Pareidolia Series (November 29, 2016)

Here is the latest drawing in my Pareidolio Series of Rockfaces.

Pareidolia – Rock Faces (November 17, 2016)

Here is another completed drawing of the Pareidolia series. Pareidolia is defined as (by dictionary.com) : the imagined perception of a pattern or meaning where it does not actually exist, as in considering the moon to have human features.

I am quite comfortable with this final style for these images. Some people have commented that this looks like the mouth of a horse. I did not see that until they mentioned it. I see it as a skull with teeth.

Camera Lucida Included in Old Painting (November 9, 2016)

Awhile back I attended the NeoLucida workshop at Manifest. I remember photographing the sample of the camera lucida that the presenter had which was often advertised in comic books. I remember that ad fondly – I always thought it was a scam or fraud. I took a photo of the box it came in to remember the advertising on it.

I was recently looking through some old slides of artwork that I had and remembered that I had actually completed a painting that was derived from these old comic book ads. So I looked through a lot of slides and found the painting. I scanned it and included it below along with the photo of the box that I recently took. The painting was titled, “Tracing a Fire”. Amazing how you kinda forget a lot of what you have created until something you see triggers it.

“Tracing a Fire” acrylic paint on canvas © David Hartz

Paeidolia – Rock Faces continued (October 28, 2016)

I completed another finished drawing of the Pareidolia series – I think I will call them Rock Faces. This one does not use the acrylic wash and I think I like it much better. I think this will be my final style – I am quite pleased with the way it looks. The thing is that I am really not employing much imagination here at all – the photos I took actually look like these drawings – perhaps I should upload those as well.

Camera Lucida (October 20, 2016)

Last Saturday I attended a one day workshop on the Camera Lucida at the Manifest Drawing Center. It was very informative. The camera lucida is an old drawing device, consisting of a prism that projects what you see onto the horizontal surface of your paper. David Hockney wrote a book about this device titled, “Secret knowledge: Rediscovering the lost techniques of the Old Masters”.

Each participant received a camera lucida to work with and then take home. The facilitator, Pablo Garcia started a business manufacturing these new devices. He calls them NeoLucida.

It took me about fourteen drawings before I really felt like I had a handle on it. It is a great device for locating shapes in space. Below are the last three drawings that I created using the device – they are the only ones that looked good. We had a nude model to practice drawing with and that was a wonderful way to learn the device. These last drawings also were longer poses so I had more time to spend on them. After the sketches I have posted a photo of the NeoLucida.

Pareidolia – Second Rock Face (October 12, 2016)

Posted below is my second finished rock face drawing based on my summer vacation.

I am still not happy with the acrylic wash that I am using and plan to eliminate it in the next drawing to see how that works.

Tactile Abstraction Exhibit September 26 – October 21, 2016 (October 4, 2016)

My work will be in an exhibit titled, “Tactile Abstraction” in the UCBA Gallery this month. I have six collaborative works that are abstract works that I collaborated with David Freeman, a colleague of mine in the Mathematics department. I have three other works that are completely my own. There are two triptychs and one tetraptych. I have posted the gallery announcement and the three artworks of mine below.

Pareidolia – More Complete Rock Faces (September 23, 2016)

I have posted below my first finished rock face drawing based on the rock formations I saw in Valley of the Goblins. However, I am still not happy with this final render and may change the style as I progress drawing more of these rock faces.

Pareidolia – Rock Faces #2 (September 12, 2016)

Following are four more sketches that I created while in Valley of the Goblins.

Now that I am back, I have been working on some more finished color drawings of these ‘rock faces’ and will post them as I get them finished.

Pareidolia – Rock Faces (September 2, 2016)

Pareidolia is defined (by dictionary.com) as: the imagined perception of a pattern or meaning where it does not actually exist, as in considering the moon to have human features.
My artist friend Tom Miller gave me this term as he looked at these latest sketches in my sketchbook. (here is Tom’s website: https://www.behance.net/tomokato69 )

These are sketches that I created while in the Valley of the Goblins in Utah (see earlier posts for reference). I constantly saw weird faces in these rock formations – they were very suggestive of strange creatures. – so I drew them. There are four that I have scanned so far – next week I will scan the rest of them.

I have already started to create more finished color drawings of these faces that I continue to see in all the photographs that I took from the Valley of the Goblins. I will post these as I get them done. I am anticipating creating a whole exhibition of drawings and photographs and possible a video from my experiences there.