Acey & Maggie (for JKPP)

Thought I try using colored pencils for this latest portrait...and I realized why they never come out of the box. Here's the progression:


I should have left her face alone at this point, but I ended up overworking it a bit:


The dog came out great though!


Too lazy to put much effort into the background:


See Acey & Maggie bigger over on my flickrstream. And check out all the other wonderful portraits done for Julia Kay's Portrait Party here.

Julia Kay’s Portrait Party

At some point while I was doing the four portraits that appear in the 6x6x2010 show (still up at RoCo until July 11th and online here forever!) I became aware of the flickr group Julia Kay’s Portrait Party. Julia’s simple idea (artists making portraits of other artists) has exploded into an absolute phenomenon of creativity. After seeing the incredible variety of work on display I had to get involved. Since I started my first portrait of the extraordinarily prolific, N.C. Mallory, just two weeks ago I've already drawn seven new portraits. Similar to the Moly_X project I’m involved in I’ve found that joining this community of artists has broadened my horizons and helped rekindle my passion for art-making.

Here's a handful of the amazing portraits to be found in this great group:

Sue Hodnett by Wally Torta

Kara Jansson Kovacev by goat transforming into a cathedral

Herman Schildert by I.J. Bowden

Me by N.C. Mallory

And a couple by me:

Emily O’Marra

Giorgio Bordin

Artist Sue Hodnett said of the party,

“In an age where we sit and twitter, surf and blog, Julia Kay’s portrait party has connected an otherwise disparate group of artists and challenged us to look deeper than the screen of the computer and into the eyes of people we have never met or spoken to.”

Please check out this amazing group of artists all challenging each other to look deeper.

Parka Reviews Quickie

Parka Blogs is a great review sites that specializes in art books. Recently he reviewed David Palumbo's new book, Quickie, a collection of Palumbo's small postcard nude paintings. I was not familiar with Palumbo's work before this but he's certainly a very talented artist and this book looks beautiful. Be sure to check out his Postcard Nudes blog.

6x6x2010

The 6x6x2010 show opens this weekend at the Rochester Contemporary Art Center. This year the show recieved 5,000 artworks by 2,000 artists from 22 countries and 43 US states! The online gallery is up now and online purchasing begins Monday, June 7th at 10 AM.


I contributed 5 pieces, the 4 portraits above (see them larger here) and an abstract comic which I talked about in a previous post. The portrait series I'm calling "Faces of Flickr" since all my reference photos were found on flickr.com, a great photo sharing site that I use to post all my artwork.

I liked this format and I've got a few blank squares left over, so I'll probably continue this series. Let me know if you have a portrait that you’d like to see rendered like these.