Things will be looking up for the Sacramento Kings NBA basketball team!!

(POSTER INCLUDED HERE AND JERSEY RETIREMENT POSTERS TO COME SHORTLY) The NBA season of 2001-02. Whatta year that was for the Sacramento Kings! Each and every home game was sold out with Arco arena jam packed with screaming, foot stamping, thunder stick clapping maniacs. The Kings were on a roll. Their best season ever. The team was one of the media's darlings...world wide even! They were a scrappy, fun loving team who just seemed to get better and better. They made it all the way to the play offs and almost to the finals until the last game of the series when they played against those damnable LA Lakers and the refs. miscalled a critical play. Never- the- less, what a season, and I was picked as the artist for that season's poster! It was mailed to about 8000 season ticket holders as a thank you gift from "Your Sacramento Kings!". Unfortunately, management has a policy of using a different artist each year with the result that the Sacramento Kings have gotten so bad that this season they are at their worst ever... and ... they need me! They can't switch artists if they want a winning season! Call me an egocentric, wacky, or a krank, but I know this is why they are playing so poorly. All may not be lost, however, for I have been called back. Management asked if they could reproduce two of the water color paintings that were origionally on the 2001-02 poster. In Feb., the team is retiring Chris Webber's jersey during half time, and in March, the same with Vladi Divac's jersey. At each game, the fan's ( alas, the home games are far from sold out) will be given a limited edition print as they enter the arena. One print for C. Webber's night and one for Divac's night. It is also a possibility that I will be commissioned to create the art for the first poster ever for their women's team, the Sacramento Monarch's. Things will be looking up, I'm sure! By the way, each player on the poster was a full sheet (22"X30") watercolor.

Sojourner Truth

She was a slave (for about half her life) who became a famous speaker for the abolition of slavery, capitol punishment and equal rights for women ( wrote "Ain't I a Woman"). She is the first black female to have a bust in the U. S. Capitol building (placed there in 2008). This is a portrait I painted in acrylic on canvas for The Sojourner Truth Multicultural Museum here in Sacramento.

Indian Bicycle (in progress)

A superb artist in India by the name of Milind Mulick, a superb artist in Santa Cruz, CA by the name of Mike Bailey, a superb artist in Sacramento, CA by the name of Terry Miura, and yours truly are all painting an Indian street scene (with bicycle) to post and compare by Feb. 1. Herewith is my "start".

Still working on the Amgen Tour of California painting

This acrylic may be 98% completed, and anyway, it's due soon to get reproduced in the form of gyclees that will be presented to many of this year's sponsors. I'm working on about 5 different paintings currently that I hope to soon post including another "paint off" with Terry Miura, Mike Bailey, and Milend Mulick in far off India. I'll also be posting some posters with my watercolor paintings of one time Sacramento Kings players Chris Webber and Vlade Divac. They will have special ceremonies in Feb. and Mar. at Arco Arena where their individual jerseys will be retired before game times.

Save money by painting snow

Yes, in these increasingly hard economic times, you can save money by painting snow scenes!* With the soaring cost of paint nowadays, why waste too much of it on your paintings? We artists need to economize and a snowscape is just the ticket! Simply remember where NOT TO PAINT! Have a happy new year and remember: waste not, want not. *this economic painting tip applies to watercolorists only. If you paint with any opaque medium, you may be sh-t out of luck!

The Final, Final "Lobentruck"

I wasn't quite satisfied with this acrylic so I added some more yellow hues into the truck, barn, pipes, and tree, added blue violet hues into the shadows, some more texture and lighter values into the barn, added white to the sky, lightened the top of the seed spreader, and lightened and simplified the ground a tad. Now I'm done...time to move on! Terry Miura's (click on his "studio notes") oil painting here is a done deal as well. He is a fabulous painter and is very good at writing about the process of building a painting. I strongly urge you to check out his blog and read about his "Lobentruck". I have also posted Mike Bailey's wonderful watercolor "Lobentruck" iteration that he painted for my water color class. Enjoy. And finally... the reference photo that we all painted from.

A Few Samples from My Art 300 Class

I most always demonstrate art assignments to my class. Talking and lecturing is fine but demonstrating is finer, and my students can see that I practice what I preach. Here are a sampling of student charcoal self portraits on newsprint paper. They worked from photographs. I told them to take photos with as much value contrast as possible. Most students will pull out family snaps where automatic flash units totally obliterate any strong value contrast. Some even tried to work from their driver's license! All of this, of course, handicaps them significantly. I also instructed my students to take a photo with some sort of attitude. Some did, some didn't. Unless you threaten your students (mostly the college age students) with an F grade or bodily harm, many will ignore the parameters of the assignment, and will work from flat lighted and unbelievably boring poses so as not to embarrass themselves. Apparently the embarrassing and sexually lascivious poses are saved for the social internet sites.