And the winner of the portrait drawing is…

The inspiration behind these mixed-media portrait and figure drawings came to me naturally as a feeling that welled up inside of me of the desire to scribble, and to combine several different materials together. I like complexity. Prior to this my focus has been primarily on oil painting, which was fun for a while, until I had the urge to complicate things. I achieved that by doing collage and then painting on top of that, which created a really interesting visual effect that engages the subconscious mind of the viewer a lot more than just paint alone. But since falling ill, I have had to modify my focus to the less toxic media, which is also giving me a chance to really focus on the fundamentals of drawing. This scribbling is not just my bratty inner child coming out, although part of that is certainly true, but it is really the essence of the ether, the atmosphere of energy particles and spirit flying around. It is the swirling of memories in the forlorn expressions I capture. It is the chaos that finds order enough to produce a likeness in a portrait, or a moment in life that feels like there is more there than meets the eye. It’s not just the illusion of three dimensional happenings onto a two dimensional surface. My goal is to capture a fourth dimension as well, the intangible something that is hard to explain. It sort of has a mind of it’s own, and I am just the channel it is expressing itself through. This spirit, this energy, I let it loose to scribble around as it starts vaguely resembling a figure, and then I tame it, constrict it, and exact it with some of the discipline of technical drawing, enough to render something or someone recognizable… only to let it build up the rebellious desire to be set free and scribble again.

Thanks to everyone who came out to the Salt Lake City Pride festival and visited my booth. The first day it rained and we rushed to save my artwork from the downpour, successfully.   The sun came out, we hung out, we laughed and watched hundreds of people take a selfie with my dinosaur sculpture.  It was all in all a good time. I had a drawing for a portrait giveaway that had about 100 entries. The odds of 1 in 100 are not too bad!

And the winner is… The lovely Cat Palmer!! Congratulations to Cat!  Yes she is my friend, and no this was not rigged. She’ll be coming to the Utah Arts Festival to model for her portrait that I will be drawing live on Thursday afternoon, right after the workshop she is teaching at the library. Come check it out at my booth #99, and also get another chance to win! I’ll be having another drawing at this Utah Arts Festival, which is this Thursday through Sunday, noon to 11:00pm, at the down town library in Salt Lake City.  Visit www.UAF.org for more details.

If you are interested in purchasing a portrait drawing of yourself or someone you know, I am currently taking commissions for mixed-media drawings of either black & white (graphite, ink, and charcoal) or color (water color, ink, colored pencil, and pastel) ranging from $150 – $1000 depending on size, which is a lower price point than my oil paintings, because this is a much quicker and less expensive process. You will need to model live and this could take one to two sessions to complete. After the festival my schedule will open up and so drop me a line at queerboiwonder@gmail.com if you are interested.

Hope to see you this week at the festival!

~Sandy