A preview

I've just finished this piece for the LA Times Book Review on the poetry of Zbigniew Herbert. Quite atmospheric. This is a detail - you'll have to check your Sunday paper to see the full image. Oh, heck... I'll post it in full later. Oh, and another thing: it publishes in black and white, so I'll post both the color and b/w versions. Check this space!

Upcoming Drawing Circle outing!!!

Our next Drawing Circle outing will take place on the beautiful Santa Rosa Plateau this coming Saturday morning (February 24th). Meet at the Visitor's Center at 11:00 am. RSVP to Steve at drawingcircle@stevesedam.com for details! See you there!

Wild Animal Park

I'm working through some images from a recent trip to the San Diego Wild Animal Park, expanding to some wet media in addition to my usual graphite and ink pen.

Favorite old haunt

The Old Adobe on the Santa Rosa Plateau, cast in afternoon sunlight. Susan calls our hiking outings "sketch and stretch" because we often hike in to the Adobe where I'll do a drawing and she'll do yoga. On this particular outing, Maddie came along and had some solo hiking time with Mom while I paused to make this image.

Dipping my toe into oils

I was inspired this morning to pick up the oil paints once again. This small skyscape is the result. I love how patient oils are - they're in no hurry to dry, and so I found myself calmly building the little image, unlike my usual mad dash with acrylic or watercolor. I'll rig up a holder so I can try these oil sketches on location - this was done from photographic reference.

Morning Song Farms

We took a homeschooling group to Morning Song Farms, in Rainbow, CA. Forty kids, lots of plants, tools, chickens and lamas. And did I mention plenty of fun?

Life Models

There's a funky little dairy farm not far from where we live, and I sometimes take the kids there to feed the critters. This time, I also took my sketchpad - and camera. Drawing from life is a great exercise, especially when your subject is moving quickly! I filled a few pages with gesture drawings, but these images come from my photos. How else can you get a chicken to hold still?

Shell games

My subjects lately have been oaks, orchids - and now shells. All the drawings are done in the traditional way, but the topmost image has been taken further. It's an experiment expanding on the "digital monotype" technique that I use, in which a drawing is combined with painted textures in a digital workspace.
Shells are one of those miraculous bits of nature that reward close observation with ever more interesting and subtle revelations. I'll explore them further!