Avocado

This painting is now available as a print.

On The Easel

Here is a painting of an avocado that I am finishing up.

Scientific illustration

Here is a link to an illustration I did for a scientific article. It shows the spines on neurons of zebra finches as the father is teaching the juvenile the song. Scientists are able to view the spines and how they change while the birds learns songs. They can do this by creating viruses that are engineered so they will attach to the spines and become florescent. The images that they have are remarkable but difficult to understand. The images themselves look like green blobs. A scientist had to explain with diagrams what I was seeing and show me the changes over time. After I gained some insight into what I was seeing I was able to create the image.

Paintings at Confluence Clinic

I am showing my paintings at Confluence Clinic in Portland. My friends Erin and Kjell Moline own the clinic. It is a holistic health care center were practitioners offer acupuncture, Chinese herbal medicine, massage, and counseling services. Besides showing my work they are welcoming a new massage therapist and celebrating their website redesign launch. I am planing to be there and it is an open event to the public that will be happening during the Portland first Thursday Art Walk.

1st Thursday at Confluence Clinic

Host: Confluence Clinic
Phone: 503-241-6505
When: Thursday, May 05 at 04:30 PM

Where: Confluence 506 southwest sixth, suite 801 Portland, OR 97204

You can check out the event listing on Facebook. You can sign up as a fan and respond if you can come to the event.

New Prints

I have some new prints available.
These paintings are a couple years old. I like them a lot.

Fun with Pencil and Watercolor

I will be teaching a drawing class coming up next month.

Fun with Pencil and Watercolor
class #108
instructor John Holdway
Mondays, 2/7/2011 - 3/14/2011, 1:00pm - 3:00pm
Oasis Center
100 Valley River Center
Eugene, OR 97401
541-987-9178

Rose Hip

Here is a shot of my drawing table. I am doing a watercolor study of a rose hip. I am using a helping hand holder for soldering to hold the rose hip. I have the helping hand because I actually do solder things from time to time but I think I will use it more for drawing small things. It even has a magnifying lens so I can draw super tiny things.

Nice Stem

I just made this painting available as a reproduction. It is called Nice Stem, and it is from 2005. I like to grow a vegetable garden every year and that always includes some interesting heirloom tomato varieties. It can be very frustrating to grow tomatoes in the Pacific NW but maybe someday I will figure it out.

Drawing Class Wrap Up

I finished up the class I was teaching at Oasis, Fun with Pencil and Watercolor. It was a good group. Here is an picture I did as a demonstration in class of a Goldfinch. I first drew it with a graphite pencil then started with watercolor. I was having so much fun working on it I worked on it a little longer back in the studio. I thought I would dig out some colored pencils that my wife used in college. I haven't ever got into colored pencil but I might now. It works very well on top of watercolor.

Here is a demo from the previous week showing some invented head studies. I used sepia and brown watercolor pencils and a waterbrush. First I drew with the sepia pencil. then developed some tone using plain water and the waterbrush. Later when it dried, I added a few details with the brown. A little regular graphite pencil too. I also added some blue to describe the negative space around a couple heads.

I will be doing another session of this class in the winter starting February 7.

Fun with Pencil and Watercolor

I am teaching an art class at the Oasis Center in Eugene. It just started Monday. It is called Fun with Pencil and Watercolor. We focus on drawing techniques and use watercolor as an extension of the drawing process. In my classes I like to do lots of demonstrations. Here is a quick demo of a piece of hard candy.

I always liked it when teachers used to do demonstrations. When I was in art school it was somewhat rare to see the teacher actually painting or drawing. I can understand the philosophy that it is important to let a creative person develop without mental restraints on how it should be done.

One of my favorite teachers at Maryland Institute was Paul Moscatt. He often did demonstrations in class. But Paul didn't do demonstrations on technique exactly and his student's paintings don't look like his own. He demonstrated how to get to work as an artist. He puzzled through problems in front of the class. That is a great lesson to learn. Painting is puzzling through the problems with brush in hand. In the end the piece is scrutinized as a product. To the artist the final piece is an artifact of a kind of performance of thought and action.