Dr. Askins Final

Here is the finished Dr. Askins portrait and a picture of the unveiling of the final painting at Dr. Askins's retirement party.  He was happy with it, so I was happy with it.

More Bonfire Pictures

I was up until four and the fire was still burning strong.  Here's a picture of the aftermath the next day also, still smoldering.

The Bonfire

Last week I had the pleasure of going to a bonfire party thrown by my good friend Doug Ballantine in Greensboro, NC.  He'd been building this bonfire pile for quite awhile out on the land he owns.  Doug burns a good fire every two years or so and the one he did before this one burned for nine days.  It was a great time and a perfect night for it.  The flames reached at least twenty feet in the air and the fire department stopped by to make sure everything was smooth.

Traveling....

I'll be in New York for the next week or so visiting the Met and picking up some paintings/drawings. There may not be updates during that time, or there might be.

Pandora state 2

Here's an update on the Pandora painting.  There's actually not a whole lot more to do, just work in the cloth and legs, hands and the smoke/etc coming out of the box.  Unfortunately this will have to be put on the backburner for a little while while I sort out some commissions.

Army Wives in Charleston

So last Thursday I had the chance to be an extra on the set of Army Wives.  It was a pretty long day, about 9 or 10 hours, and it seemed they may have only gotten 5 minutes of footage out of the whole thing.  I'd been on sets before, so I knew how much work went into just a tiny scene, but it was cool to see it again.  I was dressed as an Iraqi street vender.  What!? You may say, well, I had a fairly long beard at the time, and a head wrap and they darkened my skin.  The beard is gone now by the way.  Anyway, I didn't have my camera that day, but here's a group of photos I took yesterday of the area in North Charleston where the scene was shot.  It was dressed up as an outdoor bazaar in Iraq where a shooting took place.  I had a few different background roles I had to fill including a fruit vendor, shopper and baby goat herder.  There's a picture of blank shells, holes in the wall where some errant bullets were supposed to have hit and two of the gunpowder squib balls used for creating gunshot holes.

Prepping a new canvas

This is a huge (though it doesn't look that big in this picture) canvas, 64 x 44, that I've been preparing for a portrait of my mother.  Here I'm painting rabbit skin glue onto the raw canvas to get it ready for the next step, gesso.  The rabbit skin glue is used as an isolation, or size that separates the canvas from the gesso as they don't play well together long-term.  It also tightens the canvas down onto the strainer support.