Ricky Colson

Ravi by Ricky Colson

I found this artist online yesterday through a series of fortunate events, and I like his artwork so much I can even forgive him for stealing my idea. If you look in one of my old sketchbooks you will see a series of undersized-people paintings which I planned out, and still intend on getting around to. Eventually. So Ricky Colson either drove from Texas to California and stole my sketchbook when I wasn't looking, or he is just less of a procrastinater than I am and acted on a good idea. The world will never know. Either way, he is one talented dude!*

Lucky for me every artist has a unique view of things, even if the concept is similar. This is why artists are amazing: Who else would think of drawing a guy sitting on a bar of soap? Not to mention then having the ability to then turn that idea into something so beautiful.

His website is here: rickycolson.com, and his blog is here: rickycolson.blogspot.com.

*Disclaimer for people with an impaired sense of humor: I am joking about him stealing my idea.

I learned a lesson.

Well, I managed to lock myself out of the house, but I still have my beloved iPod, so I figured now would be as good a time as any to do some blogging.

Aside from being stuck in my backyard, with my dog, today is a celebration day. I am finally nearing the end of a painting I've been working on for over four months. That's a long time, for me. I've finished a lot of other paintings in that time, but this one was kind of torturing me. I realized that I had gotten too wrapped up in the the technical details of the painting and it had become more important than the message of the painting, the result being a painting that looked kind of dumb, even if--yes--that furry scarf really looked like a furry scarf.

Once I stopped putting more importance on the technicalities of painting than the message I wanted to convey, it went MUCH easier and faster, and now it actually looks good.

LESSON: Not making technical expertise more important than the painting itself! Otherwise it just looks like paint, without the life and beauty part.

Speaking of life and beauty--here is a painting that I am in love with by my favorite painter, William Bouguereau.

The First Mourning

Morgan Weistling

I really like this painting:

"A Helping Hand" by Morgan Weistling

He has some beautiful stuff, and an exhibition coming up in October. You can see here: LINK!

"Flirtation" time lapse drawing

Yaaayyyy!! I've always wanted to do one of those cool time lapse videos of a painting, and I finally did one. It's a pastel portrait of a friend of mine:

Jean-Leon Gerome exhibit

On Saturday I went to see the most amaaaaaaazing exhibit of works by Jean-Leon Gerome at the Getty. It's running until September 12th, 2010. If you live even remotely close to Los Angeles (and, actually, even if you don't), you HAVE to go see this. Of the small handful of people that I would give my left pinky finger to be in same room with too see how the heck they did what they did, Gerome is definitely on that list. How I wish sometimes for time travel. The astonishingly accurate skin tones and the ludicrous level of perfect detail that he did on these heads the size of your thumb.... (I mean, did he use a hair off a fly to do that, or what?) It's enough to make you cry from jealousy. Or from happiness. I don't know.

Unfortuntely, it's pretty hard to find a picture online that does some justice to any of the originals I saw. For some reason, most of them look like a cheap Kinko's copy of the real thing. (No offense to Kinko's, I use you all the time.) But this one is pretty good:

Carpet Merchant in Cairo by Jean-Leon Gerome

Aaaaagggh!!

I've had "blogger's block" recently, so I thought I should title this blog with something that really expresses how I feel at this time. My inability to write a blog post lately has been due, Number One, to the fact that hardly anyone is actually reading this blog yet. For all this is accomplishing right now, I might as well walk into the kitchen pantry every few days and announce my thoughts on art to the canned vegetables and shredded wheat.

But alas, I will plug on. Why? I am not quite sure.

Today I wanted to do the thing I most enjoy, which is to spend money on art supplies. So without the inconvenience of removing my butt from the couch, I moseyed over to dickblick.com and ordered a set of pan pastels.


Besides just wanting more stuff, I bought them because I've decided to make some drawings. Up until now, most of the drawing I've done has been for the purpose of being a better painter, just practice and studies. Today I was struck with an interest to do some drawings that have no further purpose than to be completed works of art in themselves. I have no idea what they are going to look like... hopefully somewhat respectable. Stay tuned!

Here's a drawing done with pan pastels that I really liked, by Sydney McGinley.

Edouard Dantan: Ridiculously Good Painting of the Day