Wax Bloom

Rose tagged me for everyone’s favorite “Five Things You Don’t Know About Me” meme, so here goes. Prepare to be enlightened! Or something!

I play the drums.

And I’ll bet if you sit around me at work, the incessant tapping on my desk in rhythm to whatever I’m listening to on my iPod probably gave that away.

I work for AOL.

I started in late ‘99, just in time for the stock to hit its peak and be completely useless to me. And if you knew that I played drums by way of hearing me tap on my desk, then you already knew this one too.

I used to smoke.

Two packs of Basic Lights a day, but I quit three years ago. Now I can’t abide it.

Until 2003, I’d never been outside of the U.S..

And since then I’ve been to Germany, Austria, Ireland, Greece, Turkey, and the UK.

My wife and I are expecting our second child in March.

A boy!

Of course, a meme isn’t a meme if it isn’t passed on, so…

• Jeanette Jobson, because she left such a nice comment about Nate & Hannah.
• Cindy Li, even though I’m sure she’s been tagged with this meme before but without her excellent photographs to work from, a lot of my portraits wouldn’t exist.
• Kevin Lawver, because outside of my own family, I’ve drawn more Lawvers than anyone else.
• Paulette, because she was nice enough to add me to her blogroll.
• Stuart Langridge, because this is just the sort of thing that I’m sure would conjure a litany of curses from him just for being tagged. And that amuses me.

Not that I expect any of you to carry it on. Well, except Stuart.

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Colored Penil on Cold Press Illustration Board, 14 x 10″

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Nate’s had some refinements made and Hannah begins to appear in this short session I squeezed in over lunch:

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Colored Pencil on Cold Press Illustration Board, 14 x 10″

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Colored Pencil on Cold Press Illustration Board, 14 x 10″

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With heavy brightness adjustments made in Photoshop:

Colored Pencil on Cold Press Illustration Board, 14 x 10″

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This photo taken in a room with both windows open along with a flash. Still not optimal, but getting better…

Colored Pencil on Cold Press Illustration Board, 14 x 10″

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I’m getting frustrated with my inability to take a reasonable photograph of this piece…

Colored Pencil on Cold Press Illustration Board, 14 x 10″

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Commission #2 of 2008:

Colored Pencil on Cold Press Illustration Board, 14 x 10″

As you can see, this photo demonstrates my need to experiment with how to take photos of large works.

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Colored Pencil on Cream Mi-Teintes Paper, 8 x 10″

My first commission of 2008, finished. I was a bit nervous starting this one as I didn’t have any prior experience drawing someone with as dark as a complexion as Debbie, but in the end I feel like I matched it pretty well. Colors used were sand and yellow ochre for a base, burnt ochre over the base, chocolate, dark umber, black cherry and dark green for shadows, with terra cotta as a mid-tone.

I also used circulism for this piece, which I think suited it well. I first started experimenting with this technique with graphite drawings to varying degrees of success, but I think I’ve finally gotten the hang of it with this drawing. I’m not claiming I nailed the technique, just that I managed to not deviate from it over the course of the drawing.

As an aside, I noticed this morning that I had used the smooth side of the Mi-Teintes paper quite by accident. An entire week went by without my realizing it, so there must not be as much a difference as I had originally thought. Of course, at about the same time I noticed that she is holding a kitten in the source photo after an entire week of staring at it, so maybe we chalk both up to distraction.

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