The 1st Finger

8×11.5 in. ink.  The drawing that started my obsession with these objects. I believe it was part of an abstract drawing assignment, not sure where the objects came from…imagination maybe…or school trash bin? 

This is as good as any time to share with you the artists that have influenced me the most as I promised weeks ago. These people represent what I admire the most in art… using color, shape, texture, movement, and feeling.   At some point in time I have been exposed to these artist by book, TV, internet, and in galleries…and when I see any of these works in galleries I can look at them for hours…

Kooning,Monet,F.Stella,J.Stella,Dali,Hopper,Johns,Mucha,Rosenquist,

DeMuth,Diebenkorn,Duchamp,M.C.Escher,VanGogh,

Indiana,Klimt,Picasso,Thiebald,Wyeth,Rockwell,Kupka,

Giraud (Moebius),B.Wrightson,Frazetta,Neiman… I know there are works I really enjoy by other greats, but this group has first dibs on me.

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The 2nd Finger

8×11 in. mixed media. My first piece done on a Mac512 using McDraw about 1986.That isn’t old age spots  in the left hand corned, but spray acrylic that didn’t like the parchment paper… I made it work like background texture, each spot is outlined in white. 

Boy was I proud to sling that portable machine over my shoulder, in it’s tan apple case with logo, and take it to my computer class at Washburn University in Topeka. Everyone was so jealous while they had to hack around with Apple II’s doing art, very crude, and I was doing my thing freehand with my MacMouse. Loved the mirror option, doing one half while the computer made sure it got the other half down. Funny thing was I had broken my left arm, i am a lefty, and watching the screen and mousing away with my right hand I was getting very good at being a righty…so much so whenever I used a computer from then on, I was right handed…but believe me I couldn’t hardly draw with my right to save my life (still can’t)…but i could on a Mac.You had to have imagination also, since the screen was only in black and white…just as well color printers for the Mac at the time were very limited, thus mixed media if you wanted color. This was a great machine for conture drawing, I did several full sized drawings of people’s faces and liked the look better than pen or pencil, and no messy paper…just a nice colorful floppy disk with label. Just wished at that time it would have been battery powered.

The 4th Finger

12×16 mixed media.  Well I am back, the show at the Putnam Library is going well, just finished putting up the 2nd wave of pictures. But more importantly I have started to make pieces again. What better way than to try my 4th version (the 3rd finger) of the soda, orange, finger and cloud themed piece.  Still think the best is yet to come on this series…stay tuned.

The 3rd Finger

A 9×12 mixed media.  I have done this imagine three times,twice in color, once on a 512 Macintosh paint program…all are based on a pen and ink drawing I did while in college.  In this version did you notice the ninja cloud guy in a stance? It was so accidental and I didn’t see it until well after the piece was done, cool accident huh? Not sure why I keep going back to it but I am sure I will do it again.