Friday, May 21, 2010

" I will go down to the grave, mourning for my son."


A Few months ago, in my children's Bible study workbook, it asked the children to draw a picture describing how Jacob felt when his other sons told him that his beloved son Joseph had been killed by wild animal attack (for those of you not familiar with the story from the book of Genesis Josephs' brothers being jealous, because Jacob favored Joseph and because Joseph had prophetic dreams that his brothers would all bow down before him, they sold him to slave traders bound for Egypt and faked his murder putting animal blood on Joseph's special coat of many colors). The emotion of losing a beloved child was not too hard to imagine for this piece and it simply drew itself out without a lot of creative energy. The exception was the hands which I worked and reworked several times. I tried to capture the moment when Jacobs' sons present him with the bloody remnents of Josephes coat. I wanted all of the emotion of the scene to come out in Jacobs face and hands.

Monday, May 17, 2010

A Super-Girl


This is a picture of my oldest daughter in her Halloween costume from 2008. It is a pencil drawing done like all of my pencil drawings with a mechanical pencil. I was attempting to do a photo-realistic drawing. I did not achieve this but like the piece anyway. I loved her pose and facial expression like she is saying; "so Brainiac... We meet again". She really is a super girl.

Hand 1

This is another pencil drawing. It is from the many figure drawing exercises I do out of Burn Hogarths' dynamic figure drawing book. I liked the execution and and layout of this one enough to make it a finished drawing. I guess I should give myself a hand.

Sunday, May 16, 2010

This is an oil painting I did in the days after September 11, 2001. It is a picture in the aftermath of the World Trade Center coming down by terrorist attack. This occured shortly after my oldest daughter was born and i was trying to put into the painting the emotions I felt at the time. This painting I did almost all in one sitting using grayish oil paint. I spread the paint across the canvas like a wash and used Q-tips dipped in odorless mineral spirits and and hand towels to create the image. All told it took about 5 hours. After it dried I added the little bit of color in thin washes

Tuesday, May 11, 2010

Resurrection


Back when I was in art school I did a triptych depicting Holy Week. The third part was Easter that I had done with pastels depicting Jesus emerging from the tomb with an angel rolling the stone away; I was never happy with how that turned out reworking the idea over the years. Conceptually I like this pen and ink version but am not sure this is my final take on the subject. I always had the concept of trying to depict the fact that Jesus had been prepared for burial incompletely and at the same time not to have him look like "The Mummy". At the same time having sense of power behind the event that conquered sin and death.

Saturday, May 8, 2010

Avengers Assemble


An example of drawing what I am told to... in this case by my son. After watching the Ultimate Avengers movie he wanted me to draw "all of the Avengers" (Which means all of the ones from the movie). Although I chose to draw them as they appear in the regular Avengers comics instead of how they looked in the movie. For those of you not familiar with The Avengers (or if you are thinking your a lousy artist that looks nothing like John Steed or Mrs. Peel) top left is the Wasp, to the right is Thor, The big guy in back is Giant Man, Infront of him is Iron Man and below is the Hulk, out in front is Captain America, to the right is Black Widow and behind her is Nick Fury.

Friday, May 7, 2010

Golgotha


I first started exploring the idea of Jesus on the cross based on the scripture "My God, My God why have you forsaken me?" attending Good Friday servises in 2004. I kept working the theme of the desolation and lonliness of the cross, knowing that this is certainly an already well explored area in art. I did several pencil drawings and then this pen and ink. I have also worked this picture in an oil painting.-DCK