Monday, October 17, 2011

Who IS that Masked Man?

I spent a good portion of the Summer working on a number of charcoal drawings.  My studio space, up until the last year has had a lot of headroom and good airflow.  I didn't have to worry too much about dust accumulation in the air.  My current digs, while dry, are a little shy in the area of ventilation.  I'm pretty sure I was about a canary short of a coal mine.  As a precaution I've been keeping my dust masks handy.

Making Art safely is something you're (hopefully) taught when you go to school.  You hear the lectures and anecdotes, but many times you don't take them seriously because when you're taught these things you're typically young and indestructible.  This is not the case.  Ok?  Good.  Wear gloves or barrier cream if you paint.  Wear a mask if you work with aerosols or high-dust materials, and always work with good ventilation.  There's nothing cool about hacking up magenta lunch biscuits because you've been hitting the pastels.
At any rate I really need to get those pieces photographed.  Since I was a little rushed getting stuff framed for the last show I'm stuck with the task of having to pull the glass out of a bunch of frames.  Thankfully this round I stuck with metal.  

Needless to say I'm glad to be back working in oils.  Here's another detail from some of my current work, a mashup of one of my favorite cities, Chicago being created for a client who's on secondment from the UK.  As soon as I'm done writing this I'm headed down for another session.  Mixing all of these landmarks together has been challenging.

I like a challenge.  Hopefully I'm rising to it.  It feels like I am.


Cheers

R