Blue Ball No.5 On White

11 x  18 in.  ink and pencil on texture paper.

One of a series of three I did using shapes, shades and the color of the paper. I let the circles influence the shape of the rectangles and kinda went from there. When I was in shop class many years ago we worked with plastics, layering them together and making items from those colorful sheets. I remember how cool the colors were when they overlapped, alast I never had the money to try anything with them back then.  So one might see my thinking when playing with these shapes and colors.  Each one was a playful experience and time flew during the process, completion came when it didn’t make sense to add more. Title? Well i did grow up in the 60’s & 70’s so it fit with that period in my mind.

 

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Sunflowers In A Red Vase

11 x 14 in. mixed media.

Punch out from a board game, new color pencils,  markers and the need to use my acrylics…and this is what you get. The background colors were done with the colored pencils and the outlines were the markers, after that I went to town with the acrylics. At first it was just various shades of bright yellow and then the idea formed about sunflowers…after all Kansas and sunflowers go hand in hand, right? Then if you care about the flowers one must put them in a vase, but not any vase …a red vase, must stay classical, right? The greens and browns should be self explanatory. Had to work on the border some, as plain didn’t look right at all.  Quite a bit of raised textured, course the reflections show that.

Without the title not many would guess my intent, but I would hope they would at least enjoy the view.

Windows Locked and Blinds Open

9×12 in. markers on pad board

Ever wonder what to do with the pad board when you finally finish a pad? They make a wonderful surface for markers and ink and take acrylic finishes well, leaving a nice surface finish. This is a doodle finished out and detailed to come up with this urban type setting…not sure about modern or not, but love the flow back and forth. The shapes are ones i have used in the past but never as many or varied. Without the white this may be a nice exercise but with the white i find it a fun piece to look at and drift about the composition. The silver helps and is a nice contrast to the white. Gold and copper markers contrast well with the natural color of the pad…and the black helps to finish it off. Was tempted to add letters as accents but the piece was fine without, will log that idea for the next time. Title…in a crowded city I would hope this to be true.

BS or Art

8.5×11 in. pen and ink.
This is the second one done during my downtime while at this past years art prowl. The subject was actually from some words I had put on my blotter, “art can be elusive,” in my basement studio.(by the way that is my blotter in the background on this photo) While thinking about that this piece took form…drawing about words I try to link most objects, although it isn’t a hard fast rule. In fairness to the process this was finished at my desk and not during the art prowl…the biggest clue…note the bottle of terro, i am sure most art shows wouldn’t require it 😉 It was just an interesting object in my line of site and filled the void presented on the paper. Same could be said about my glass of ice cold diet coke. The rest? … they are almost just positioned doodles in a pen and ink composition. But none the less these are fun to do even if all never get completed or see the light of day…lol

BS or Art? Art can be so elusive to most people, but we must all try our best. Ken Knieling 2011

PS…If it makes my work seem better to you thinking BS is short for cow manure then i am fine with it…but the truth is it stands for Bored Scribbles , used that in college and it still fits 😉 . As to if it is ART?…well that is in the eye of the beholder, right?

Fear or Boredom

8.5x11in. pen and ink.
For those in my neck of the woods Sweet Sally’s in Cookeville,Tennessee has 16 of my pieces on display. Stop by have a coffee and sandwich or a nice pastry and see my work. Should be around thru June.
When one has a show in a local art prowl, and not in one area, people coming thru can be feast or famine at times. I am not much of a book reader so I start drawing, mushing stuff together, trying to make it fit. During this past art prowl I did three pieces, two I will share…the other, let’s just say it was good exercise.
One of my early visitors started talking about taking pictures of bears in Alaska…needless to say my imagination started going from there. As for any wording my piece didn’t come with a spell checker :-). Can’t say I had any conversations about zombies, Frankenstein, or spiders but then it was my imagination running un-checked.

Testing new input hardware

9×11 mixed media…
Using a Asus TF700 tablet, which has a 8mp camera on the back of it. Also trying WORDPRESS software for Android with latest patches and such.

Had to use another way to add “featured image pic” but i think its going to work…this really allows me to have nice portability with my gallery pics and from a blogging standpoint it would be great, to say the least…wouldn’t replace using a camera for gallery files but when i am out and about…one stop shopping, plus a wi-fi connection to post…i am too cheap to pay for connectivity anywhere USA 🙂 Few more tests and we will see if this will be a keeper…other than it doesn’t run abode flash (no free hulu 😦 , i have been impressed especially with picture quality…stay tuned…
…Well the last hurdle I couldn’t clear, connecting to our printer, I am sure there might be work arounds but that starts taking away the value of this tool…i must say it is easy to get hooked on touch screens, course why wouldn’t an artist love that feature :-)…so I will continue the hunt.