Copenhagen

I'm in Copenhagen now. Details later. It is beautiful here. I am not getting much sleep. 

Jacksonville

My folks drove up to Jacksonville for a day in their new electric car. We had a nice lunch. It was good to see them. Afterward, I went to a lovely local farmer's market/ craft market. I was inspired by the local talent and spent the rest of the day in the studio.

Shaun and I started a mural behind a local bar called The Volstead (named after the prohibition era 'Volstead Act'). Shaun expressed appreciation for the structure of my murals, so I influenced much of the underlying lattice to our collaboration. Shaun and I negotiated the palette, though he picked more colors than I felt comfortable using. We worked on the mural for an afternoon/evening session. We covered most of the wall space with color, then carved shapes into mostly plant forms, flowers, leaves, fungi, etc. The wall has a great sense of movement thus far, and there is no going wrong within our palette, despite deviating from what I originally had in mind which was closer to dichromatic.  

In the studio, I am building shelves for the bathroom. I hope to turn the space which currently feels like a prison, into a calm space, in which inspiration can strike. I hung a painting, which helped. I do not yet know how the creepy crawly critters fit into the picture. Perhaps they don't, but I also do not want to kill anything for my personal preference. Perhaps I will put in a sort of deterrent. 

Still Life

I made a painting from life last night. It was my first. I intended to learn something about plain air painting before setting out into the wilderness (or more likely somewhere along the coastline) to paint the sun rise. I became enthralled with mixing colors and stayed up late into the night. When I was exhausted, I dated the study and went to sleep. I woke in the afternoon, much too late for sunrise.

Jacksonville

After spending a week or so down at my folks house in Crystal River I felt well and rested to return to Jacksonville. I packed my car full of art supplies and books and made the drive back through bands of rain. I picked some lovely flowers from a median along the way- they are still doing well in a glass of water on my studio worktable, nearly a week later.

I was happy to be back. Upon returning to the studio, I felt as though I knew exactly the next steps to continue moving in. I built a wood holder, then a bookshelf. I unloaded my spray cans and tools. I installed a pegboard and a bicycle hook. The studio now feels like there is more of a flow to it. I took the advice of my friend Shaun in relation to setting up a studio. His advice was to arrange in this order from left to right: books, materials, tools, work station, preparation station, and finished work. With this set-up it is easy to view myself as a cconduit through which art is channeled and created. Flow. 

I finished a logo that I'd started for a local church. The second visit entailed some detail work on a scroll with a heavily seriffed font on top. I enlarged the font digitally and brought it to a print shop where it was printed to size. I made a carbon transfer onto the church wall so that the font would be exactly as pictured. After a total of 20 hours or so, I am happy to be through with the logo. And it looks wonderful.

I helped a family who I met in San Marco (trying to seek refuge from churches with no luck). I helped them get back on their feet by buying them lunch, paying for a night at a hotel, buying them groceries, and subsidizing their bus tickets to Michigan. They were very grateful. I am blessed to be able to help those in need when the case arises.

I also finished a drawing that I began down at my folks house. It started as a doodle, then progressed. I outlined the initial pencil drawing with a gel pen, then went in with a 3B pencil to establish some rough values in the case that I choose to paint it or finish it with markers. Well, that was a slippery slope, as I began to enjoy shading the drawing deeper and deeper. I took it back to the studio reluctantly, dreading having another piece of unfinished artwork lying around, but to my great joy, I found plenty of time to finish it today. 

I am now working on more black and white studies of graffiti-inspired landscape/cityscapes. I enjoy the process of making them as the options are merely to go black or white- no colors or midle tones to crutch on. Working this way has been a fear of mine for some time, but it seems to act like a crossword puzzle at the end of the day. The rules are simple- if you're looking to show a defined line, black must touch white to the point that the eye can recognize a pattern. Becoming comfortable with this one rule, and learning its boundaries is wonderfully rewarding. I feel that working with a full range of values after working with hard black and hard white will be less difficult in many ways.

Laurel left town for a family trip to Europe and while I do miss her, her abscence represents an upturned hourglass in which I can create in the studio without the option of distraction. 

I may move into Shaun's studio a stone's throw from my current studio. We are moving his belongings out now in preparation. I plan to use my current studio as a woodshop where I can work large scale, and the CoRK studio as an illustration lab.