Tomorrow morning, I leave for the Illustration Academy, held at the Ringling School of Art & Design. I’ll be one of two guest alumni instructors for the week, teaching alongside my good friend and former student Robin Eley. We’ll be giving an assignment for the students to complete in a week, doing demos of our respective techniques, and giving slideshow talks on our work and how to get started as an illustrator. The Academy is where I received my most valued training, so it’s a privilege to get to go back and share what I’ve learned. And a week spent with the amazing full time faculty of the Academy—John English, Brent Watkinson, George Pratt, Sterling Hundley, and Doug Chayka—promises to be a week filled with a lot of laughs. These are a great group of guys who are not only talented artists, but also love practical jokes, so I’m prepared for a little hazing.

Assuming my demo goes well, I’ll post photos of it upon my return.

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It took forever, but my newly redesigned website is finally live. Go check it out.

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Some more quick sketch figure drawings, probably 2-3 minute poses. Charcoal on smooth newsprint.

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Blogging has been a bit sporadic lately due to little Miss Natalie the Great, as we like to call her. But I’m back in the studio now and working on some fun projects, so more art is coming soon.

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I don’t intend to turn this blog into a tribute to other artists, but when you find the good stuff, you gotta share it. Just came across this video interview with my good friend and mentor, Gary Kelley (you can find samples of his work at his rep’s site here). It’s a fascinating look at his work and has some great footage of him working on everything from a monoprint to a large mural project for the University of Iowa. The only frustrating part is that it’s in Real Player, so you may need to download their free player in order to be able to watch it. When will the world wake up and just use Quicktime exclusively?

I first met Gary as a student at the Illustration Academy back in ‘97, and studied under him again at the Academy for the next two consecutive summers. I had the opportunity to study under him yet once more when he was a visiting instructor for my graduate degree illustration program at Syracuse (now transplanted to the University of Hartford). Julie and I get to see Gary and his wonderful wife Linda every so often, as they love Santa Monica and visit frequently, and we’ve even managed to get Gary up to Westmont a couple of times to do demos for our students. One of those pastel demos hangs in my office and is one of my most prized possessions.

Gary is hands-down the best teacher I’ve ever had, and I feel fortunate to be able to call him a friend. He’s funny, witty, well-read, and extremely well-versed in art history—I’ve discovered many artists upon his recommendations. And as you can tell from the image above, he’s one heck of an artist. I’ve always maintained that Gary is one of the best “designers” around—his compositional sense is without peer. He’s been a powerful influence on my work.

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I just discovered that SF illustration legend John Berkey passed away on Tuesday. I didn’t know John, but he was a friend of my friend Steve Rude, and one afternoon at Steve’s house, he called up John and I had the privilege of briefly speaking to him. Steve called John to have him repeat something to me that he had said to Steve in an earlier conversation; they had been talking about art and Steve asked John how painting was going at this stage in his career. John’s confident yet utterly modest response: “it’s as easy as breathing.” Both Steve and I took great comfort in hearing those words from a grand master of illustration—there’s hope that it’s not always going to be a constant struggle!

By all accounts, he was a complete gentleman, and my brief experience on the phone with him only confirmed that. And as his artwork…well, see for yourself. Bravura brushstrokes filled with confidence and vitality, whole worlds summoned into being with the most economical means. The first time I encountered his artwork was as a little kid; my older brother had some kind of educational coffee table book on the universe, and it had a great John Berkey spaceship image on the cover. When I began getting serious about art, I remember coming across some Berkey images in an illustration annual and instantly recognizing his singular loose style.

Rest in peace, Mr. Berkey. You’ve left an astounding legacy.

News about John’s passing discovered via The Art Department.

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Introducing Natalie Marie Anderson, born April 15th. Five pounds 12 ounces, 18.5 inches long.

Study of a human skull. Continually trying to improve my knowledge of human anatomy and form, and that means studying skeletal structure. Charcoal on smooth newsprint.

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oil on gatorboard, 8×10 inches

My good friends Jeff & Kathleen Sieck live up in Santa Ynez, which is basically the cowboy version of Santa Barbara. In keeping with the unspoken moral code of their rural surroundings, they’ve got their own chicken coop, and one day Jeff sent me a great photo of one of their chickens on the move, on the off chance that I’d want to paint from it. And I did just that one afternoon, producing the above quick sketch painting. I had a lot of fun painting this, and apparently my enthusiasm came through in the finished piece, as a friend promptly bought the original the very next day.

It’s worth noting that I think the only good chicken is a dead, grilled one—I think the actual living birds are kind of disgusting in real life, and just like Napoleon Dynamite, I’m a little freaked out by the talons. You’ll never catch me actually touching one. But for some reason, I’m fascinated with them as painting subjects.

With how busy my schedule tends to be, I really treasure the days where I get to do a “done in one” painting—it keeps my brushwork looser, and it just feels incredibly satisfying to finish a painting in a single sitting. My illustration work tends to be fairly labor intensive, so for me, good quick sketch painting sessions are an essential part of keeping the fires going.

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oil on panel, 8×10 inches

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oil on panel, 8×8 inches

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oil on panel, 8×10 inches

We had a faculty show at the beginning of this year at the Westmont College Reynolds Gallery, and I had grand visions of a large body of work that was going to be displayed for my part of the exhibit. But as Mark Twain said, life is what happens while you’re making other plans. I was set back tremendously in all of my artistic output from September–December of ‘07 as we were doing some “light” remodeling on our house that turned into a nightmare, and left me without a studio to work in for months. Add to this the fact that I got hit with some of the worst flu I’ve ever had during the Christmas holiday, and I was left with very little time to pull together work for this gallery show. So, it was time to be pragmatic and figure out a series that I could execute quickly, and so I decided to simply do some fruit still-lifes. I was inspired partly by the amazing fabric paintings of Daniel Adel, and wanted to try my hand at painting detailed folds. When you get right down to it, the fruit was there basically to add color to the true subject of each piece—the folds.

Posted above are three from the series. All are oil on cradled masonite panels, which is my new favorite surface to work on.

Update: I just re-uploaded all three images, after noticing that they had turned completely acidic upon my previous upload. Hopefully the colors will be more true to life this time around.