I made these two images at Sketch Tuesdays at 111 Minna.    The first one is their red door outside which is also their logo.   The second picture is based on the second room/ bar where they held the sketch night.   Michael Mason was there DJing too!   He is a new artist mover and will be playing out of the Pull Up gallery at some point in the future.

Abstract Art with belt sander

Already a drawing a day is pushing me to expand my techniques and style.   The simple process of putting pastel on black and white photos is working well-- but I had to start painting abstractly or I was going to go crazy.   So here we have layers of metallic paint--  I each layer down before adding another one to provide the textured background.    I actually made the background for this blog using that technique. 

 

                                                                              I'm still thinking about adding layers to the second picture shown here.   Let me know what you think.  

Page St. San Francisco

Pastel on black and white photo.  

Work from January 2012

New Art January 2012

Cezar Chavez freeway exit at 280 San Francisco, CA  

365 Mixed Media artworks in 365 days.

 This project was inspired bymy friend and studio-mate Anthony Papini.   He was in midst of his own 365 paintings in 365 days project last year when I moved into Art Explosion Studios.  It was amazing to watch him develop as a painter by putting in consistent hours.  He is obsessed with traffic and all that it represents to him about America.  Some say it's a metaphor for over-population, while others see it as a main artery of our society--  cars travel through like the nations lifeblood.   Staring at San Franciso's freeway overpass at Alemany St. he told me once that if cars ever stopped going by you would know something terrible had happened.  When you look at it that way-- rush hour traffic is not quite as... ok well no one likes sitting in traffic.   

 I've seen how his work developed-- how he started painting from memory instead of photos-- and now how he has perfected his materials and color tones. 

 I'm 25 days into the project but I'll start posting images regularly.

Panhandle, San Francisco CA

                                                                Toronto

                                                                      New York

                                                                 Washington D.C.

Henry Ostang-- Oakland's graffiti documentarist--

http://www.henryostang.com/-  Now offering photography tours of Oakland and SF street art. 

       Henry Ostang didn't discover his passion for photography until the middle of his life.  He was doing a book assignment for a Wisconsin based author who wanted to know what life was like in Oakland and SF so that she could write a book in the gay vampire erotica genre.   Since then he's been off and running-  As an O-town native he wants more people to appreciate the art that's constantly in our face.  Graffiti artists take a lot of risk when they put their art out there, but when the do it right the streets are a richer place for it.   Henry documents both the artwork and it's context.  He's expanded his range to include the urban landscape as well as people. 

        About his craft he says: "For me photography is a yin-yang passion comprised of artistic intention and expression a'blended with aggressive cooperation - graffiti is in the main transitory and parked cars, glare of sun, random people, trespassing and the limitations of a given lens are all separate negotiations I engage in with photography to make what I see in mind's eye manifest in digital reality."

         His site has more of his photos as well as info on his upcoming shows.