Ready for Spring

Finally another winter is fading away. I'm starting to feel more energetic. Last weekend I photographed many of the paintings I've accumulated through the winter. Below is one I did sometime last fall/winter. It's of the remains of an old wall I found while tromping through the woods in the Gunpowder State Park, just a few miles north of here. Watercolor, exploiting transparency and glazing.

Acrobatics

Sometimes work gets overwhelming and confusing, and you end up doing things that you didn't know you could, but had to. Like walking on your fingertips. This is another drawing, scanned, outlined in Illustrator, colored and texture applied.

Staying Busy

I've got way to many irons in the fire. So many things to do, and so many things I want to do, and try. I recently acquired a mandolin. Not a really good one, but functional. I've always wanted to play one. I've played guitar since hight school, so the learning has been going pretty well. But like anything, it takes time, so playing it means I'm not doing other things. But it's entertaining. And hopefully these two drawings are entertaining too. They originate from sketch book sketches, scanned, colored and textures applied.

Oil

So I had some time, and I had some oil paint that was sitting for too long without being used. I prepared a bunch of 8 x 10 inch boards for painting. They are actually scrap pieces of matt board, which I have a lot of since it's a natural by-product of my usual medium of watercolor. I coated them with gesso and let them dry. Then I did a series of paintings. The goal was to work as fast as possible and see what I ended up with. Here are a couple of samples. These two were a combination of oil, alkyd and alkyd medium. Others, not shown here were done with water mixable oil. That worked well too, but I'm not so keen on the smell. It was fun!

More Textures

It's been a while. More time than I intended. But I have been staying busy. I've been doing a lot of painting with real paint. Oil lately. I'll post a sample or too when I get them scanned. In the mean time, here is another drawing from my sketch book. I scanned it in and converted the lines to paths in Illustrator CS2. I then colored it and added texture.

Hope you like it!

Serious Shoes

Here is a new illustration using a scanned texture to enhance a typically flat illustration completed in Adobe Illustrator.

The black line drawing was taken from one of my sketch books. I scanned it then brought it into Illustrator where I traced it using the fabulous live trace feature. Still in Illustrator, I added various blocks of color, playing with different levels of opacity for each one. Finally, I added the texture, a tif image from Photoshop.

The original texture file is a digital photograph of my sidewalk in front of my house.

Textures

I've been playing around with textures in Adobe Illustrator. Encouraged by the thoughts on the topic of Von Glitschka, and the pictures of several other illustrators, including Jeffrey Pelo, I decided to give it a try. Since I do a lot of watercolor painting, I am partial to the look of natural textures. So this is a great way to "naturalize" the slick perfection of color blends and builds in Illustrator and Photoshop.

The drawing itself started from one of my sketchbook drawings. I scanned it in and traced it Illustrator. I then colored it with flat colors using various levels of transparency. At this point all the colors were very flat, so I wanted to crunch it up a bit. So I ran outside with my digital camera and shot the road surface in front of my house. I brought it into the computer and loaded it up. I think it worked well!

Almost August!

Hi there!

As I mentioned last time, back on June 16 and 17, I participated in the Gunpowder Falls Plein Air Competition. You can read about it at http://www.gunpowderfallspleinair.com/.

All day Friday and half the day Saturday I wandered about and found things to paint. Then, Saturday evening there was a show of much of the work of the participants. Each of us could submit two pieces. I painted four.

Below, in order of execution are the paintings I did. The two I showed were the house with the big porch and the Boordy Vineyard barn rooftop.

Hope you like them!

Back for more

Well hi there! It has been a while since my last post. Sitting here on the deck on a Sunday morning. A beautiful day. Laptops with wireless are pretty cool!

This is a pretty major week for us. Our oldest daughter is getting married on Friday!

I was feeling bad about not posting anything new, so I rummaged around to see what I have on my computer that I can show you. I found this picture of my brick-flying boy. Hope you like it. It's a scanned line drawing from one of my sketch books. I then colored it in Illustrator CS2, using some of the cool new brushes with my Wacom.

I'll have more to show later from my outdoor painting adventure from a couple weekends ago. I just have to get the images on the computer.

See ya!

More Web Updates

Slowly I've been moving more of my web sites out of the stone age (the era of table based designs). The latest to get makeovers are the Baltimore Watercolor Society, and my wildlife painting site.

Recent Updates

Just in case your checking. I've added a couple new web sites that show different topics and styles of illustration work.
The first is a site devoted to some experimental things I did with acrylic and watercolor dye, working up ideas collected in various sketch books I've been keeping. You can see that one by going to http://www.robertjcoe.com/diversion/index.htm.
The second shows a series of watercolors of construction equipment I've seen sitting around the area. You can see those at http://www.robertjcoe.com/construction/index.htm.
Oh, and I've animated the top graphic of my main page.
Lots of fun for all!

Illustrator CS2

It's been a while since my last post. But fear not, I've been working and learning lots of new things. I took some time to try out the new features of Adobe Illustrator CS2. I've been using Illustrator ever since version 3, and I've had CS2 for a while now. But I haven't really used it thoroughly. Below are two images I did recently. Using the blend tools, the color mesh tool and layer filters. Very cool. Now if I can just get it to print as easily and consistently as Photoshop does on my Epson 780. Any ideas?

Mental Health Break

I've been so busy with work, freelance work and learning new technology that I haven't had much time to paint regularly over the past...well, a long time. So this week as a sort of act of rebellion, instead of doing the work I had, I did a couple half-sheet watercolors. Very enjoyable to paint, hope they are as enjoyable to see.

Another Watercolor Workshop

Today I spent another lovely morning and afternoon with painters from the Patuxent Art League in Maryland. They asked me to come in and demonstrate more watercolor painting techniques. I had a great time. Many thanks to Rose and everyone who came out.

Here are the two paintings I did today. Very quickly done, wet-into-wet technique. I can see on the second one I should have been a bit more careful on the drawing of the pot. The bottom is a bit out of wack.

My Saturday

What a busy day!
Got up this morning and went for a sweaty run. Took a cold shower. Then drove 1/2 hour to conduct a watercolor painting workshop for a few hours. It was fun. I did two demonstration paintings, with lots of time after each for the attendees to take a crack at it. Each of my demonstrations took about 1/2 hour. At the end of the day, we had a critique of the paintings produced by the students. My demonstrations were done on 1/2 sheet pieces of watercolor paper. Too big to easily scan. So I quickly took some shots out under the early evening sky with my Sony digital camera. Not great photos, but hopefully you get the idea. Here, have a look.

After the workshop, I had to drive back home, throw on a suit and drive 45 minutes to attend a wedding reception. Now I'm home. Whew!

So this is blogging?

What I'm all about.
Making great pictures. Here's one to start with. If you like it, let me know. In the mean time, you can view my regular page at http://www.robertjcoe.com. Keep in mind that it's really old. I have a new one in the works. I'll let the world know when it is ready.

Bob