It's Robinson Crusoe Day!

Yes, indeed. A fine, fine day to send out message in a bottle tweets from your remote island home.

Incidentally, I've never typed in phone text abbreviations before, and had to visit the Twitter feeds of both Kanye West and Paris Hilton to research this sort of thing.

Fiddling around with pastels.

Here are three pieces I've been working on for a children's magazine job; I've been trying to find some way of working that doesn't change the process or overall quality of a piece, but makes the process a little more portable, a little more direct. The sketches are pencil and white gouache on gray Canson paper, which how I usually roll, whereas the finals are pastel, conte and charcoal over gouache on various shades of Rives BFK printmaking paper. The originals range in size from 13"x 17" to about 6.5" x 15".

I won't show you the poor wooden mannequin that I dressed in a tissue paper sari after watching way too many "how to wear a sari" videos on YouTube...

For Demonstration Purposes Only.

It's that time of the semester when I find myself doing demos. Lots and lots of demos. So skipping over the one where I painted a tarnished brass frog sprinkler in blue and orange gouache to demonstrate a logical place for a complementary color scheme, here's a portrait of a student in my Art Appreciation class, executed over the course of an hour in class.

Fabiola, 2010.
oil on canvas, 11" x 16"

The following two were separate technique and color scheme demonstrations, based on a sketch from my "Mind Your Manners, Alice Roosevelt!" book. They're both variations on tertiary, triadic color schemes, one utilizing a combination of red-orange, yellow-green and blue-violet, while the other is comprised mainly of red-violet, yellow-orange, and blue-green.

Each of these took about an hour and a half to complete (thankfully, the sketching and reference had been taken care of two years ago). The watercolor was for my University of the Arts Pictorial Foundation class, while the gouache was for a Seton Hall University 2-D Color & Design section.

Watercolor on Fabriano 140 lb. soft press, 10.75" x 13"

Gouache on Arches 140 lb. hot press, 10.75" x 13"

Here's the original oil that appears in the book:

"She simply decided to spend her time over his roof." 2010.
Oil on paper, 18" x 30"

...and the original sketch...

"She simply decided to spend her time over his roof." 2008.
Pencil and white gouache on gray Canson paper, 11" x 19"

Another train person.

2010, 6" x 8.5"

Pastel, charcoal, conte and gouache on Rives BFK paper.

Mass Transit Hipster.

7.25" x 8," 2010.
pastel, conte and charcoal over gouache
on gray Rives BFK paper.

It's World Egg Day!

On approaching the object,
Mable could think of nothing but
omelets, pancakes and cookies;
her every neural impulse
trained on visions of
homecooked vittles,
baked and fried.

This was indeed unfortunate.

A book signing in Brooklyn...

I'll be signing copies of THE BLUE HOUSE DOG at BookCourt, 163 Court St., Cobble Hill, Brooklyn on 10/3 at 11 with the book's author Deborah Blumenthal.

Stop on in, by all means!