"Here I am. Send Me!"

Isaiah 6:1-8 Describes a vision of the prophet Isaiah as he is in the presence of God in the throne room of the temple.  The passage describes an angel (seraphim) with 6 wings, two covering the face, 2 covered his feet and with 2 he flew.  In the presence of God Isaiah falls to the ground "Woe is me for I am ruined!  Because I am a man of unclean lips, And I live among a people of unclean lips; For my eyes have seen the King, the lord of hosts."  (verse 5) Then in verses six and seven the angel takes a coal from a fire with tongs and touches Isaiah's mouth with it saying, "Behold this has touched your lips; and your iniquity is taken away your sins are forgiven."  I have struggled for years to pictorially describe the angel in this scene.  I do not feel I have solved the artistic problem of drawing an angel with six wings, just done the best I can for now.  Another major problem was how to draw the throne room of heaven.  In this I went for Jack Kirby-Esq energy attempting to create more a sense of vast power than anything too specific.  I went with pen and ink and then decided that I would experiment with color.  I at first began with colored pencil but was not happy with it.  I then went over it with art markers that my Mom had gotten me a while ago.  Verse 8 is one of my favorite Bible verses "Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, "Whom shall I send, and who will go for Us?"  Then I said, "Here am I.  Send Me!""

Grip The Ball

This piece is inspired by the chief reason I have not posted much lately; my daughters' softball schedule!  I am coaching softball this year and have been reading all the books on coaching softball I can find.  Proper grip of the ball is essential to throw and/or pitch.  I did this drawing with my usual mechanical pencil and final touch up with a woodless pencil.  I chose to only show the hand but not the whole arm to add just a touch of surrealism.

Superman Kirby style

Last Fall I encouraged my kids to make day of the dead alters around Halloween. I intended mine to be done in honor of Jack "King" Kirby, co-creator of many Marvel characters and creator of several DC ones as well. This sketch was all I was able to do and I only just recently finished and cleaned it up. When Jack Kirby worked for DC comics his drawings for superman were altered prior to publication to fit the "house style" of their flagship character. DC's attitude was that they did not want their comics to look like Jack Kirby comics but like all other DC comics. This drawing I tried to do in his style with wild background energy and all (you can see that influence in a lot of my work). Most of the time Kirby did not ink his work, most of his surviving originals are raw pencil drawings. I will leave it to fans to judge if i succeeded in capturing the Kirby style or not.

This is a drawing I did of the latest incarnation of Strawberry Shortcake for my cousin's birthday. Beyond the challenge of deliberately drawing characters out of proportion (something I can only seem to do when I'm not trying), I added the shading for a little extra challenge.

This is a drawing that I did In church over the course of a couple of weeks. If you can't tell this is a pot of flowers (one of two on either side of the stage at the front of my church). I had to make sure and sit in about the same spot each week. Just another drawing done with a mechanical pencil and a gum eraser.

Luke VS Thalia: The Battle on Mt. Tamalpais

This picture is another one inspired from one of my children, my oldest daughter. It is an image from "The Titan's Curse" the third book in the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series. I have been reading these books out loud to the kids but my oldest had already read them. She told me one day that there was a picture from near the end of the book that she wanted me to draw. I was a little surprised that it turned out to be Thalia VS Luke that she wanted me to draw. It is part of the larger battle at the climax. I actually ended up doing several variations of sketches before settling on this one. The books are Greek Mythology set in modern times with Thalia being the daughter of Zeus and Luke being the son of Hermes. They battle on the top of the mountain with Thalia doing her "lightning bolt thing" pushing Luke back. They are old friends but Luke has turned evil so she fights with anger and grief (note her tears). Pen and ink drawing, my wife wants to see a color version - we shall see.

"Nice Try Lao Che"

For those of you who don't recognize this, it is of Indiana Jones from the second movie as he is about to get on the plane to escape Lao Che, not knowing that the plane is owned by him, Indy taunts his enemy. The inspiration for this piece was twofold: 1- Indiana Jones is quite popular around our house right now. I let my oldest watch them and she really likes them. My other daughter is chomping at the bit to watch them and my son is starting to develop interest due to Lego Indiana Jones video games. As a result we checked out the first volume of the Adventures of Young Indiana Jones from the library. This leads to the other inspiration - 2- One of the special features is a documentary about Norman Rockwell. One of the comments on this was that Norman Rockwell captured moments in time or snapshots in his illustrations. This lead me to think that I could do that with DVDs and pause on a moment and capture. For a still unknown reason to me this is the moment I thought of and wanted to capture as a drawing. It turned into more of a technical challenge than I anticipated. My DVD player in the Living room goes into a screen saver mode a few minutes into being paused. The one in my bed room does not, but sitting on my bed drawing is not ideal. As usual, I began with a mechanical pencil and finished with a woodless pencil. Due to the fact that I was drawing Indy in a White Dinner Jacket I also used my gum eraser to return some white highlights.

The Ripple Effect

This drawing was inspired by a sermon at church on 02/13/2011 "The Character of God". I began by just challenging myself to see if I could draw a picture of water rippling like the one that was in the bulletin at church that Sunday. As I listened to the sermon a couple of ideas stuck with me. One- was The love from Christ to us becomes the love we give to others. The love for Christ to us found it's ultimate expression on the cross, bearing God's wrath for my sin upon His son. This also reminded me years ago of a song performed at a Good Friday service called "One Drop of Blood" written by Ray Boltz: One drop of bloodFell to the scales-It covered their transgressions And all the times they failed-The enemy was mighty He came in like a flood-He was defeated by one drop of blood-No greater sacrifice has any other made-Oh yes he paid the price With every drop he gave-. The idea then came to me to show the ripples of love coming from one drop of blood from the crucified hand of Jesus. I completed an initial sketch of the drawing in church. At home I re-drew it, ironically I struggled more getting the hand right than the ripple. As usual both the initial sketch and final drawing were done with a mechanical pencil with some shading done with a woodless pencil to finish it off.

Landscape I

To start off the new year, something a little different. I actually started this drawing a few months ago. One night the Family was all together in the school room (at our house) drawing and I decided to challenge myself with something I don't usually draw. This is the type of piece my fine arts teachers would have hated, due to the fact I did not draw this from nature or a photograph. It is basically a made up piece using some drawing tricks for the illusion of a mountain landscape (very "Bob Ross Esqe"). My wife however likes it, so that pretty much settles it.

Prisoner of the Gospel

This pencil drawing was inspired by a sermon series from the book of Philippians. The Apostle Paul wrote his letter to the church at Philippi from prison in Rome. Philippians 4:12 "I know how to get along with humble means, and I also know how to live in prosperity; in any and every circumstance I have learned the secret of being filled and going hungry, both of having abundance and suffering need." I tried to depict that contentment in this piece. I have for years been expirementing with this visual idea but struggled to make it work satisfactorly with the right narrative. I am overall pleased with this piece, though I might try it in pen and ink? Both my oldest daughter and a friend were impressed that I had Greek writing on the scroll (just so you know its not, there just random designs I drew), well it is Greek to me anyway (and maybe to you too?). I alwas felt like God needed to put Paul in prison in order to stop him from preaching the gospel long enough to write his letters to the churches he helped start; and thus a large portion of the New Testament.

Batman: The Dark Knight

The book end to Superman. An old drawing whose theme you will notice coming up in other works. Pen and ink drawing Batman is a good subject for light and dark. My wife actually likes this one (which is why it was posted). Note the poor lettering skills.

Superman

This is a painting I did on the wall of my sons room. I wish I could tell you he insisted on this painting, but he was a baby when I started this, it was all me and his Mom. The tough part of this project was my wife. She is a big Superman fan and I was required to do several sketches before she finally approved this one. Over all this piece went pretty smoothly. I do everything free hand so one never knows. I did misjudge the size and space slightly (as you can see by the hand cut off at the window) but not bad overall. Just for the record my son does like it but now wants Spider-man, rest of the Justice League and the Avengers on his wall. Also a little talk that Daddy paints on the walls...ONLY DADDY.

Hero Headquarters

These are the two set pieces I did for Vaction Bible school for our church this summer. The theme for this year had been a super hero story. For some reason one of the orginizers asked me to paint the sets. My initial vision had been for something a little more abstract. However the initial drawings I did to demonstrate that I could do a cityscape were detailed pen and ink drawings ... and so this is what got painted. The sets were 12' long by 8 ' high. I have never painted on such a large scale and learned what not to do in the process. This project had a deadline and the whole family ended up getting involved to help complete it. My youngest daughter and son helped with the initial priming and the sky blue color. My oldest daughter painted some lines on the buildings after I drew them. My wife also did lines and a lot of color on the buldings. I was working on this on some Sundays when people were at the church and some weeknights as well. Around T-ball and softball. Finally it was the last Saturday and the sets had to be ready by Sunday. We started at 11:00 Saturday morning (after a T-ball game) and finished at 04:00 AM Sunday morning. Like a lot of art projects I was not entirly satisfied and felt I sacrificed too much detail and quality, but the key to a job well done is that the job is done.

" 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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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