Try something a little different

You might be thinking, "What the hell is that?" or "Who did that?" or maybe "What does this have to do with landscape painting?". Well, it's like this, I was an illustrator for many, many, many years and being in essentially a small city, I had to become flexible with what I could do just so I could stay alive.  It was an extension of my being an art director (pre-illustration), every project was different, requiring different styles and approaches; art deco, Victorian, contemporary corporate, Swiss grids, whatever. I guess I felt that if a designer could switch styles, why couldn't I? I don't get tired of talking about landscape painting but it is limiting in a way. So once in a while I may post something I, or someone else, have done that might be of interest. I was digging through my archives looking for stuff for an illustration show I'm going to be in, the show will be about process so I was looking for old sketches and illustrations and found this little gem. I don't know why I like it so much, but I always have. It was just play time with a theme, I think it was for the Shakespeare theaters production of Macbeth but I'm not entirely sure. It's been a while. But it's the play thing that was so much fun. I was going for a post-industrial, futurist, Metropolis kind of Macbeth. No sketching just layering goauche, which is a great medium for this kind of work because of the lines you can pull with it... it's a hard medium to get but it sure is good looking. It's important for us as artists to break out of our norm once in a while and try something new. Collage, monoprints, abstract, sculpting in clay, take a Steve Aimone workshop, it's all good and it's all good for you. You can learn a lot when you are not trying so hard to be you.