Big thanks to Portland and the Pacific Northwest for staying inspiring and supporting scrappy, goofball artists like me.

I thought it might be fun to see a big commission piece from beginning to end. This is a 4x4 panel of the amazing prehistoric giant elk, megaloceros. I set out to paint some prehistoric megafauna and this guy won the race. About two weeks of daily painting, and the hours just flew by.

Big ups, and gratitude to Babera, Adam, Sarah and Tim, my family and anonymous others for being rad and supportive this last few awesome and creative weeks.

The goal here is just to get imagining the world of these big beasts, but to be honest I was not very scientific about it. For instance the background is modeled after Hood Canal in Washington, but these guys were found in Europe during the last ice age. So I had to imagine that these happy newlyweds maybe visited the Pacific Northwest on their honeymoon. 

From a purely artistic perspective one thing I find intriguing is that all of the big work is done in the first day or two, and the last few images can barely be destinguished from one another even though that's the real bulk of the work, to complete the textures and details. 

This is also new to me, because in the last few weeks of uninterrupted painting time I really pushed myself for speed and completion/ follow through on the concept. I feel like I've hit a new level. 

So with that I'm ready to start into a new business model for art. I love doing commissions because it feels immediate and the limitations (if there are any) make the process more streamlined. 

Updates for the year.... I've just nailed down slots for art shows in Sept , Jan , and Feb , and I just took down my last show at people's where I managed to sell about six great pieces big and small. I'm hitting up last Thursday on Alberta street for the first time in six years, and super fired up. Selling art on the street is still one of my favorite ways to meet artists and collectors. Plus I feel long overdue for getting back into it with the Portland arts community and that event has always brought me a ton of great connections. 

Stay fresh! Stay Stoked! Stay up!

If you don't know what to paint...try bears.

Finished off about twenty bear paintings in the last few months and looking forward to finding a new space to show them this autumn.

Here's a little preview and a look at the texture I try to create with my only good brush. Maybe today I will treat myself to a trip to the art store. Big up Collage, the best art store in Portland...now lets talk mark downs.

Before and After...why is good work never easy?....ugh.

Before

After

I don't even know if it's an improvement but I just have to go back and fix it so it's consistent. Twelve hours later. Seriously can you spot ten differences?

Sketch Book Update. Becoming the old woman I have always been.

front stoop

 There was a  time when I was feeling like I had given up on art. When being a dad, or trying to have a teaching career had made the idea of sitting in the garage and painting for hours seem like the most ridiculous waste of time. I left the paint and the garage alone for most of two years I think. But when Audra came back from Bali after helping out with a Flora Bowley art adventure she bought a couple of canvases and made the whole family start painting again. A lot of thinks became clear to me when I began creating art again.

Firstly I recognized an emotional debt to the task of creating art. I saw that it had been there for me when I was a emotionally retarded high-schooler, drawing anorexic long necked nudists, and gangster rabbits and crap like that. It had gotten me to and through college and helped me make almost all of the important and lasting friendships I still count on now. Not to mention I use it to gain street cred with students and barflies alike.  So I felt for the first time that I owed art something.

I realized also that through art I am not only just enhancing my experience of awareness in the moment of drawing or painting observationally, but even just sketching from my imagination, or painting a sunken landscape full of prehistoric monsters, I am constantly seeking to understand the shapes and forms of the world as it is. My mind is always at work to make sense of space, distance, botanical structures, geology, anatomy, architecture, weather and atmosphere, shadow and light. Drawing and painting becomes a scientific task to recall how things fit together and appear to the eye. To use your sense of sight to recreate the images of your experience is a way of practicing your understanding. Each sketch, drawing and painting is a tiny thought experiment, in which you are literally measuring the dimensions of the world around you. There is no end to the insights that loom out of the fog of a blank page.

Sauvie Island

My Dog, french for werewolf.

And out of this rekindled desire to seek out artistic practice and strengthen my network of art friends I called up Greazy DC and we went to what I'm certain is not the most awkward life drawing session in the world, because I'm sure it gets weirder on a daily basis somewhere, but the most awkward pony themed life drawing session I have ever walked out on.

But we didn't give up and the next weekend we hunted down the Urban Sketchers at Palio on Ladd's Circle and I saw what could be possible with just a small watercolor set, a sketchbook and a Saturday morning. It was mostly a crew of lovely ladies and I felt for the first time in a while that I had found people who could teach me something valuable, without the ludicrous tuition costs I had come to expect, because Urban Sketchers is totally free (monetarily and otherwise).

Of course I am failing to express my point here, but what I am really trying to say is Thanks, to everyone who ever hung out and drew. I have a worthwhile task I can grow old with, and friends to join me in the task.

Stretch of river bank across from Oaks Park.

One of the least interesting views of the back fence and the woman who came to do the census at our house for five hours.

Road Trip Jet Jets. Littering...Lettering....Letting go.

A town called Beaver. It will grow up to be stronger for the name.

Salt Lake City...goes on forever.

 While Audra drives I get to paint some little Jet Jets to deliver to the stops along the way. It has gotten to the point where any time we go on any kind of road trip I'm packing my little art set first and putting hanging wires on some scrap wood...then packing my clothes.

Before I started posting them here I had put up maybe a hundred around town over the years. Now it is more of a traveling exhibit. I get the feeling like many of them must just get disposed of lickitty split, but hold out hope that somewhere someone like me is finding these little guys and taking them into their life somehow, maybe to adorn the walls of their bathroom. (Where most wierd little artends up, lets be honest.)  It has lately felt like the kind of project that will take years and years before I really know if it is working, or what working is for that matter. Is it reverse shoplifting, or artful littering? I don't know.

Downtown Boise

Boise Idaho right outside the Fork.

I just wanna paint water colors! Joy and Pain...pump pump it up!!!

water color painting in Zion!!!

 It always seems like it will be this great peaceful time, to sit in the sun and paint some beautiful scenery, and then I am sitting there swearing at the changing shadows and how the paint looks all weak and I realize I am just not the kind of person who creates peacefully. It is an awful and frustrating act to look into the eyes of the world and know you may never really know whats going on in there. It is joyful, don't get me wrong. It is a good way to spend the afternoon while vacationing in some of the most beautiful country in the world but painting what you see is hard work. It is a chance to reassure yourself that no matter how hard you look you will never see it all and there is no way you will recreate all the amazingness you have been gifted with seeing in this life.  And then I spilled ink all over it anyway so who cares.

Jet Jet, low risk street art hobbyist

Dropped this off at Vancouver Lake. It was a great swimming day.

Left this one just north of Otter Rock.

This drawing was inspired by my second best camp group of the year, who accidentally named themselves "NEVERMIND"

This sign still totally does the job.

A whole bunch of unfinished work just dying for some attention. I can hear these lousy paintings in the garage all night.

record room mural @ Killingsworth and Webster

keeping my eyes open...

Upon closer inspection I realized this was in fact a yard waste bin...the tree was just trying not to put anyone out. 

 This is this faded old hamms beer bear window painting by the delapitated mini mart down the block. Great in the same way that this next shot is great....incredibly goofy looking.

 Portland is just obsessed with pirates.

totally flawles.

Getting all blessed be on ya!!!

some little hood-rat tagged over the juniors mural so I touched it up. Feeling fresh and new. It's a good morning to drink champaign. 

Below are some pictures I took over the winter. Despite all the stress, of daily life, running around like crazy, and trying to scratch up enough money to stay fed and all, I have these moments , maybe everyday, when I look out at the world and am just blown away to be here, alive at all, and with eyes to look at it, feet on my legs and breathable air all around. I wonder if I would forget that I had ever felt such free joy if I didn't have a camera on my phone to always freeze these moments.