A Mural in Nazareth

I recently returned from a two week trip to Israel with some fellow artists, in which we painted a mural in the St.Vincent Hospital in Nazareth. I posted the plans for it a couple months ago here. It was an amazing experience, a truth I'm never able to adequately express when answering the question: "How was Israel?"

Since the mural went up a stairway, it was a bit difficult to get a picture of it in it's entirety, so I took a video instead.( and I apologize for the quality...)



The other artists who worked and help plan it:Bethanne Andersen (Our fearless leader), Boston Madsen (mastermind behind the fish... love that detailing!), Adam Borgia (Adam did all the tough start up work... there's no way it would have gotten done without him), and Jake Wyatt (responsible for a lot of the composition). I primarily worked on faces. It was the first mural for all of us.









I'm really grateful I got to be a part of this. Israel is a special place, and we met some truly inspiring people. Everyone was so welcoming and kind. I was constantly thinking..."Wow... I need to be a better sort of person." It was a privilege to be able to participate in some small way in the work they're doing.



Check out forpeace.us for more information about the project and pictures of the mural in progress.

Also, sketchbook pages from the trip coming soon..

Gestures!

This post is brought to you courtesy of THIS SITE. It's an online photo generator, meant to simulate a figure drawing class. This week at work one of our warm up excercises was draw gestures with Force using this tool, and I was reminded of how fun gesture drawing is. Seriously, I went home that day and did this for several hours. These are all around two minutes or so, except for the first few, so you can imagine how many pages I went through (I don't tend to have a whole lot of patience for poses longer than two minutes, a weakness I should probably work on overcoming...).







It's been about a year it think since I've drawn, not painted, from a live model. oops! shameful. Photos aren't really a substitute, but it was good practice... and I think I actually got a little better after awhile (maybe? at least I got brave enough to stop cheating and drawing it first with orange pencil and then pausing the generator to go over it in pen...). And I definitely want to go do some actual figure drawing now.

Anyways, drawing is fun. And somewhat addicting.

(A note: Make sure you specify whether or not you're ok with nude models if that's a concern)

After Hours

I've been inspired by the amazing Anthony Holden this week to try and keep a better sketchbook. Anthony has some of the funnest "doodles" I've seen in a long time. These are nothing like those. But, my goal is to have more fun when I draw. I've decided to start small and do a memory sketch of someone I see every day.

You might notice that the key criteria of who I choose is largely based on: hair, patterns, and color. All things I enjoy sketch-painting.






The above guy was on my bus this afternoon and had the most spectacular hair I couldn't even do it justice.

For some reason I don't get around to doing these sketches until like 11 at night, which is unfortunate because I then do not want to go to sleep.

(Confession: One of these is not a memory sketch. It's from a book. Yes, I cheated.)