Steve Martin on why he stuck with comedy

From an article Steve wrote for the New Yorker fairly recently.

New TS Elliot

Here are steps 2-5. It's changed some since 5 but I don't have a photo.

An old new one and trying something

First here's an old new one. By that I mean a piece that was started long ago and has morphed several times. There's a good bit of paint underneath what you can see.

Unnamed. Acrylics, ink and who knows what else on mat board. 15" x 21"



Something new....I thought it would be interesting to track how a piece changes as I work on it. Okay, so maybe only interesting to me. This may end up at the wrong end of a cul de sac (I made that expression up). I'll show you the good and the bad as I work on this.

I start with the original -- another Man Ray photo, this time T.S. Eliot. So far T.S. is just pencil on watercolor paper.

One of Karen's

Karen and I are planning on trying to get a show together. In preparation I took some photos of her work. The light was wrong on this one -- too much light at the top -- but it came out okay.

Poppies by Karen Stone. Acrylic on canvas, maybe 18 x 24?

Click on the painting and it will take you to my Flickr site where you can see more of her work.

100_0654, originally uploaded by Chris Beacham.

Oddly enough - updated

I've been working a fair amount lately partially because of the ease of sitting on my couch with a piece of paper, some oil pastels and a bottle of linseed oil. It's easy and keeps me from having to jump up to get more water, clean out my brushes and search for that tube of cobalt blue paint that I just KNOW is somewhere in my paint box. I'm not the most organized painter in the world.

What is odd is not me painting on the couch or changing from acrylics and collage to fancy crayons. It is my subject matter. For whatever reason -- is there really a reason anyway? -- my latest three pieces are portraits. Not portraits of Princess Di or my two sons but reasonably recognizable pieces of humans from the neck up. Reality is not my strong suite and that's not just in my painting, but a quick perusal of posts below shows that art that looks like something you know is not my usual cuppa. Herewith three portraits ala me.

This first one is unfinished. The left side won't change much (okay the eyes aren't there yet) but the right will. Sort of cubist; I like the colors.

No name. Oil pastels on watercolor paper. 11 x 14



The second one is finished. It is of the surrealist painter Yves Tanguy from a 1936 photo by Man Ray. In it Tanguy looks like a 70's punk rocker or maybe a 1980's reject from a Smiths' concert. The funny hairdo is part of the photo but it's a b&w so I made up the red hair.

Yves Tanguy as Woody Woodpecker. Oil pastels on watercolor paper. 11 x 14







Number three is unfinished and, unless it makes a big comeback on the home stretch, much less successful than the other two. Still, this is my arts odyssey and I give you the bad with the good. Maybe it'll help when I give him teeth.

[Monday....It's a little better now thanks to a suggestion by Becca. Thanks grrl.]

Graphic Man. Oil pastels on watercolor paper. 11 x 14

Something new

Supposedly I started this blog 2 years ago to track my journey into art. So far that has largely meant just posting my pictures. Is that all there is to my journey? I hope not. So something new. I'm going to post on what I think about art, where it comes from, my fears, etc. I'll also try to talk about some interesting art resources, blogs and stuff that you might want to look at.

Here goes...

Becca gave me a book last year Art & Fear by Bayles and Orland. Somehow Becca seemed to know how much fear rules my life (Her and my therapist. Hey, I'm working on it at least.) It is a wonderful book for all of us who discover that an artist lives somewhere inside. A quote from the last paragraph:

In the end it all comes down to this: you have a choice...between giving your work your best shot and risking that it will not make you happy, or not giving it your best shot -- and thereby guaranteeing that it will not make you happy. It becomes a choice between certainty and uncertainty. And curiously, uncertainty is the comforting choice.