Ghost Town

Yes, I've been distracted lately. Being a grandpa is very time-consuming! But I've still been painting a lot. And teaching some painting classes. Below is a quick study I did from a photo mom and dad provided a while back. Kind of looks like an old abandoned town. Painted on crappy Canson student grade paper. (Here's a tip for all you budding painters out there, get good paper.)

Pictures for Noah's room

Grandboy Noah hadn't officially arrived yet last Christmas, but we were all getting ready for him. Part of the preparation was getting his room ready. And part of getting his room ready was to make sure he had some pictures to hang on his wall. So here are Noah's first pictures from his Grandpa Bob. I don't know if he has noticed them yet.

(For my fellow art nerds, they were done with acrylic on canvas.)

The Roman Bath

A long time ago I had the opportunity for a short visit to Rome. The one in Italy. While there, like any good tourist, I took a lot of pictures. When I got back I did quite a few paintings from the photos. Paintings that are now scattered to various locations.

One of them was an ink drawing with watercolor. Ellen always liked that one, so she had me frame it and she put it up in our powder room.

She asked me if I could do some small ones to go along with that one, so I looked through those old photos and found some likely candidates. Below are the three the I did for her. They are each about 5 x 7 inches. The nice thing about old photos from ancient ruins is the subject matter doesn't look dated! I framed them and gave them to her for Christmas.

A corner of the entrance to the Vatican circle.

A street adjacent to the Vatican

The Colosseum

Linoleum Block Prints

I've always alike the look of wood and linoleum cut prints. And I have always wanted to spend some time doing them. So last summer I set aside some time to make some.

I started by looking through my sketchbooks and picking some likely candidates. I drew them roughly on the linoleum then drew them in with ink and brush. (Actually, it may have been one of those pens that have a brush-like tip.) Once the drawing was dry, a day or two later, I started cutting away the parts that I didn't want to print. This part took longer than I expected, 3 or 4 days or so. I'm usually a watercolor guy, I like to finish things quickly, so this was already stretching my patience. Finally, I rolled on some ink and hand-printed 10 or 12 of each. It took a few tries to get the right amount of ink, and the right pressure for printing. And in some cases, after the first test print I had to cut out a few more parts of the block and reprint.

Below is one of the samples. I made a web page for them, which you can see at www.robertjcoe.com/lino/.

Building the page was another interesting project. At work I've been learning a lot about using jquery, so I built this one with basic html and css. Then I added all the interactivity using jquery. I used it to add the links that show and hide the images. And I used it to control the navigation. The right and left links are actually just one line of html. With jquery I was able to change the action of the navigation based on which image that is displayed. Very educational indeed!

Laurel Art Guild Workshop

Back in November 2011 I was invited to do a one day workshop for the Laurel Art Guild. I've done a lot of workshops over the years in addition to my watercolor classes. It's always a lot of fun and workshops give me the chance to meet some new people.

This workshop was a little different. I was asked to show how I use acrylic painting instead of traditional watercolor. For the first demonstration I did a painting in my usual wet into wet method, but intentionally covered areas of paper that I normally would have left white, in the lower part of the sky in particular. Then, after letting the first round of color dry, I added white back into the areas to reclaim the whites and lightened some areas by mixing white in with color. That example is shown below.

For the second painting, I treated it just as if it were a traditional watercolor painting. Using the colors transparently, with wet into wet washes and glazing. No white paint was used in this one. Here is the second painting.

The first two paintings were done on Arches 140 lb cold press paper. I also happened to have with me a pre-stretched canvas, so while everyone else was painting I did another in a more traditional oil-type technique. I started by blocking in with transparent color, covering the entire canvas, then as it dried, adding darks and lights with heavy paint. Quite a bit different from the light touch required in the others. And it takes more effort to move the color around because it doesn't flow like a puddle of color. Here it is.

I had a great time and I think the others in the class did too. Thanks to everyone from the Laurel Art Guild who attended that day and thanks to Donna Aldridge for inviting me!

Almost Gone

I finally got a chance to photograph the painting of the barn mentioned earlier. Sister-in-law Cheryl, who lives just up the road, tells me the decline of this structure has as much to do with scavengers looking for building materials as it does with the weather. It's still fascinating study in decline, since the first time I saw it, and painted it, it was in good shape.

I think it's more interesting now!

Bales of Hay, or Not

As I think I've mentioned before, Grandpa Gilpin had a farm.

When I was a kid, my brothers, sister and I thought the farm was the greatest place on earth. We were small town kids wishing we could live on a farm too. Everything about the place was magical. The cows, the cats, the fields and forests. We even thought the chores were cool!

One of the events we looked forward to every year was hay baling time. Grandpa would cut the hay, wait a day or two, then turn it over with a big, tractor-pulled rake, then turn it over again to get it as dry as possible. If all went well, we would then go out to bale it. Grandpa would hook up the baler to the tractor, and a wagon to the baler. When everything was ready, my dad, my brothers and my uncle Dave, (just a year older than me) would climb on the wagon and off we would go.

Grandpa would drive along the rows letting the baler munch up the fresh-cut hay, and we would wait on the wagon while the baler pushed rectangles of hay out the back for us to grab and stack on the wagon.

Grandpa's bales were proper bales, perfectly sized for a person to pick up and stack. So when I see these gigantic roles of hay as shown here I also think that they did it wrong. I can't imagine what we would have done if Grandpa made these enormous things. I've never met anyone who worked on a farm that produced these kind of bales. What did the kids do?

Waiting for the inevitable

Another favorite site captured in paint. This one is on the corner across the road from Cheryl and Scott's house in upper PA. An overrun barn, left to stand or fall by itself. Lonely but for the birds, weeds and critters who still find it worthy of shelter.

Imagine my surprise when I found it, a year later, collapsed except for the silo. But that's a painting for another day.

I have some photos, should I paint it?

Break Time (Mildred and Ethel)

The long hard winter is over. Spring is here, bugs are out, snakes are getting run over in traffic. My favorite time of year! Here are a couple cows taking a break, enjoying the weather, chewing some cud.

A tree is a tree

One of the side effects of drawing and painting for many years is, you end up with a lot of drawings and paintings. The picture below started with two tree drawings I did in a sketchbook. They weren't based on any trees in particular. Just ones I made up. I scanned them and then added color, texture and type in Adobe Illustrator. I first started this two or three years ago and forgot about it. Better late than never?

Hoping for Spring

With all the stinking snow around here, it was time to start thinking about something else. So I dug out an old drawing and give it some color and grainy texture via Adobe Illustrator. It's one of my favorite programs, and the first one I really got to know in the stone ages of computerized illustration.

Textures and Colors

Near Rome Pennsylvania I've been able to collect lots of material for paintings. Along the stretch of road that my sister-in-law lives on are lots of old farm buildings and worn trees. This painting was of a corner of an old barn. I had a lot of fun with the light coming through the dark doorway from the opposite wall. Not to mention the subtle color changes in the weathered planks.

Wanted, a tree with lots of branches lopped off

Northern Pennsylvania again. Up a winding road in the middle of nowhere I found this lovely old tree. It is quite battle scarred, but still standing strong, wearing it's sign proudly. I don't remember what was on the sign. Probably no hunting or something. I made it a wanted sign. Fugitives must have been on my mind.

This was done as a class demonstration. Quickly with glazes and dry brushing.

More rooftops

I think this was from somewhere in Ellicott City, Maryland. It's very hilly there. I like the way the houses rise up the hillside.

Old friend

Up in Michigan, in the woods behind the Gilpin farm was an old pine tree. Perfectly groomed for climbing. If you could brave the mosquitoes, it was always worth a visit. This painting was done for a class demonstration. So it's pretty loose, and I left off a branch or two. I did a bigger version that is at mom and dad's house. I suppose the tree is still there.

Jerusalem Mill Flag

Very close to where I live is the Jerusalem Mill Park. It has several restored buildings from the revolutionary period. Some good and dedicated people take care of it, some dressing in period costumes and performing some of the typical tasks of the time.

When wandering around there, I found this flag flying from a window. I really liked the way the light was hitting it with the shadowy brick wall behind it.

All the things I've been working

I've been studying javascript,  learning about video, project management, content management, and many other topics that make the web design world go around. So here is what I hope will be a thought-provoking illustration.

The Smart Shopper

Fence Posts

Whether good fences make good neighbors or not, I'm not sure. But I like painting these old fences and fences posts found meandering the countryside. No barbed wire on this one.

Another experiment from class

Here's another picture done in my Spring 2010 watercolor class. In this session we experimented with using watercolor on non-white papers. In the example, I used transparent watercolor on gray Canson paper. After I had all the darks and midtones, I added the lighter color by mixing my watercolor with white Windsor Newton gouache. I like it!