Experience LA

Hello readers!

I'm happy to annouce that I've been approved as a community partner for ExperienceLA.com, which is a free online resource for LA residents and visitors to find out about arts, cultural, and recreational activities!  If you are reading this, it means you already know you can find my event listings right here on my website, and ExperienceLA.com will allow me to connect with even more members of the LA community, SO cool!  Be sure to visit their site for great local resources:

New Drawings

I'm planning out some new paintings and have been working on drawings that will ultimately get incorporated into them.  I've been in love with photographs from the early 1900's as my art reference, and lately I've been looking at photos of early Hollywood screen sirens after watching a documentary about Mary Pickford...

These drawings were done on plain bristol, but my favorite drawing practice to experiment with has been to work with some of Golden's gritty materials as a drawing ground.  My absolute favorite ground is Acrylic Ground for Pastels, second favorite is Micaceous Iron Oxide...their finer grit lends itself well to a finer graphite line.  When I get these images transfered onto a painting surface, I will coat them with the Acrylic Ground for Pastels and darken my pencil lines on top of the "AGP" when it is dry...then PAINT!  Whether you are into acrylics, oils, or watercolors... all three of these paints (in addition to dry media, like pastels) can be used on top of this ground.  I love to think about all of the layering possibilities one could come up with, they are truly endless!

Free demos scheduled for the Spring

I'm way overdue for a new blog post!  So much has been going on these last few weeks - setting up new demos/workshops, painting, adventuring, the daily grind - and I'm working hard to get some instructional videos made to post here on my website. 

My biggest news is that, in addition to new workshops, I've scheduled several FREE demos for Golden Paints all around LA during the next few months.  You can read all of the details on my workshops page, and can find a brief listing below.  If you are new to my site or have taken a workshop and have never been to the free demo, it's an information-packed two hours of acrylic product goodness AND you get a packet of Golden paint samples to take home, so awesome!  I hope to see you there:

March 30: Continental Art Supply - Reseda

April 6: Utrecht - Santa Monica (NEW location!)

April 27: Blick Art Materials - Los Angeles (on Beverly)

May 4: Lyons Art Supply - Long Beach

June 15: Blue Rooster Art Supply - Los Feliz

Stay tuned for my next blog, it's another one about dreams!

Dream Fragment

I have vivid dreams a few times a week and every once and awhile when one stays with me, I'll write it down.  I've wanted to keep a nicely bound dream journal, but usually they end up getting documented on the closest piece of paper I can find - post its, napkins, anything.  My dreams tend to get really involved...they are typically long and drawn out plots where I'm a spy or I'm trying to crack some code like Indiana Jones, sometimes they have monsters or villains in them, other times beautiful sights.  Today I wrote another one down in my sketchbook, so I thought I'd scan it and share it here.  This one is a dream fragment, a flash of a moment that happened in between longer scenes. 

I'll keep adding more of these as they come to me.  I'd love to hear your dream stories, especially for those of you who are artistically inclined, do your dreams ever show up in your art?  Have you kept a dream journal to record these visions?

The LA Art Show

The annual LA Art Show was at the convention center this weekend and I had a chance to go over and check out work by both historic painters and the some of the best artists working today.  It was a most inspiring day wandering the show floor discovering artists I hadn't heard of before and revisiting paintings by artists who were my favorite after the last time I went to the LA Art Show.

One of the artists that I love is Francis Livingston, he paints amazing landscapes and city scapes, some with animals roaming through them.  His sky whale works are my favorite:

To see more work by Francis Livingston, visit the Arcadia Gallery.  I enjoyed seeing many of the paintings that the Arcadia Gallery (SoHo, NY) had on display, Brad Kunkle is another favorite, and there was a beautiful painting of a woman in a mask by Malcom Liepke. 

I'm still so wonderfully overwhelmed by all the sighs I saw there and look forward to sharing more about these art show adventures in future blogs!