Musician Drawings

Penny 2008

Depressed and hating my own paintings I have gone back to drawing and finishing building the printmaking studio.
This feeling came upon me after the last exhibition, the last frantic deadline. I am fed up with all that.
A very welcome change was heralded by an invite to attend musician friends Penny and Paul's house warming last Saturday. They have recently purchased a few acres of orchard with house, guest house and music studio. Many musicians were there and all played in an organized out-door concert.

I drew first some plant that grew in front of where I was seated and later the star turn played, a couple who do gypsy jazz a la Stephan Grapelli and wow were they good, absolutely absolute friend... I was blown away and the charcoal pencil danced in time on the sketch book and I did the portrait above that I am very happy with and two more that are not quite but up there, you know, up there too.
Fuck Painting!! Back to graphic art and printmaking, at least for a time, a season..

The Weekly Portrait: Penny

Isn't she gorgeous? Penny is here playing her Bodhran as percussion for the all girl group "No Boys Allowed" she is singing harmony with.
It's Waitangi Day here in New Zealand which is a national holiday to celebrate political stuff from our colonial past, an agreement between the Maori and the British Crown back in 1840, read: we get Friday off to go to the Waitete Cafe and enjoy live music! Yay! Such pastimes are essential stuff for artist types like myself.... keep me dander up, you know, bathe in the warm glow of the atmosphere of creative people enjoying life....

Marley's Mural, a Pictorial History part 6, basic design of the second canvas is sketched out at long last

So many interruptions have slowed progress on this mural but this is not a bad thing, it is just my life..
Now that I have selected the images for the mural and they are sketched in with paint on both seven metre canvases there is a whole new ball game as they say in the U.S.
Yeah, now I have to make it work, as a whole, and I want it to look like music; to have colour, tone, harmony and rhythm.
How I achieve this I don't know but that is the goal and Thursday to Sunday is my next opportunity to get stuck in and go for it, wish me luck eh?

Marley's Mural, a Pictorial History Part 4: Images and Design Ideas hit the canvas at last

Tuesday 22 July 08: A mural comprised of some of my drawings and photos of musicians and the sheet music to a Ricky Lee Jones song begins to come together on a 7 metre by 1200 primed canvas.
The other 7 metre by 1200 primed canvas will have more of the same and the sheet music to a Warren Zevon song.
The mural panel shown here will be high up on the left interior wall of Marley's Music store and the other will be high up on the right.
I had no definite idea of how this would come together when I started Tuesday morning but it began to take on a life of it's own and I got a wonderful natural high and could not sleep until four in the morning Wednesday.