I was in the mood to draw today, but I was not in the mood to move. I had my trusty camera, a piece of old mat board, a white Prismacolor Art Stix, and some Sharpies (<--cool website) in reach and at my disposal. I snapped a picture of myself and this is what I came up with.



My favorite part is the background. I normally dislike my backgrounds in most of my work so I figured I'd blog about this technique more than the actual art. It happened by accident. The mat that I used was sitting on the floor, in my bedroom, propped up against the wall. I did a few small drawings on the back, around the time I got it, but nothing ever came of it until now. When I tried to erase the pencil I used to sketch my face, the background started erasing too. The mat was whiter than it had appeared a second ago. My guess is the dust around my room began to settle on the board, over the past few months, causing it to become discolored. I figured I could use this to my advantage.

I finally got up and grabbed my Staedtler Tub Point Sharpener so I create graphite dust to smear onto the background. My fingers were dirty and black by the time I was done that it reminded me of being a kid in Kindergarten finger painting. After washing my hands, I removed the filler to establish some highlights for my shirt. The background was now plain and dark which made it stand out. I used the eraser to scratch lines into the midtone to mimic the diagonal lines I used to create my face which also created the variation I needed. This piece only took about two hours to complete, but overall I like the turn out.. except my left eye looks a little lazy. Other than that, time well spent.

Although I see them almost everyday, this time was different. I have been in a cloud in an airplane as you can see in the photo above, taken in October of last year, but being confined to a seat, in the small space of an airplane, does not let you fully enjoy the sky's mist. Instead we get turbulence and terror and we dream of being on the ground with our families and friends. But what does a cloud really feel like? I know I have never been close enough to a cloud to touch it's moisture and feel it's temperature and I would have guessed that it would be physically impossible to do so, until it happened to me yesterday. While driving down a 5,000 ft mountain, I had the opportunity to travel through a cloud in an automobile. This was something I had never seen or done before. Maybe a person reading this thinks I'm crazy because I found this to be so rare and interesting, but I grew up at sea level. At sea level, we call it fog.. At 5,000 ft above that, it's a cloud! These ten pictures best demonstrate my decline through the haziness.




















From the top of the mountain, the clouds looked like the ocean. I could imagine the waves crashing into the jetty as the clouds began to corrupt the mountainside. It looked violent and peaceful just like the ocean. As I got closer, the air within the cloud plummeted in temperature. It made holding my camera out of the car window a task. It restricted my visibility and dissipated the sun's rays making everything around me look dreary and sad. As we neared the bottom of the mountain the sky seemed to overcast. Believe or it or not, but the day at the bottom of the mountain wasn't nearly as nice as it was on top of the mountain. A few thousand feet above me, the sun was raging above the clouds, while down at the bottom, the sun barely peaked through to say hello. Overall, I was just glad that I could experience such a thing. It was definitely the best part of my vacation.

What would you think is the most expensive painting in the world and how much do you imagine it sold for? I decided to google this today and was quite shocked with my findings. It turns out the winner is the American painter Jackson Pollack; well maybe not him per say but his painting No.5,1948 is. This painting holds the current record price paid for a work of art at an astounding amount of $140 million US dollars. Even more shocking, there's not much information on this painting. Normally there is a story, hardship, or reason for the painting's importance, but nothing here. I know that it was part of the abstract expressionist movement after WWII and was a way out of German Expressionism, but besides it's ticket price and the possible scandal behind it's purchase, theres not much to it.

I completed an abstract painting last month entitled Winter Painting, that I feel could be the next Pollock ;) It took very little time and I really don't have much to say about it except that it was simple and automatic. I could also say, my extremely arbitrary brushstrokes, simple color palette, and sloppy composition help convict it's non objective nature and add to the emotional angst of the painting.. That I normally wouldn't even post a painting like this. Thank goodness I know what THEY say? "Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder." (On a side note, Margaret Wolfe Hungerford is most widely accredited for coining that phase so I'm not sure why people refer to her as "they.") Anyway, I figured it would be a waste of my time if no one ever saw it so enjoy it or don't. If you do and want to give me $140 million dollars, you can do that too.




The painting on the left is Winter Painting. The title really doesn't have much to do with the painting except that I did it in the winter. The painting on the right is a collaborative effort produced by the combined talents of Natalie and me. We entitled this piece Slip of Santa because it looks like Santa just took out someone's Christmas tree.

P.S. In my honest opinion, I believe the most expensive painting in the world should be The Sistine Chapel by Michelangelo. I'm sure it is and would be if it could ever be sold because that really is an absolute masterpiece. It's 12,000 square feet of perfection. I've studied this in Art History and am amazed that Michelangelo did not even consider himself as a painter and he could produce such beauty in only four years. I've never seen it in person but rest assured, it's on my Bucket List.

For this mixed media piece, I used a similar technique I used for my previous post Freddy Corcoran and His Girlfriend Starstruck Tracy. I also added some titanium white acrylic paint to accent the highlights and reflections on the face. I am not happy with the overall turnout because I went overboard with the paint and couldn't correct it with the color stick. I figured the only things that could cover the paint would be more paint, the Markette, or graphite.



Graphite.. My buddy Tyson recently drew me in pencil with this awesome linear, sketchy-style which I used faintly over the paint. It basically conveys the shapes on the face, provides direction of planes, and makes it easier to follow on the eyes. I'd like to do more with this in future sketches.

There are more things I hate about this work than things I like. I'm hating the mouth and what I did with the tongue. I blacked out that area during the outline phase and counted my chickens before they were hatched. The whole piece, with it's strange palette, over obsessive white, and crazy mouth make Doug look like a brain hungry zombie. I'd say the only part I am happy with is the reflections on the eyes. The paint makes them look so much more realistic even though I didn't render them well at all. I will definitely use this tool more often although I could just do it in Photoshop without the mess.

Yesterday, I was randomly browsing my digital life we call Facebook and I stumbled upon this interesting picture of my friends Keith and Tracy. Back in the day, during my high school years in Art with Keith, I would draw him all the time in Life Drawing or during free time. Keith loved being the model and he was a great subject. It got to a point where I would draw Keith unintentionally during my doodling sessions in other classes. This is off topic, but it's kinda like Evan's character in Super Bad and how he would randomly draw pictures of dicks and store them in his "Ghost Buster lunch box dick treasure chest" but without the dicks.. and the lunch box, but I think you get my point.


I decided to draw this image in celebration of drawing well over a thousand faces without a single dick.. I mean Keith.. showing up. <--Just kidding KCore! In honor of you dude, I present you with this mixed media piece Freddy Cocoran and his girlfriend Starstuck Tracy.



This piece was entirely experimental. I have never used graphite and colored pencils together in one drawing and especially not on recycled newsprint. It was fun but I wasn't to happy with the clouds in the background of the original drawing, so I added to them thanks to Adobe. I'm still not sure if I like the digital background or the original so I posted both. You tell me.

Please check out Keith William Corcoran's writing on WordPress. Here is a sample to spark your interest. Don't be lazy! Its so easy just click link above, or here, or here, or even here!

03/11/08
"To paint a picture with words. Red, blue, yellow, primacy, hello, splattered across brainscape, dripping out ears. My jaw is a canvas, my cheeks made of cloth. My nose is running, dripping watercolors, painting snot.

Achoo, achoo! A masterpiece for you." -Keith William Corcoran