Holiday Show Poster & Illustrated Frame

In the spirit of supporting small businesses and local art this holiday season, Kettle Art is kicking off its 8th annual Holiday Presence show!  It's a great place to buy some affordable gifts from your favorite Dallas artists.

When I was asked to put together a show poster for the event, I wanted to experiment with designing a custom frame while also applying a softer, seasonal palette to my typically stark black linework.  I had a good time plotting which artistic media to embed in the frame itself, and how to create a quick read that the Kettle Art gallery provides a framework for local artists to play and exhibit.  Oh, and I also wanted to cleverly hide the #8 in the shape of a snowman.  See what I did there? wah wah.

Holiday Presence #8 opens at Kettle Art, Thursday, December 6th at 7pm, hope to see you there! Feel free to RSVP @ the Facebook Event Page

Cosmic Controls - Gallery Benefit Piece #2

Here's my second piece for Kettle Art's For The Love of Kettle benefit show on Sat, Feb 11th.  Follow the link for details.  Again, everything in the show is a steal for $50 and goes 100% to keeping the non-profit gallery afloat.  

I've been wanting to do a piece like this for quite awhile and hope to do some more on my usual scratchboards, possibly integrating color.  This one is nib pen on 9x12 primed masonite board.  This and the 'Empty Nest' piece were a good excuse to get used to working with a dip pen instead of technical fine tip pens.  Naturally I'm most comfortable on scratchboard and still feel they're the most flexible medium for me, but I enjoying playing with new materials!

Empty Nest - gallery benefit piece

Just finished up this piece for a benefit show at Kettle Art ("For The Love of Kettle") on February 11th.  I'm told every year there's a line down the block of people waiting to get their hands on the work, all of which sells for $50.  This is a major steal, by the way, and there's a huge group of talented Dallas artists showing work.

This piece was a challenge for me in the sense that I was working on a primed piece of wood instead of my super smooth claybords, which required that I use different tools to contend with the rougher and more absorbent surface.  I went through a large handful of pens, sharpies, markers, brushes, and finally settled into a comfortable use of a dip nib pen.  So far all of these new gallery opportunities are forcing me to really stretch out of my comfort zone, material wise, while retaining a sense of my usual aesthetic.  All good things!

Kablam! - mixed media Soda Gallery piece

This is a piece I just finished for the upcoming Fab 50 Show at The Soda Gallery in Dallas on March 1st (50 artists, 50 pieces, $50 each).

This was my first attempt at adding color to a scratchboard, and found that it's remarkably easy to to add watercolor washes to the Ampersand Claybords.  The silver was also an experiment, where I masked out the black drawing with a carefully cut chunk of blue painter's tape.  Spray painting the black was a total disaster, actually, because the paint wouldn't adhere over the silver layer.  I ended up having to manually draw the lines and hand paint the fills.  The painter's tape did a nice job of texturizing the silver when I pulled it off, which was a happy accident.  


Despite my reluctance to integrate color into my drawings, generally, this was successful enough that I suspect I'll be doing more of it down the line.