Nat Dickinson Doing Art

Jamie Alana at the Fishing Pier (2009)

noreply@blogger.com (Nat) — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 18:25:00 +0000

Sand Beach Boulder (2009)

noreply@blogger.com (Nat) — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 20:37:00 +0000

Watercolors

noreply@blogger.com (Nat) — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 20:21:00 +0000

I've always had mixed feelings about painting in acrylics outside-- I don't enjoy painting small, it's tough to carry around all of the supplies you need to some cliff edge or beach, and the paints dry too fast when the weather is sunny. But I have really enjoyed painting with watercolors on a sketchpad this year. In the past I haven't felt that the "shorthand" of sketching in watercolors serves me well when doing a final acrylic painting. But this year I feel like I am seeing a bit better my goals in a particular painting by rendering it live in watercolor first.

Window Box

noreply@blogger.com (Nat) — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 20:01:00 +0000

I arrived in Maine this year to find that the annual Sunbeam Fair was in a couple of days. I found some watercolor paper already attached to a board from some prior year's activities, and painted a sketch of the window boxes my sister in law had planted. I hadn't realized, but my brother had also painted some nice watercolors for the fair.

Robot Visiting with Triceratops

noreply@blogger.com (Nat) — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 23:35:00 +0000

Astronaut with Godzilla

noreply@blogger.com (Nat) — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 22:37:00 +0000

Dinosaur and Cow

noreply@blogger.com (Nat) — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 12:09:00 +0000

Pseudo Lomography

noreply@blogger.com (Nat) — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 21:38:00 +0000

I'm not sure this is going anywhere, but recently I have been playing around with optics and digital photography. All of this emerged out of a curiousity about lomography. And giant robots. I got some plastic lenses from a science surplus site, and I've been recombining them to make myself a holga webcam with horrible lens distortion. Hmmm... trendy, interesting.

Frog and Deep Sea Diver

noreply@blogger.com (Nat) — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 11:10:00 +0000

Yesterday I sent off this postcard of my little deep sea diver. I played up the negative space a bit more than usual because I thought it was a particularly nice shape and helped offset some of the compositional problems of cutting off the frog. The diver guy has a real copper helmet, and that blue around the ear is actual verdigris.

Stonington Houses (2008)

noreply@blogger.com (Nat) — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 20:19:00 +0000

Still Life with Dinosaurs

noreply@blogger.com (Nat) — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 12:11:00 +0000

I'm up in Maine on vacation, explaining the recent resurgence in landscapes. But out back on the porch I found a trunk full of large dinosaur toys, and I love the expressions on them- scary, but almost comical. In the evenings I've been trying to sketch them. Then yesterday I went to a little local fair and came across an old deep sea diver toy. Without delving into the psychological ramifications, as a kid I always wanted armor, a wet suit, or a deep sea diving equipment. So, in the evenings after chores, poking around, and painting all day, I've been setting up a little still life to do some ink sketches. I could do this for a living.

Warner Point (2008)

noreply@blogger.com (Nat) — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 11:56:00 +0000

Arlene's House (2008)

noreply@blogger.com (Nat) — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 11:54:00 +0000

Comeback Trail

noreply@blogger.com (Nat) — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 21:13:00 +0000

I must have traumatized myself. I chased myself away from doing art for several months, but I'm not exactly sure how. I applied to a show and got rejected, which wasn't unexpected but certainly didn't help. My dad died after a lengthy decline. I got lost a bit trying to find a trendy schtick with the dog paintings, and that ran out of steam. I spent a lot of time looking at the work of other artists who seem like they have a stronger technique, color sense, or vision, and maybe got a bit dejected. My job went through a rough stretch with a grueling project, which is thankfully over. Mostly, I guess art didn't seem like fun and the basement studio seemed too gloomy to enter.

Today I stopped by Momopeche's blog and read about her recent fascination with lomography-- photography using truly horrible 80's era eastern bloc film cameras with plastic lenses. I'm in love with the photography of a local artist, Erin Antignoli, a master of the genre who reignited my flagging interest in art photography; the creative diarrhea of digital imagery has overwhelmed the market a bit. Unfortunately I am too neurotic about precious film to participate in a movement where the golden rules are to not think and be fast. I tried reading online about techniques for adapting a fixed focus digital camera to using cheaper lenses, but the engineering involved is way out of my league. Instead I took my ancient Olympus C-4040 camera, poked a hole in a piece of tin foil, put it over the lens adapter, and took some photos to achieve my "crappy camera" effect. Instant creativity.

For those of you waiting on my "Pay it Forward" promise, I have the pictures all finished. I just hate shipping stuff so it's taking forever to get them in the mail. Apologies.

Dinosaurs and a Cow (2008)

noreply@blogger.com (Nat) — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 03:28:00 +0000

It's been a while since I posted. I took a little hiatus after generating a pile of unfinished paintings. Now I'm just trying to loosen up a bit and get back to enjoying myself. I'm using some slightly creepy lighting-- when I was a kid my grandfather had eerie art deco dolls hanging in his bedroom that were underlit by tabletop lamps. They always looked like they were plotting.

The Downside to Painting on Paper

noreply@blogger.com (Nat) — Sun, 30 Dec 2007 18:41:00 +0000

I've been debating the wisdom of painting on paper for some time. Though storage is easy, matting and framing are costly. Last weekend I was talking with a more established artist, and he gave me some insights into some other shortcomings of paper and how I've been presenting works on paper.

One of the key points he made was that people respond very differently to a painting under glass. It's certainly true that you lose your sense of the surface when a painting is under glass. I have seen some shows, for instance the Hopper show at the National Gallery of Art, where a few paintings on canvas were under glass-- and I always was distracted by the glass and wondering why it was there. The point my friend made was that, under glass, a painting often loses much of what distinguishes an original from a glicee print, undermining its value.

A second point he made is that mats may not be working well for me. I came from a printmaking background where the deckled edges of the paper were prized, and floating your work unmatted in the frame was the standard operating procedure. Recently I had resorted to matting to avoid tearing down my paintings to get a clean edge. He was strongly recommending floating over matting, because it is a more polished style. Or, better yet, switch to panels and get rid of the glass.

So much of selling art is creating the perception of value, and I can certainly see how not obscuring work behind glass and mat board might be a cleaner, preferred look. I'd been starting to move towards panels, and this conversation certainly encourages me to follow through.

The Parts of My Dog 12 (2007)

noreply@blogger.com (Nat) — Sat, 29 Dec 2007 19:25:00 +0000

I've been struggling a bit with finishing paintings since the beginning of the month, and I'm not really satisfied this one is done either.

Godzilla versus Stegosaurus (2007)

noreply@blogger.com (Nat) — Sun, 16 Dec 2007 22:52:00 +0000

I managed to finish one of the 5 x 7 inch panels by switching subjects. This may be the first of many toy paintings, or it may be one of a kind. No telling at this point.

Dimensional Dementia

noreply@blogger.com (Nat) — Sat, 15 Dec 2007 12:51:00 +0000

I got myself a passel of 5 x 7 inch panels thinking I might churn out some painting studies. Hey, I certainly have no troubles with drawings and watercolors at that size, and there are plenty of daily artists who work even smaller with impressive results. But I'm either picking lousy subjects or lack the finesse- it feels like I'm building a ship in a bottle with fireplace tongs. The dog paintings are just 8 x 8 inches, but somehow going down to 5 x 7 inches crosses out of my comfort zone. I think I need to do a couple of 18 x 24 inch paintings to settle down.

Tagging Along

noreply@blogger.com (Nat) — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 21:35:00 +0000

I was tagged by Tracy Helgeson with the challenge of listing five things you might not know about me. Seeing as this is an art blog, I should probably be shocking you with factoids like that I have a regular job (ooh!) and wear a tie each day (aah!). Somehow when try to come up with five things, I find that I am just profoundly normal. Well except for:

When I was a kid, I loved making art, the color lavender, Bobby Sherman, and dressing up in my father's hats to sing show tunes. And I'm straight. Really.

I am a merciless lobster slayer, with hundreds of kills from decades of beach parties. Three inches of sea water in the tub, drop them in at first boil and loosely cover, seventeen minutes from the second boil, pull an antenna to test. Like a crustacean killing machine.

My childhood dentist wore a pair of flip-down magnifying glasses as he closed in with the drill, like some bug-eyed reject from a David Lynch movie. And no Novocaine. It's amazing that I've ever been back to any dentist.

The most famous artists to emerge from my tiny undergrad studio art program are comic strip cartoonists (Watterson and Borgman). I'm kind of proud, but I occasionally ponder whether the Kenyon art department admits that to new prospects.

If you don't know already, I have a tribute blog for my dog, Pappy. He's like ten times more famous than I'll ever be. His Youtube movies have 200,000 views, and he's going to be on the National Geographic Channel's "Dog Genius" later this month.

Now there is the question of who to tag to pass along this great opportunity. Coming in on the tail end of this thing, I'm having a tough time finding people who haven't just done it among the art blogs I know well. So I am going to do the lazy thing and say-- if you feel inspired to do this tag, please leave me a comment and let me know to come look at your blog. I'd be thrilled to update the post to link to you.

On Exhibit

noreply@blogger.com (Nat) — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 18:44:00 +0000

I have two pieces in a show at the Touchstone Gallery, 406 7th Street, NW, Washington, DC. The "Art on the Small Side" show, juried by Rosemary Luckett and Jon Wassom, runs from December 12 to January 5. The opening is Friday, December 14 from 6 - 8:30PM. Shouldn't let pleasure get in the way of business, but the opening conflicts with a friend's Christmas party.

Wordless Wednesday: Postcard Art

noreply@blogger.com (Nat) — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 11:02:00 +0000

If you'd like this free postcard, enter by emailing me at doingart-whorl-gmail-period-com and I'll contact the winner. More Wordless Wednesday here.

Evaluating Software for Running an Art Business

noreply@blogger.com (Nat) — Sun, 09 Dec 2007 20:39:00 +0000

Well, I've been busily at work in preparation for evaluating the different software packages for running a business marketing and selling my art. So I've set up a computer in the basement, and have installed demos for each of the products below:

Art Affair
Art and Craft Business Organizer
Art Look
Artful Butler
eArtist
Flick
Museografic for Art World
My Art Collection
Working Artist

So far each has their idiosyncrasies, some seem to have advantages in specific niches, and a couple stand out for my purposes. One thing that each has in common is the capacity to track a portfolio and add additional information about each work, but beyond this are many differences. I've been working on a matrix in order to evaluate each of them individually.

There are three other products which I won't be reviewing. One, Marketing Artist, is a web application that seems to be shutting down. This would have been my principal reservation in using their service-- that the company might cease operations and I would lose access to their system.

Two others, Gyst and Artworks Pro, don't have demos. I looked over their sites to get some idea of their products.

The Gyst site is intriguing. The product supports both Mac and Windows PCs, and the comprehensive features read like a syllabus for a course in marketing art-- press releases, inventory management, goal setting, checklists, contracts. In fact, the company also seems to run seminars on selling art. However, when talking about the software, they don't actually show any screen captures or program details. This makes me a little suspicious whether it is a well integrated product or a set of unconnected document templates. Under support information they indicate that they have identified a compatibility problem with Intel-based Macs that could be corrected by recompiling on the new platform, but they haven't fixed it. This is strangely casual. This could be a great program, but I remain uneasy about some of the loose ends.

The Windows application Artworks Pro has gotten some great word-of-mouth from art forums, and the product has a low "promotional" price. Their site has a lame video and minimal specifics about the product, but there is one thing I really dislike about them. They crow the misleading claim of being Mac compatible on their site, when this compatibility would require a big investment in emulation software, Windows license, and knowledge of Windows. All of these products are Mac compatible under those terms. I have a big trust issue with this company for using that kind of deceptive marketing, and there just isn't enough information on their site to counteract that reaction.

Will Draw for Links Card 4

noreply@blogger.com (Nat) — Sun, 09 Dec 2007 17:31:00 +0000

Demonstrating that I haven't shut down postcard production altogether, here is a "Will Draw for Links" postcard for Johann. I kind of like the crazed look. If I still owe someone a postcard, please let me know... I'm not terribly well organized as these things go.

Plexiglas Misadventure

noreply@blogger.com (Nat) — Sat, 08 Dec 2007 16:36:00 +0000

I was framing yesterday for a show, and went to use a set of 1/8" Plexiglas pieces in my frames. These were normal inexpensive pieces of Lucite ES purchased from the local hardware store. I wasn't looking for anything glareproof, so figured this would suffice.

Most artists know that Plexiglas has advantages over glass because it is lightweight and shatterproof, but is much more prone to scratching. What I hadn't realized was that the stuff from the hardware store would have so many imperfections-- little black flecks embedded in the plastic that make it look like there is dirt trapped inside the frame. I'm no perfectionist, in fact I'm barely an adequatist, and I could only use one of the six pieces I had purchased. I guess I'm going to have to investigate whether there are different grades of Plexiglas, because Lucite ES isn't going to cut the mustard.