The Portrait Project

A few years (quite a few, actually) I decided to start a project that I referred to (in my mind) as "One Hundred Portraits." After the first dozen or so, I decided it was just "the Portrait Project."

The goal was, loosely stated, to do a portrait of everyone I knew. Talk about a never-ending task. Regardless, I've completed around 50 (give or take).


Last fall my good friend Leo Wesson, who I've known and worked with for over 30 years, came over and shot a massive number of works on paper for me on his digital camera. Among the stuff he shot were most of the portraits. After much screwing around, I've finally posted my favorites on the Ralph Art website.

The pieces that comprise the project follow a fairly standard format: all are more or less mug-shots, and are on 22 x 30 rag paper. Not all are paintings; quite a few were done as drawings.

It's been fun, and I'm certainly not finished (I meet new people every day), but only a few people have seen them, and usually only a handful of the pieces at that. If you know me, you probably know quite a few of the people in these works.

A big thanks (again) to Leo, who made this possible.

Enjoy!

A new acquisition for the collection

As of Sunday, I became the proud owner of a painting by my old friend, John C. Moore, who is a fabulous artist. You can see more of his art on his Facebook page.

Here's my treasure. I'm currently trying to find a decent place to hang it in my house.


Please note I shot this with my iPhone so I could post this quickly. The actual painting is a far better thing than my crappy photo.

Thank you so much John for sharing this with me!

New painting - JCM

I've worked on and off for several years on a series of portraits of eveyone I know. Just finished the latest -- one of my oldest friends from my TCU days. If you know me you'll probably know who this is, if not, I'll never tell.

Fall 2009 Arts Goggle

Fall 2009 Arts Goggle has come and gone. Despite minimal publicity and intermittent rain, we had a good turn out at the office of Courage and Renewal North Texas.

I got there about 3:00 in the afternoon. The rain at that point was fairly light and we already had small but steady stream of visitors. As the rain picked up, traffic fell off. Because the rain cooled things off we were able to open the windows and enjoy the breeze.

As afternoon drifted to evening, the rains slacked off and the visitors picked up. A number of friends from Broadway Baptist came by, though a competing event (that I would have attended myself, should I not have been otherwise committed) kept a number of folks away. Quite few old TCU cohorts and work friends made their way over.

Catching up with old friends was probably the most enjoyable part of the evening. Usually I do that at other people's art events; it was a nice change to have my art on the walls. If I'd bothered to price things I think I would have sold several pieces (I've got a couple of people I need to get back to on that topic).

We finally closed up shop around 9:15. I stopped off at the venue my brother was volunteering for and ended up giving their evening's guitarist a break by playing for about 15 minutes. The audience consisted of the other volunteers who didn't seem to mind one way or the other whether I was there. I go home about 10:30 to discover the neighbors had "pigged" me (local joke) -- part of the pigging included a bottle of Tanquery gin.

All in all, the evening was a success. The CRNT people were as nice as could be, the space (an old converted house) was well-suited to my rather domestic scenes. I've taken the show down (this was a one night only event) and am now in search of my next venue.

Thanks to all who came by or made this possible.

New oil painting and website update

I decided I was finished with the oil painting I'd been working on. You can see it below.

People occasionally ask me how I know I'm finished. My stock answer is it's when I realize that there is nothing I can do that will improve the painting. Unfortunately I've continued well past that point in numerous paintings.

I also spent the greater part of this evening scanning old slides to go up on the Ralph Art website redesign. I'd tried this earlier with an old UMAX scanner I've had for too long. I ended up opting to use a much older Nikon LS 1000 slide scanner, which did a much better job.

Upon reflection, I've decided to do a rolling relaunch of the site, which means it may not be finished, but it will be finished enough. Part of this was predicated on the fact that the current site is largely unfinished and the new site is a vast improvement, especially when it comes to maintenance.

Two more restaurant paintings

Here are two more restaurant paintings, one just completed, the other from last year. Both are 22 x 30, acrylic on paper.

First, just completed...

And from last year...

After shooting these it became painfully obvious I needed a new process for shooting photos of art.