I'll have mine with mustard please!

 

More art... with the background fading into the silhouette foreground. I can't resist a good textured brush in photoshop.

It's done with a wacom actually... and a pencil. 5mm 3B leads... never need sharpening.  The textures are both painted, scanned and photographed. The background began life as a photo of a concrete wall.  That's part of the fun of digital... it's very much an editorial process of choosing components.

I heard of one artist who scanned in sliced ham for texture. Of course it's all in the processing after it's scanned. I'll have that with mustard please!

A fun sneak peek...

Here's a fun sneak peek.

I think I like the image more like this... with the background stripped out. So the foreground is a silhouette... with the background transitioning from blank line into full color depth.

Now... how to figure that into a regular illustration. I'm sure there must be a way.

My own 'Painter of Light' ...

Once, many years ago, I wanted to paint something... but I didn't know what. So I stared at the blank canvas in my downstairs painting studio and decided to try my own 'Painter of Light' canvas. It just took a couple of hours to sketch it out.

I thought it was funny, of course... but it was fun all the same.

Of course I hated it at first... but then, years later I dragged it out and it didn't look quite so bad. Florals and painterly mushing of brushwork can satisfy the artistic soul I guess.

No doubt there's something to painting mature shrubbery that is bound to assuage discontent. Maybe I'll get back to it some day...

:0)

Kitty kitty on the wall...

Kitty kitty on the wall, who's the fairest of them all?

Usually I think cats choose themselves. No contest.

It's always fun to finish up a first page of a new project.
One thing it accomplishes is then the changes can begin.  No doubt I'll change my mind about the color or texture at least 3 times before it's finished.

I hope I don't get a completely new idea just 2 days before the end.  That's always the worst.

Raccoons & Dobbs Ferry

Cute... but do not hand feed!  When I lived in Dobbs Ferry, NY, we once had a raccoon live on our windowsill for 3 days.  

Good old Dobbs.  I'll have to write up a blog about my 4 years in Dobbs some time.  I could sit on my window porch and see the Hudson river and Palisades... sun going down and giant ocean going freighters and sailing ships sail past.

Pete Seeger's boat used to sail past in the summer.

Those were the days...

:0)

A new version of my website...

They say good things come to those who do things over a zillion times. So I guess that applies to me and my newly redone website.

It's really just an updated version of my old website... but it's now in Dreamweaver instead of the antiquated GoLive. It's got bigger graphics, new buttons and even a slideshow.

Since Dreamweaver allows widgets, there's no telling what new things I might add. The whole point was to actually learn template based CSS. And having gained that knowledge at great personal sacrifice, I can now develop this beginning into anything new I like.

Anyhow... it's at www.johnnez.com

:0)