Utilizing the Library

I really haven't practiced my trade on a consistent basis for a combination of reasons. Firstly, a lack of materials. Secondly, a disorganized lifestyle, and lack of workspace. Thirdly a lack of guidance and inspiration.


I really didn't appreciate just how helpful even the most useless of art classes were to developing my medium. Simply having being told "do this!" clears up artists block better then anything then you can imagine. I've had numerous, brilliant concepts for truly divine paintings blip into my mind over the past three years, but none of them I've been able to see through because I wasn't remembering the basics.

Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain is
practically a legend in art study books, and
one of the first I ever read.

First Writing Exercise Part Deux

This post is the second half of a writing exercise started here.

I know I said this would be posted quite a few days ago, but due to a short term lack in internet connection, and the fact no one is really reading this blog yet I'm just now sitting down to write it, forgive me.

So lets begin, the first page of a graphic novel. This page should grab you by the proverbial gonads and make you want to read more. To do that, there needs to be a unique combination of design, writing, font, drawing style and color.

I'll begin with a legend in the comic book industry:

Charicature Portraits

The scrolls had our surnames written
on them, which I concealed for privacy reasons.

This most recent Christmas, my boss gave me a nifty double sided picture frame. The one side displays a single 5x7 photo and the other side display two 5x3.5 images. While it's not exactly something I would go out and purchase myself, I thought it was a cute gift and was excited at the prospect of putting pictures of me and my significant other in it. I placed the frame in a spot that was out of the way, but easily visible to anyone in the room.

Almost three months have passed and I'm still staring at the sickingly adorable perfect couple stock photo people. Sick of looking at the happy couple staring into each other's eyes while they lay on some grass, I decided the most infinately awesome thing to replace this with is the lovely portraits you see above you. Here's an (lame) account of my inspiration:

Second Writing Exercise

Disclaimer: This post contains profanity, violence, misogyny, and basically is just kind of sick. It is simply for the sake of my meager attempt to be in a character that's not anything like me. It was a basic writing exercise that was pretty freeflowing and unplanned. Please, please, please, please don't bother reading this if you are squeamish or easily offended.

Activity: "Finish the story. Start with: He had a scar."

Rebuilding My Art Stock

Art supplies are bloody expensive. Ok, not exactly breaking news, but for some reason four years ago when I left Memphis, TN, I thought it was a fantastic idea to leave most of my supplies in a friend's storage unit. Suffice to say, four years later, I've yet to go back to Memphis. Other then a couple charcoal sticks, some prisma color markers (whopping total of four actually), and my sketchbooks I left EVERYTHING behind, from my 72 count prismacolor pencil set to my wacom tablet.

Why is this blog called Lord of the Marbles?

Point blank - because the image at the top is one of the first LARGE charcoal exercises I've done since collage, and I like two dimentional cats :)

The setup for this still life was actually taken from a painting exercise intending to teach the style of Venetian Painting (the values are painted first in shades of red and the colors are built on top). Not only did I love the example paintings provided in the book, I thought the subject matter was not only dirt cheap to set up, but also a great practice in reflective objects. Personally, I feel if you detest drawing/painting something, it probably means you need to practice it and I detest reflective objects.

The focal point of this sketch is a shiny green lucky cat that stands about three inches tall that I picked up in Philly's chinatown about two years ago. And yes, his eyes really are painted on lopsided on the lucky cat in question.

^ The set up

The book mentioned earlier is Diane Edison's Dynamic Color Painting for the Beginner and honestly, I think it is a great read even if you have painted before. I actually checked this book out from the library while trying to research color theory, a subject I never got to take in my short stint in school. I remember older students talking about the class with a zeal I'd never heard before from...well college students.

http://www.amazon.com/Dynamic-Color-Painting-Beginner-Edison/dp/0810970902

Writing Club Exercise: Examining the first sentence

The idea of this first exercise is studying one's initial response to a piece of work. The exercise is to grab your five favorite books off the shelf, write down the line or two of each on paper, and write about what made you appreciate that first sentence and want to read the book further. As much as I love this idea, I'm going a step further and expanding another 5 introductions, but to graphic novels since that is my end goal through this writing group.