slow hand ~ Andrew Ken's sketchbook

[aks9]

ZandraDragon: Yeah, Android Jones is one of my influences. Back in 2010-13 I used to look at a lot of his art, a big inspiration. I don't look at other artist's artwork as often as I should, most of the stuff I make lately comes from my head. Artist's caution against that, but I'm ok with that right now. I have a few pieces that I want to finish, when they are done then I'll get deeper into studying the masters. I still observe nature of course - reality is the main inspiration!
The other is meditative stillness - there is a quality of mental focus and image generation that occurs in those states that is a big source of inspiration for imagery. I'm glad you like the work, thanks a lot for your comment!




Artloader: Thanks! As for being "too abstract" - I am actually really interested in making all the abstract pieces resemble things - I think the reason some of them look too unrecognizable to you is because they are detail pictures taken out of a larger image. You'd probably see more interesting things in the larger ones, which I won't post until they're complete. 
Yes, last one is a type of floating island. There is an alien face in it - its also a floating head - but most people I've shown it too haven't grasped that yet, so I want to keep working at it to make it a bit clearer. If you look at the two white spots, in the left and center, those are supposed to be "tunnels" that are lit from within, which are also like "eyes", and the larger dripping stalagmite-esque form is where the nose would go.



Adam Lina: Yeah that's a crit I can agree with (re: depth). Thanks for that. More overlapping forms is something I want to do in the larger compositional sense as well. There is a bit more of that going on in the floating island pic, it still has to be rendered properly value-wise though. Thanks for your feedback and praise. I don't get enough critical feedback on my work, please keep it coming.
Yeah I am a huge fan of Alex Grey. Got to attend a 2 day workshop he did in february, met him briefly but I didn't really have a convo with him, he just told me a bit about the Entheon project. His work had a huge influence on me - just in the sense that it made me happy to look at and I like the positive message it has.



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Going to post a bunch of sketches I've been doing over the past month or so. Most of these are drawn from the statues around Vienna. Between 20-60 minutes each. Got no scanner so these are all photos.


































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And update on the floating island. Next steps for this:

• work really define separate layers in the image, value-wise. They're there in line but not in value.
  
• bring in more depth
  
• more consistent lighting 
  
• balance out the energy which is too left-leaning
  

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future art goals:

- get a pouchade box and get into plein air painting
- learn more about oils, pigments, mediums - continue down the learning path opened up to me by www.AloriaWeaver.com and www.DavidHeskin.com whom I've been studying with the past three months.
- study and develop my skills in figurative realism

current projects:
- finish the 4 large digital paintings that I've been working on. This is mostly clean-up. But also the culmination of some paintings that have brought me immense joy and interest while making them. Big openings and breakthrough pieces for me - they express some of the deeper spiritual views and experiences I've had. I want to finish them at last. Also so I can let them go and finally say goodbye to digital, so I can fully embrace physical oil painting. Don't feel interested in digital art at all anymore. No idea where I will get the time to finish these to be honest. Sometimes I things just take on their own longer process of their own.
I also have UFIV and UFV to finish as well as the floating island, and the 3 oil paintings that I started in the past 6 months that I've been posting pics of. Lots to do ~