Tag: art

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Recupero Urbano

Jeff Winkowski asked if I would want to take part in a benefit to raise money for the Bay View Community Center‘s food pantry program and I said “I’m in!” so join us Saturday, April 6th, 2024 at Puddler’s Hall from 6pm to 10pm. (See the Facebook Event!)

And what’s happening? It’s an Art Show (and Sale) and I will be offering a bunch of my recent digital illustrations (well, prints of them) as well as some of the relief prints I made in January.

This is another Pay What You Want experiment on my part, and I will be donating 50% of all sales to the Bay View Community Center. Get one of my prints for $5 and the BVCC gets $2.50… Give me $50 for a print and the BVCC gets $25. We’re going to work together on this, providing art to people at a price they can afford, and hopefully also raising some money for those in need. (Fun Fact: I used to live right down the street from the Bay View Community Center and passed it every day on the way to work.)

There’s also a silent auction planned that will feature a never-before-seen illustration I’ve done. It’s a classic Milwaukee historical thing, and you might like it. Oh, there will probably also be some music or other things happening… a live band? A local DJ? I don’t even know. (Literally, things are still in the works.)

Oh, there is an entry fee! It’s one non-perishable food item. So canned goods or the like, something you would donate to a food pantry. Anyway, I hope you can join us. (And bring some cash or a card or your phone or all of those things!)

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Game Boy Sketch

Game Boy (Sketch)

Game Boy (Sketch)

For me the peak of portable handheld gaming in the 1990s was the Nintendo Game Boy. I remember not having on, but using the one my girlfriend had. A year or so later we broke up but I got a new girlfriend and she also had a Game Boy. (Also, just a quick shout out to Adafruit for the Game Grrl.)

Game Boy (Sketch)

Anyway, past relationships aside, I pretty much just played Tetris on the Game Boy. So yeah, Tetris… which led me to the Anbernic RG35XX last year. I probably spent more time playing Game Boy games in 2023 than I did in all of the 1990s.

Game Boy (Sketch)

For these sketches I always start with the lines, typically working directly from a photo, doing some tracing and making decisions about each hand drawn line. Damn I am really enjoying the capabilities of the Apple Pencil! I still have a lot to learn and I spent about 20 minutes watching a video over the weekend and learned a few Procreate tricks I was unaware of…

Game Boy (Sketch)

I should probably spend a bit more time just screwing around in Procreate and doing some real learning but I also find the drawing so fun and enjoyable that I mostly try to do that when I have a small amount of free time.

Game Boy (Sketch)

Finally, here’s a more loose and sketch version. Once again this digital illustration was done with an Apple Pencil on an iPad using Procreate.

Oh, just a quick side note, I do have a Game Boy Advance for my Game Boy Camera but I sort of wish I had the Game Boy Color because the form factor seems much better for using the camera.

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The Ghosts Sketch

Why (re)draw a bunch of 8-bit characters from a video game that was released over 40 years ago? The first answer is “Why not?” and that should be enough, right? Yes, it’s sort of ridiculous to make a hand drawn sketch of blocky pixelated characters, but life is ridiculous, life is absurd, and sometimes you’ve just gotta play along with it.

You may remember me from the Pac-Man Cookies my daughter and I made in 2011 or the Life-Size Pac-Man project of 2019. (The Life-Size version is at Jason’s house now and I’m a little sad I didn’t get the Shelf-Size version we made that was shown on TV for a Maker Faire promo… Oh well.)

Doing these sketches is sort of therapeutic for me, and I really enjoy doing them. I’m still not sure I want to create these as actual physical art pieces for sale on a web site. I’d like to continue the Pay What You Want for Art experiment I started in January. Enough people have been supporting it lately that I think it’s worthwhile to keep pursuing.

Pac-Man was a game I first played in an arcade as a kid. I’m pretty sure I sneaked off to Palmer’s Billiards on 27th street with the neighbor kids and play it along with Space Invaders. I wasn’t really a huge fan of either, and I was more of a Tetris fan later on.

So hey, enjoy these fun ghosts that were drawn on an iPad with an Apple Pencil using Procreate.

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Pay What You Want for Art

In January 2024 I made over 45 relief prints. I set out to do this because I was not accepted to the Var Gallery 30x30x30 show and I wanted to challenge myself to create 30 pieces of art during the month even if I would not be showing my work in a gallery at the end of it. I shared all of my work online to my friends, family, and followers across Facebook, Instagram, and Mastodon. In theory more people saw my work than would have in a local gallery show.

I also wrote about the process and about art and life along the way. See the posts; Part I, Part II, and Part III, Part IV and Part V.

I had no intention of selling any art. Historically I have not sold much of the art I’ve created in my lifetime. I’ve sold a few things along the way, but I certainly didn’t have sales in mind when I started. Just like with the photography I’ve done in the past, if I can keep art-making very low cost for myself then I can either give it away freely (like I do with Gallery 69) or at least just share it online. Photos are great to share online. Physical goods, like prints, can be made pretty cheaply, of course there’s still the cost of ink and paper. (And I try to make a lot of paper.)

For me, making art is something I love to do, and I also love sharing it with others… which is why I’ve posted hundreds of photos with open licenses and why I have a Free Little Art Gallery in my front yard.

And yet… When I started posting prints people wanted them. I mean, often one person would want one. Sometimes two people would want a specific print. I should mention I was often just making a few prints and picking the best one as the “final” or sometimes even just one single print. Of course I could always print more (and yes, I’ll get into that later) but I would make a print, frame it, photograph it, post it, and every now and them, someone would want it.

So I told people “Pay what you want! Any amount will do.” Wait, could they pay nothing? Pay a penny? Well… sure. No one did that though. Perhaps because these are people that (in theory) already know me.

One follower said I needed to set up a shop and list them all because they didn’t want to have to ask me which prints were still available. I didn’t want to muck around with doing listings for all the prints, and honestly the conversation that happens when someone wants a print is valuable to me. It’s interaction with a person who actually wants a piece of art I created. It’s not a store where you anonymously just spend money and get something. I’m thinking about Commerce versus Capitalism. (Which is a topic that’s a bit deeper than this post is going to get into.)

What does this all mean moving forward? I may try to continue the Pay What You Want model for some of the upcoming prints I have planned, but I may look into things like goimagine which seems like an ethical choice for selling art as they take part in a caring economy. If I can get art out into the world at a low price and also help those in need? Well that’s what they call a win-win situation.

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Falk Hammer Sketch

I did this one more than a week ago but forgot to post it! It’s the sketch version of one of the photographs I took of the Falk Hammer last year.

As mentioned in the previous post, this was my dad’s old hammer, which was forged at Falk Corporation, where he worked. It’s a nice hammer. I like it.

Yet another digital sketch done with an Apple Pencil on an iPad using Procreate. (And yes, this might make a really nice three-color relief print.)

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