Out and About
Showcase at RAW ARTIST: Impact
Exciting development for me!: I was scouted to be a featured artist at IMPACT: the first showcase held by RAW Artists in Salt Lake City. They are an international organization which organizes local art shows in Australia, The US, Canada and Mexico. I’m very excited. The show is at the Depot on Tuesday April 30 from 19:00-23:00. There will be other local artists, musicians, dancers, fashion designers and filmmakers showcasing their work as well. It’s an honor to be sought out to be part of Salt Lake’s local art scene. Here are just a few of the pieces I’ll be showing and selling prints of at the show.
About these Pieces:
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This piece I made specifically as a test to sell something on my recently opened Etsy online store. I sold it and mailed it to my parents. Thanks for the support guys! – The image is form a photograph I took while on vacation in Riga, Latvia. I quite liked the cat shaped weathervane on top of the wood shingled, conical roof. The reflectiveness came through well using the chalk pencil.
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Riga, 2018, Chalk and Graphite on toned Paper
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This torso study is based on a sculpture by Marusia Nita, an Italian Sculptor in Florence. Find their work on instagram at @marusianita. This is one of my very first digital works, and certainly the one I’m most proud of so far. I’ve been teaching my self to use Krita, a digital art software and drawing on my surface pro, which I highly recommend for doing this type of work.
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My dear friend and ex teacher, Paul Ramsey asked me to draw some of his cameras; well, as he put it, he had “a number of cameras who would love to pose for me”. This is the first, I plan to draw more of his cameras when I get the time.
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Perhaps one of my favorite drawings in recent months, I found a piece of a security envelope in my apartment building’s recycle bin (I am consistently stealing and hoarding ‘trash’ for art purposes) and the printed pattern on it begged me to draw on it. Hopefully the first in a series of many pieces created with up cycled and found materials.
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I drew this ink drawing of my hotel I stayed at, in Torino, Italy, (Otherwise known as Turin) while I was waiting for my flight home at the airport. I think this piece was so successful because I used a limited color palette, and the colors all work very well together. The deep tones are made by layering the orange, blue, and green ink. This has the effect of making the shadows read as genuine darker tones of the same colors. If i were to have used brown, purple, or black ink for the shadows, the effect would not be the same. Even though shadows appear as those colors to our naked eye, there are still complex tones that we don’t pick up on. A shadow may be brown, but any brown pen is not likely to be the exact mix of colors, or the exact brown, that you see when a lighter colored surface is in shadow.
P.S. for those of you who don’t know, the series of three asterisks (***) is called an asterism. It’s a typographical symbol used to divide sections or segments of text. I’ve always found it to be an attractive typographic ornament.
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Thanks for reading!
Inktober Part…Four ?
I wouldn’t say I gave up on Inktober, I just got off track and after that it wasn’t my main focus any more. So it’s taken me until now to accumulate enough drawings, that I just happened to do in pen and ink, to finish the 31 drawings for Inktober. Hope you enjoy:
Drawing #31
I drew this on my last day on my trip to Vancouver over MLK weekend. It feels a bit flat, but I still love the way it turned out. Faber-Castel Black SX Pen & Gouache Embellishments.
Drawing #30
I took advantage of the long weekend and rode the train up to Vancouver for three days to do some drawing and photography. This was my first drawing I did…It was so cold that it was hard to stay outside to finish it.
Also, look for my photographs from Vancouver on the Photography Collections page, coming soon.
Drawing #29
Male and female torso and arm studies. I love the way the whole page of them looks together, but here are closer pictures of each one, below:
(1/4 – Male torso with arms extended)
(2/4 – Female Torso)
(3/4 – Male Torso)
(4/4 – Female torso with arms extended)
Drawing #28
A drawing I did of the Utah State Capitol Building, when I went home for winter break. My buddy Esteban and I drove around for a while, ended up at the capitol, drew it in the freezing cold, and then went to Siegfried’s german deli to eat when it started snowing and we had to stop drawing.
Drawing #27
Nothing more than some doodles really.
Drawing #26
Lake Union, Seattle. I love this one.
Drawing #25
The seam in the cement, the shrub at the base of the walkway pillar, and the black and grey scribbles in the foreground on the left…look like a man sitting with a fishing pole…or so my aunt tells me. (That’s called apophenia)
Drawing #24
Drawing #23
Red Square on UW campus. Perspective is really off…just keep moving. Nothing to see here.
Drawing #22
These were really fun to draw. A VW bug in the parking lot next to my building, from two different angles.
I actually liked these more before I inked them, when they were just pencil. Here I tried something new. I used these box grids to help me visualize how the cars would fit in there. It helped with getting the perspective (almost) right.
Thanks for all your support! Its been a fun project. I’ll try again in October.
Inktober Part Three
I’ve fallen behind…got too wrapped up in college papers to take ink to page recently. So even though they don’t match up with the days completely, here is the next seven drawings
Drawing #21
Lights. The five smaller bulbs in the background are actually supposed to be the reflection in the dark window. I’m not sure if you can tell that or not.
Drawing #20
As far as I can remember, this is the third self portrait I’ve ever done. The one before this was from my sophomore year in high school. It was the first image posted on this blog. You can look back to the very first post to see it here, if you like: Test Post
The first was one I drew in second grade art class. I imagine my mom might still have it somewhere.
I made sure to take process photos. I love to see the process. See them below.
Drawing #19
This is the third drawing of Inktober so far with at the Suzallo Library. This is my first drawing using a shading marker. This month, with all the time I’ve spent drawing, I really think I’ve broken through to a new level of understanding the things I see and how to draw them. The perspective on the stair rail and the lights was tough, but I could not have drawn this a few months ago. Its one of the best in the series, I feel.
Drawing #18
What does it say about you if a pretty girl stands next to you in the library, and you’re more interested in the way her leather boots fold, than her?…Anyway, I felt a bit creepy surreptitiosly taking a picture of her boots, but I had fun drawing them. I left room on this page in my sketchbook to do several more. I plan to draw the same boots but in several different mediums. Look for it in a future post.
Drawing #17
A plant outside Suzallo Library in Red Square on my campus. I love the way it turned out. If you remember my October 6th drawing, this plant is right behind the penciled in lamp in the distance, on the other side of the stairs.
Drawing #16
This was a fun one; I met up with my friend Darren whom I met a year ago on my first trip to Seattle. We met up for coffee and went down town to do some sketching. We might even collaborate on some projects in the future.
Drawing #15
There was a seagull who sat next to me while I was eating my lunch in Red Square. Here he is twice.
Like I said, I’ve fallen behind, but I’ll post the last series when I’ve finished them. There will be 31 drawings for 31 days of Inktober.
Thanks for looking!
Inktober Week One
I’m doing a drawing challenge this month: “Inktober” the challenge is to do a new drawing in ink every day of October. At the end of each week I’ll post the new drawings from that week. Here’s week one
October 7th
A drawing of Audrey Hepburn and her pet deer Pippin
Based on this photograph.
A lot of people don’t know that I’m a big fan of Audrey Hepburn. This drawing didn’t turn out the way I wanted, so I’m going to try it again next week, but I wanted to mix it up and draw something other than buildings for a change. I rarely draw people because I’m not very good at it.
October 6th
A lamp at Suzallo Library.
October 5th
Some hand studdies. Used reference photographs from the internet.
October 4th
I also added watercolor embelishments to this drawing afterwards.
October 3rd
The University of Washington Fountain (it has another name, but I can’t remember it).
In-progress shot.
October 2nd.
October 1st
Gas works park in Seattle.
I later added some watercolor Embelishments.
Thanks for reading, check back next week for Week Two.
New Drawings from Europe
This summer was great, I traveled to Europe with my family as a graduation present, and I (mostly) got to pick the destinations. Given my fascination with german culture and language, I wanted to go to Germany and Austria, so that’s where we went. We also stayed a few days in Prague, which was incredible as well. We went to Berlin, Prague and Vienna. Here are my drawings I did while there.
For some reason, I wasn’t loving my drawings at the beginning of the trip. But they got better. They actually go from my least favorite to most:
It was our last day in Berlin so I had to at least do at least one drawing. I drew the Berlin Communications tower at Alexanderplatz and the top of a church that’s in that same square. Ehhhh…it’s alright, I’ve done better.
This sketch isn’t the greatest either, but I like it much more than the one from Berlin because this was what I sometimes call a “power sketch” something I do when I have very little time to draw: I forgo taking time to get the perspective perfectly right and cheat a little bit on the details. Also edit out a lot of the details so that instead of a detailed sketch it really captures more the feel of the scene. I did this sketch in 25 minutes.
This is the chimney and part of the roof on our terrace at the place where we stayed in Prague. I like this one a lot.
This drawing I did in the Stadtpark of Vienna, The largest central park/greenspace in the city. This park was seriously one of the most beautiful I’ve ever seen. If you ever are in Vienna, make sure you go there. While drawing this two girls who walked by and saw me drawing stopped and asked to see my drawing. That happens from time to time when I’m out drawing, but this time we talked for a while and they ended up looking through my whole sketchbook! They seemed to like my work but I bet I was having a much better time just having them look. It was so great to have someone be interested in my drawings.
I took these while I was sitting on a ledge similar to the one you can see in the photo on the opposite side of the river. The first one is from the first day. But I loved the park so much that I decided to come back the next day to add more to the drawing: what you see in the second one.
This is my favorite one from the trip. Also in Vienna, this is the oldest church in the city. A similar experience happened while I was working on this one: A man who only spoke German walked up and admired my drawing. I did my best to understand what he was asking me but, Meine Deutsch ist nicht sehr gut! He didn’t look through my sketchbook like the other two, but he seemed to like this one.
And here’s a photo of the church. I like to take photos of the places I draw from the same vantage point I drew them so that I can compare. This one I think is one of my best in the whole book.
That’s all. Thank you so much for checking out this page! Please check back for new pieces and drawings. Im really trying to be better about posting regularly.
Newport Beach: Minerature painting on stone
It has been a long time since my last post!…But check out this small gouache painting I did today. I found a surprisingly square and perfectly flat stone walking on the beach…in other words a Minerature canvas.
I also used water from the ocean to constitute the paint.
So It’s a painting of the beach, on a rock I found at the beach, using water I got from the beach…I think that’s cool.
At the High Museum of Art, Atlanta
Aside Posted on Updated on
I’ve been in Atlanta for the past few days, staying with my friend Tom. He’s a professional designer and I’m out here getting advice and absorbing what I can about it.
Had some downtime this evening and we went to the High Museum. That’s Tom in the background behind the Rodin (above)
Saw some great stuff there, I always take pictures of the stuff I want to try to emulate or use the technique in play, like this acrylic and cut paper piece.
A piece here by Vik Muniz, an artist I really admire. If you don’t know his work, I urge you to watch Wasteland, a documentary about him and his work in Brazil.
Austin Overmoe 