A Few of My Art Techniques

People often ask me how I work; and the answer is not always so simple. My usual answer is that I look into the paper and try to bring out what I see within, but there is a bit more to it. Every time I sit down to work I am coming from a different place and often I use different techniques to express where I am coming from, so I thought I would describe a few of my favorites here. The piece above "Da News" utilizes three of the methods I discuss below.

The first method I usually call "Chaos hatching" ; I basically let the pencil go where my unconscious tells it to, sometimes using real objects as a focal point. This is an exceptionally freeing process and I often feel a sort of high as my pencil forms a picture.

I am sure there is another name somewhere for such scribbles; but it is
properly descriptive of both the process and the results. Often the sketches lose some of their chaotic freedom as I work them into more finished pieces; it is hard sometimes to know what to do and when to stop.

The next method is the for-mentioned bringing forth of visions. Or; if you want to be less magical; making images utilizing pattern recognition. I would either construct a work from my mind's eye or from what I see emerging from the working surface itself.

I almost always work this way; it carries over from seeing faces in the dark as a child. Now whenever I look at anything dark; images appear. Capturing them so others can see is both my modus operandi and my raison d'etre.

Third, is a structural method where I utilize totally uncalled-for curved lines in the composition to bring the images together and create a dizzying, hypnotic effect.

Life moves in patters, on waves of energy we do not always see. We tend to think in squares, in boxes, because we are surrounded by them; but our preliminary psychological environs are circles. As a design element I enjoy throwing curves of energy into normally square environments to illustrate these unseen energies and forces that move through our lives.

The last method I will discuss today is melting and marbling. I have always loved the look of the paint swirled on the canvas and I wanted to bring it into my work.

I am fascinated with how the application of paint in unusual ways can express the flow of life or sinking death; Suffering and joy. Artists have different ways of marbling which I should explore, but my current method is picking up the paint from the palette and placing it slowly and delicately on the canvas to create wild swirls and dripping trauma.

It is also a method that makes creating landscapes much more interesting to me; I hope to make more in this style at some point in my life; perhaps I will get an interested buyer one day.