i’m taking part in a group show called “paper pushers” at gallery 1988 in san francisco.  i’m showing eight pencil drawings (click here to see six of them).

the show opening is tonight.  i hope my readers in san francisco can stop by and see the show!

paper pushers
an annual show featuring all works on paper

august 15 - september 6, 2008
opening reception: friday august 15th ( 7 - 10pm)

1173 sutter street (at polk), san francisco
ph. 415.409.1376
www.gallery1988.com

i’m inspired by the ugly patterns on the textiles for baby clothes at the fabric store. happy clowns and baseball patterns and weird pastel-coloured bears with eyes too close together.  they are so ugly i’m having nightmares.

it’s been super cold here in saskatoon.  it’s already the end of april!  it was snowing the other day…  i like prairie winter - so cold and painful, but not this long.

i should start spreading cherry blossom heads.  they will keep me warm.

jean snow, a canadian writer based in tokyo, invited me to contribute a drawing for a website called neojaponisme. he suggested i try to use the same colour scheme as neojaponisme — red, black and grey. but he was kind to say that i could use my usual style if those colours didn’t suit my work.

i was happy for the suggestion, because i’ve been wanting to do something new. when i started drawing, i did a lot of line drawings using ballpoint pens. these days i do most of my work with colour pencils, gradually adding details and shading and only using my line drawing technique to vaguely outline figure before i start colouring.

so it was a nice brainstorming project to put my usual colour pencil technique away for awhile. i enjoyed working with a pencil again. i quite like the grey colours of graphite and the nuances that can be added by that smudging.

to add a little red to the black and white of my pencil drawing, i gave one balloon head a nosebleed. truth is, it’s a carrot stain from elijah’s lunch. he likes to feed himself these days — he gets annoyed if i try to do it all for him. when he uses his fingers, he’s very accurate and doesn’t miss much. but when he uses a spoon, food ends up all over the place — on the floor, and on his clothes, and in my hair and in this case, on my drawing. carrots flew through the air from elijah’s spoon and magically landed right on the balloon head. i like it — i think it’s very natural. so i didn’t erase it.

the colour of the carrots/nosebleed was more like orange than red. so i used photoshop to color that part, to fit with the style at neojaponisme.

(title :: simple minded)