in the Meadow with some lovely ladies. They are much prettier than my sketches. Everyone knows I like to make everything ugly in my art. Except for ugly things. Those, I prefer to make beautiful.

Three Portraits

Three Portraits
Acrylic on Paper
4/22/11

So one of my goals this summer has been to make more art, even if it's not ideal. So I started making these blind contour drawings wherever I went. Then I would color them in later, sometimes with watercolor pens, and lately, with acrylic. Here's a set of three portraits I made at my house the other night. One of them is me. It's not the cute one.

The Road to John Day

I'm pretty sure I started this painting about 3 years ago. It is finally complete, thanks to my week o' lonelitude. It's amazing how much creative energy I have when my family is away. I think they will have to go away at least once a year so I can finish all my projects!

The Road to John Day
Acrylic on Canvas Board
11 x 14
Available

Fabric + Image--an idea whose time has come

Updated 8/30/11--completed the fabric portion. Now, I need to work on the image that is going to go over it. By the way, it probably took about 8 hours to get this silly thing done. At least.

Work in Progress
Acrylic on Stretched Canvas

Actual fabric from doggie bandanna

Okay, so ever since I bought @IsaacYoder's Caticorn, I've been toying with the idea of painting a canvas with a fabric pattern, then putting a crazy, weird-ass image on top of the fabric. See, Isaac's painting is oh-so -awesomely painted on a sheet I'm pretty sure my parents had in the early 80s. Well, not the exact sheets--that would be gross. So, the other night during the Un-finished Business painting session, I finally started putting one of these ideas into action. Voila! The first layer of rainbows copied from a bandanna the groomer put on my dog last month. Stay tuned for all sorts of awesomeness to bedeck this image. I'm toying with the idea of a gas mask.Caticorn
by Isaac Yoder

Demo-Orange

Orange
Acrylic on coated paper
6 x 6 (ish)

I don't even know why I'm posting this. But I am. Maybe because I don't want it to feel bad that it's only a demo I did in class and not a "real" painting.

How Collaborative Painting Works

I Will Walk You
Acrylic and rhinestone on canvas board
5 x 7 inches
by Moonka Minka, Jake Fabrycki, Anne J. Paris

This past year, my good buddy @moonkaminka turned me on to collaborative painting. We started a huge canvas at my house on a night when several friends were over. At least five different people worked on the painting, and when the night was done, so was the painting. I took it to school, where I got tons of positive feedback on it. That led me to have the kids make some collaborative paintings. When I get a chance, I will will post pics of those here. Meanwhile, here's a little 5 x 7 collaborative painting that has the following lineage:

I asked my high school students to make a painting in the style of the surrealists. One student, let's call him Jake (because that's his name), came up with a sketch of a town where people had melon heads, and they could shop for different heads at the melon store. He soon realized the size of the canvas was not going to accommodate his vision, so he switched to paper and pencil. I took the sketch and proceeded to fill in the large blocks with color. Then the school year ended. The other night, Moonka Minka was at my house, and I asked her to finish the painting. Here's the result.

The secret to collaborative painting is that you really cannot care about controlling the outcome, which can make it a good exercise in the artistic process, because ideally, we should not be worried about the finished product at ANY point in the creative process until it's time for signing and framing. Or actually maybe just when it's time for hanging.