Monday, September 03, 2007

sketches...a preview


To pick up where my last post left off, I have a preview of what's to come in terms of my new body of work.

The piece that I'm displaying here isn't a result of sketching on-location and/or during travel but rather a visual study that will be a part of my still life work. I chose the subjects not only for their "non-traditional fine art subject" qualities but also for the conceptual contrast. All of my sketches are free hand; no pencil outlines were created prior to the use of the chosen medium. I'll post more to my blog and website as they're created.

title: "garter and garlic, study#1"
medium: pen



© 2007 joe blend. All rights reserved.

life, travel, and sketching...


Several months ago, I developed a renewed interest in the fine arts; it started with an unannounced desire to paint and is currently a strong desire to sketch/draw/illustrate. Along with this new direction for my work came a strong interest in handmade elements and mixed media. Over the course of developing new work that "worked" and new work that "didn't work", I realized that I wanted my work to have a strong purpose...and that purpose was to document as well as re-interpret. But it didn't end there. I couldn't just sit down in front of a still life for all my work; I needed to document places, people, interesting attributes of life, etc and I needed to create these sketches on-location and not from a photograph or entirely from memory.

Drawing and painting is something I never thought I'd get back into but I guess some things take time before they're fully understood and realized. Although I just finished several sketches from a recent trip to Atlanta GA, I still need to work on refinements and color (for some of the sketches anyway) so for now I don't have any completed travel pieces. I'll post those soon on both my blog and website.