the last (well, not really the last) hoorah pt. 2

The time has come folks... Mary and I are hi-tailin' it out of San Francisco and Chicago bound in a day!
There was a little snafu with some of the other images I wanted to post, so it'll have to wait till we get settled.
Thanks for all your comments, there highly appreciated and have been a great impetus for me to continue this little blog project.

Special thanks goes out to the Lord of blogging, for without him we would be but primitive cave dwellers, making funny marks on stones.

More special thanks goes to Lane and Sutter. It was because of them that I had come out of my hiding in the first place.

Please check back in about 2 - 4 weeks. I'll have a new, shiny scanner of my own for personal use, as well as all the stuff I will have done in the interim to show you all.

Thanks & Goodnight.
Eugene "Bedhead" Smith

the last hoorah! pt. 1

I can't help it, geekiness is in the genes



a sketch of mary done in pencil



something random done in pencil



a whole sketch page, unedited. the figure on the right is supposed to resemble Buck 65. I drew him as if he were some lecherous pervert.

From the ol' sketchbook

Our time is almost up so I'll be posting several bits of ephemera from my sketchbooks today. And than I'll be absent for about 2 - 3 weeks.

Say No, kids.

Disclaimer - drugs make you crazy....

Word is bomb

This here work was done in pencil!

I haven't painted in about a month and a half and it's starting to get to me.

I'm tired, and debated with myself whether or not to bother with making the obvious Bush bashing comments, but hey he's our president, and it's like Britney says-ya gotta listen to your president! Over the last couple of days my brain's been mush. Perhaps it's the up coming move (context=wife and I going to Chicago) It seems that tends to be my style when things start getting gritty, shut-down, enact the auto-pilot feature, and freak out later.

But on a good note, my 30th birthday has come and gone sans any sort of "life-crises." A lot of people have asked me whether i've lost my shit and seem dumbfounded when I tell them no. These life markers we set for ourselves can be traps and pretty much result in nothing but high blood pressure and an unnecessary sense of dissapointment. What the hell, I was angst ridden enough as a teenager, why carry that crap over into my adult life. Of course one could argue that i'm still a kid, and quite frankly I wouldn't disagree. So anyways, no deep ruminations here about my life so far. No words of wisdom or clever insights. Just brush your damn teeth, wear comfortable shoes, and look up at the clouds kids, and your ass'll be fine.

Nick Cave

Johnny Cash

Done with acrylic on board.

Bjork ink sketch

tweedy ink sketch

Pitcher study

This is a study for a future painting I plan to work on in oil. It was done with acrylic on rives BFK. One of the things i've been wanting to work on with my oil paintings is to loosen up and let the paint itself express a representation of things without being too exact and photorealistic. This is a hard stuff for me. I came from a school that at the time really pushed it's students to try to accurately represent what their eyes were seeing. In a lot of ways this helped me to observe. In other ways I feel like I got bogged down in a sort of "hyper-observation," where I felt the need to record exactly what I was observing. After a while one's eyes begin to hurt with this approach, so a change was in order.

One of my favorite painters is Alex Kanevsky. The way he uses paint to make suggestions of what he sees amazes me. His paintings our by no means simple. They contain a multitude of brushstrokes and colors that complement and sometimes compete with eachother. Often you can see hints of figures or objects that seem to have been erased to make way for another figure or object. His finished paintings become more than just the end result, but a display of the process that goes into a painting.

That's what I've been liking about my more recent paintings; they're becoming more of a representation of a process as oppossed to a desired effect. They're feeling looser, and they are becoming a lot more fun to work on. When I have the money to get some good slides, I'll post them for you all.

That being said, I have to say the Bechtle show at SFMoma was damn fine. I still have an appreciation for painters who can paint photorealistically, and he is one of the best.

So at any rate, feel free to give any comments on the study.

So, what the hell was I saying?

As some of you (or not a damn one of you) know, many months ago my scanner decided to prematurely end its life. It was a sad moment in my life as I realized that everydaysketch would not be so "everyday" and that my reputation would be quickly sullied. For months the loss of my dear friend Hp ScanJet 4570c (lets just call him/her Ol Hp) was too much for my fragile heart to bear. I found solace for Ol Hp's death in the drink, like many weak men before me, and could be found in bars of questionable reputation and the alleys behind these bars. Lo and behold my dear friend Sutter retrieved me from this life of self-pity and demanded that I get my life back in order. With the help of his lady's (Lane)formidable scanner, Tanktron, and Sutter's own good guidance, I have been able to scan several items from my sketchbook that represent my efforts in the months without Ol Hp's companionship. Hence I will be posting new material every other day or so for the next couple of weeks. I should note that my wife and I will be leaving San Francisco for Chicago at the end of April. One of the first things I'll be doing upon arriving in Chicago will be to find me a new trusty scanner so I may present to all of you, on a daily basis, my most recent little doodles and observations. And that's that!