Tag: art

A Bit on Writing and Art

With NaNoWriMo in full swing, I’ve been seeing a lot of fiction writers write about plot. I’m a short story writer, but I’ve been through plenty of classes for novelists that teach Aristotle’s 3-act structure of Beginning, Middle, and End, and the popular 4-act structure (which lengthens and halves the Middle section) for novels. I … Continue reading A Bit on Writing and Art

Louie and Bruce 001-2022-1020

I was 9 or 10 when I fell in love with drawing cartoons. I copied everything popular on TV and in the newspapers and comic books. At 13, I began drawing my own “toons.” This allowed me to put on plays between the characters I created. The shows were silly or serious, sublime or nonsensical, … Continue reading Louie and Bruce 001-2022-1020

It Began With Watercolors

Like most kids in the U.S., I began my painting experience with a child’s watercolor pan set, also called a box set by my Canadian cousins. Those sets had a small painter’s brush and six blocks of colors bound by gum arabic inside: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and violet. Even at the high school … Continue reading It Began With Watercolors

Allow Mistakes

I think sometimes we strive too hard for perfection that when mistakes happen, we’re too hard on ourselves for not achieving perfection. As a wildlife and landscape artist, I learned early on to plan out my paintings to avoid mistakes. My sketchbooks brim with the many plans I used to reduce mistakes in my finished … Continue reading Allow Mistakes

Acrylic Painting: Black Bear At Beaver Dam

This post features the evolution of a black bear I painted in acrylic on canvas in 1989. Enjoy. It began the year before, in 1988. Black bear weren’t common sights around my neck of the woods, but I caught a glimpse of one while I hiked some swampland and stopped to sketch and photograph a … Continue reading Acrylic Painting: Black Bear At Beaver Dam

Doing What We Love

After blogging for eleven years and seven months at a WordPress site that featured my artwork, I shut it down so I can spend more time writing and keeping up this website/blog. That doesn’t mean I’ve given up on making art. On the contrary. In my post prior to this one, I showed a graphite … Continue reading Doing What We Love