Thursday, January 31, 2008

Police Sketch

As an artist, I have always been interested in police sketches. The original sketch below is the one that appeared in the local Albuquerque, New Mexico, paper. (The Albuquerque Police Department Cold Case Unit is handling the victim’s case. She is known as the “Just Keep Moving” victim because of the slogan appearing on the T-shirt she was found wearing. A police artist made the sketch from a clay reconstruction over the victim’s skull.) I have some problems with the sketch, and I wonder why the sketch was not done over a photo of the clay construction. With digital photography it would have been easy and quick.

The human head has certain proportions that do not vary too much from one person to the next and change regularly with age. I have applied some of those proportions to the sketch of the “Just Move It” victim. My “fourth approximation” I feel would more likely correspond to the victim’s appearance.

Original Sketch


The first thing I did was to put the eyes mid way between the chin and top of the head as shown above.

The second change was to widen the head. Typically the width of the head at brow level is about two thirds the heighth of the head.

The third change, above, was to move the mouth up so that the lip line was one third the distance from the base of the nose to the bottom of the chin. The victim was in her twenties, so this is a sound assumption.

Finally, the eyebrows seem a little high, so I moved them down a bit. Compared to the original police sketch, this adjusted sketch gives more of an impression of a real person.

Posted by Chuck in 05:12:01 | Permalink | Comments (1) »

Who’s Edna ?

Chuck Dunbar, Edna Casman, 11 1/2″ x 9 1/4″ (29cm x 23cm), charcoal pencil on Strathmore rag 3 ply Bristol

Who is Edna, the person I’ve been working with the last few years?  In her own words:

Edna Casman moved to Albuquerque in 1973. Originally a Fine Arts major in college, she was sidetracked from the art world when she changed her major field of study. After receiving her degree in Political Science, painting became a sideline to farming, family, and career responsibilities. Continued art education came by way of seminars, classes, and personal projects and in 1994, Casman settled down to serious full time painting. Her two dimensional work is primarily in acrylics. It has been evolving from loosely representational local and coastal scenes to patterned images and abstractions. Her latest work shows a remarkable freedom from naturalistic limitations. Art lovers familiar with her earlier landscapes will be amazed at the freedom she has discovered. A whole new vocabulary of mark making astonishes the eye. She has relegated subject matter to a place of vagueness while entering into a dance with the paint itself. This is romantic painting.

I always thought I’d be a painter one day. My drawing and painting efforts seem to have come naturally to me from an early age. What I didn’t foresee was how much soul searching and personal exploration it would take beyond mastering the technical aspects. Just applying paint to canvas makes its own magic and I do find this totally engaging in itself. But why any painting is worth the time spent on it is another issue. The challenge seems to be in creating a painting of substance, while playing with color and form perhaps too personal to be of immediate interest to others. Yet, if I admit to wanting a dialog with the public, my job is to capture people’s attention and amuse or please them solely because of the visual impact. I expect to be at this work a long time.

Posted by Chuck in 00:57:38 | Permalink | Comments (1) »

Wednesday, January 30, 2008

New Drawings with Edna

Untitled Drawing, 29″ x 23″ (74cm x 58cm), charcoal pencil and black pastel on Strathmore rag 2 ply Bristol

Untitled Drawing, 29″ x 23″ (74cm x 58cm), charcoal pencil and black pastel on Strathmore rag 2 ply Bristol

Untitled Drawing, 29″ x 23″ (74cm x 58cm), charcoal pencil and black pastel on Strathmore rag 2 ply Bristol



 Untitled Drawing, 29″ x 23″ (74cm x 58cm), charcoal pencil and black pastel on Strathmore rag 2 ply Bristol



 Untitled Drawing, 29″ x 23″ (74cm x 58cm), charcoal pencil and black pastel on Strathmore rag 2 ply Bristol



Untitled Drawing, 29″ x 23″ (74cm x 58cm), charcoal pencil and black pastel on Strathmore rag 2 ply Bristol

Last Tuesday, January 22, Edna and I got together at her studio for another day of drawing. We finished three more flower drawings we had started in the previous session (the first three above), and two more of the big bend drawings. The last drawing may start a beastiary series, although the one above that may be a beast and and not a big bend.

Today we worked on our first painting based on the drawings. The painting is 54″ x 50″ (137cm x 127cm), big enough for us to work at the same time. We stapled the canvas to my studio wall.  Edna and Cathy, my wife, like it a lot, but I’m not sure what to make of it. I feel I’m in very unfamiliar territory.  Turning a drawing into a painting is not making a drawing in color.

Posted by Chuck in 05:01:29 | Permalink | Comments (1) »

Wednesday, January 23, 2008

Very Bad Feng Shui

Sandia Mountains, digital photo

These are the beautiful Sandia Mountains.  The highest point is 10678′ (3253m) above sea level.  We live under these mountains at an elevation of 6080′ (1852m) and our house, and a great many others, are only 3.75 miles (6km) from the crest. That means the mountain rises nearly 9/10th of a mile (1.4km) above us in a very short distance.  Any book on Feng Shui that I can find says this very bad positioning.
Posted by Chuck in 05:17:20 | Permalink | Comments (1) »

Thursday, January 17, 2008

San Jose Juniper

As every bonsai enthusiast knows, late autumn and winter is the time to prowl nurseries for cheap bonsai material.  Cathy and I stopped at a new nursery last Tuesday.  There wasn’t much there that looked like it had any bonsai potential.  I was heading out, when Cathy called me to come look at this juniper she had spotted.  It was in a five gallon container.  Its neighbors were not interesting, and in this part of the country a five gallon nursery plant is expensive.  Well, when I looked closely it was different from all its neighbors.  The trunk was 4″ (11cm) in diameter.  It was labelled a San Jose juniper, a plant native to the U.S. west coast and very popular bonsai material.  There was no price on the tree.  A nurseryman looked it over and went inside to look on his computer for a five gallon San Jose juniper.  Their computer only showed junipers in 2 gallon containers.  Computers speak with such authority, even when they are wrong.  He shrugged his shoulders, and said I could have it for the 2 gallon price, about US$60.  Sold!  The tree is worth two or three times that much.

San Jose juniper, about 3′ (1 meter) diameter

San Jose juniper, 4″ (11cm) diameter trunk

San Jose juniper showing three branches

The plant is very root bound.  The bottom of the plastic bucket is bulging out.  I’ll work on it at the end of February.  The roots will be Gordian knot.  I’ll put it in the ground so new roots closer to the surface can develop.  It will take a three or four years to bring some order to them.  The one branch that crosses under another will have to go.  The remaining branches will have to be trimmed back when I work on the roots.  I’ll have a few years to consider what to do with styling.  By the time I’m seventy five, I’ll have a real beauty.
Posted by Chuck in 05:59:45 | Permalink | Comments (2)

Sunday, January 13, 2008

New Drawings with Edna

After a holiday break, Edna and I got together last Wednesday, January 9th, for more drawing. Among the things we did was to finish a series six drawings, which, for lack of a better term, I’ll call the Big Bend series.

Unititled Drawing, 29″ x 23 ” (74cm x 58cm), charcoal and black pastel on Strathmore rag 2 ply Bristol

Unititled Drawing, 29″ x 23 ” (74cm x 58cm), charcoal and black pastel on Strathmore rag 2 ply Bristol

Unititled Drawing, 29″ x 23 ” (74cm x 58cm), charcoal and black pastel on Strathmore rag 2 ply Bristol

Unititled Drawing, 29″ x 23 ” (74cm x 58cm), charcoal and black pastel on Strathmore rag 2 ply Bristol

Unititled Drawing, 29″ x 23 ” (74cm x 58cm), charcoal and black pastel on Strathmore rag 2 ply Bristol

Unititled Drawing, 29″ x 23 ” (74cm x 58cm), charcoal and black pastel on Strathmore rag 2 ply Bristol

Posted by Chuck in 17:01:50 | Permalink | No Comments »

Thursday, January 3, 2008

Alex and His Wheels

Alex and His Wheels (Portrait of the Engineer as a Boy), digital photo

Posted by Chuck in 04:25:09 | Permalink | Comments (1) »