Art in the environment

A few years ago I was walking in Venice, California with my daughter and her boyfriend. I looked across the street and saw a building in the shape of binoculars. I asked my daughter’s boyfriend to go do me a favor and run flat out on the other side of the street because I wanted to take a photograph of the building with him running in front of it for a piece of art I was planning to make out of it.

This is it…..

No Distance is Too Great.

How did the cow get a antenna?

Years ago I was in Aruba and was wondering around the marina and looked over to my left and saw an unusual sight. A restaurant had a full size sculpture of a cow on it’s roof with a antenna on the cow’s back.

Very unusual indeed. So, I photographed it and four years later I decided to make a painting of it. This is it. A 16″ x 20″ oil on canvas painting I like to call “TV Cow”. Enjoy!

"TV Cow" - 16" x 20" Oil on Canvas painting

New Work

Years ago I photographed a flower that came out of a catus plant that I thought had seen better days. One day it wasn’t there and the next day it was. I decided to paint it. Here it is.

Oil on canvas - 16" x 20" painting - Cactus Flower

Back to Art

Well, it’s time to paint again. It’s a very strange thing to be going along and then one day like a bolt of lightning it hits me that I need to create more art.

I’ve decided to do a series of paintings that I’ve had as digital ideas for a few years and stop wondering what I should do next. Just do the art and get back into the “habit” of being a fine artist. That feels like a healthy idea and a very productive thing at this point of my life.

This is the first image I’ll be working on. Let me know what you think. I call it TV-Cows! It’s based on a photo I took in Aruba. This cow sculpture was sitting on top of a restaurant with a antenna sticking out of the top of it. Strangely amusing!

TV-Cows

Pop Art Elvis Presley meets Photoshop.

This painting of Elvis was done last year and I decided to see what it would look like if I posterized it and added a photoshop pop art texture. What do you think?

Elvis meets photoshop version

Portrait of an attorney

This is another portrait commissioned of an attorney and he’s smilin’ pretty wide here.

DUCATI FINALLY GETS IT RIGHT.

As an artist I’ve always considered motorcycles as truly beautiful art. Friends of mine would come over to my garage and we would discuss how high the art factor was for any given motorcycle we had parked in there. Ducati always seemed to just blow away the competition just standing still! Let’s face it, those Italian engineers really know how to craft a piece of clay into metal and the metals they use can get very ‘spensive as well.

After all these years Ducati has finally come out with fine art prints of their bikes. You can see them at http://www.ducatiart.com/. Here’s a sample:

As a rider of Ducatis and other motorcycles I can attest to the fact there is something a little different about these bikes. They feel hand made (which they are) and they always don’t work exactly right, but when they do there’s no comparison to how much fun and exhilaration you can take away from an afternoon astride one of them.

They’re headturners, much like their brother Ferrari  and each year we wait to see how they will top the preceding year’s design. They usually do.

Ducati gets get right to put them where they belong when their not being ridden – on our walls to look at.

The Fine Art That Never Sleeps in New York City

As I said in an earlier post, my days of walking the streets of New York was always filled with a never-ending stream of art throughout the varying neighborhoods. From walking in the Village to strolling uptown along 5th Avenue I always managed to be entertained by either unique window dressings or from yelling cab drivers as they weaved their way in traffic to an unknown destination.

I was never, ever bored living there and found the City a fountain of culture with art from all ages. My most favorite thing to do was to walk through new neighborhoods as they presented such diversity from block to block. A true melting pot.

My last visit was no different other than I labored more because an aging body but still the excitement of what I would find around the next corner was always there and I’m sure will always be there when I return.

As I was walking up one of the streets deep in the SoHo area I came across a painting of Marilyn Monroe in the window of a gallery that stopped me dead in my tracks.

This was the best collaboration between Disney characters and stardom I’d ever seen to date.

Then there were the beautiful photos in the windows that captured the imagery designers tried so hard to place within the community to broadcast the richness of the present day cultures.

I even came across a striking Mona Lisa painting on the side of a building that seemed quite natural to be there and reminded me that street art can be some of the finest when created by artist that have true passion for their work and decide that a gallery just doesn’t suit them or their paintings but they deserve the right to place the paintings in front of the pedestrians anywhere, anytime.

Sculpture is bountiful in the City as well and you can’t walk very far without coming across some very striking pieces that designate the different “squares” throughout the neighborhoods. And of course the architecture is classic and as varied as the people that inhabit the buildings.

So we call it the City that Never Sleeps. We can see why now. The Artists never do as well!

Abstract painting or not?

One day I started a painting in my abstract style and for some reason it kept reminding me of an image that portrayed a front yard with a white picket fence.

This piece has a different quality to it than most of my others. Sometimes it looks a bit realistic and sometimes it looks  abstract in nature.

Maybe that’s what an abstract painting is suppose to do? Change, depending on who is looking.

Fences – 18" x 24" acrylic on paper

Squinting is bad for your eyes but great for your art.

Back in art school I had a drawing instructor that taught us how to measure with sight and the pencil. You probably have seen artists being mimicked by other people holding up their thumb and squinting at it as if they’re measuring something. Well, that’s what he was teaching us and it works well as long as you add one more thing to the drill – comparing different portions of what you’re drawing or painting to some other part of the same subject.

We use to stand there in class and while drawing a nude model we would have to measure how wide their shoulders were in relation to how wide their head was and how far from the left shoulder in towards the head we would start drawing the neck and so on and so on.

It’s an excellent technique and if you use it throughout the drawing most of the time the pieces all seem to fit together perfectly and voila! It will look just like the real thing!!! Try it some time.

He also taught us how to do “Quick studies”. The model would hold a pose for 20 seconds and in that time we had to “capture” the aesthetic line of the body with minimal drawing and then the model changed to another pose and on and on until we were able to capture the pose quickly and correctly. Terrific drill. Try in a park sometime with a large pad of newsprint paper and a charcoal pencil.

The squinting just seems to come naturally because your eyes can’t focus on your thumb or pencil being held up to use as a measuring device and the subject in the distance being measured at the same time.

Oh…and don’t forget to stop squinting once you’re done drawing.

BOTTS - 24" x 24" oil on canvas. Squinted for proportion and color!