Ambidextrous Me

After a chat with my good bud Russ, who is a permanent studio artist at the McGuffey Center, I have decided to sort of attempt to try to be ambidextrous.

My work is extremely loopy, and I've noticed over the past few years that I definitely have a tendency to make everything slant to the right because that's the way my right arm moves. Trying to balance it tends to make everything look stiff, so the best solution is clearly to learn to draw with both hands, and possibly also my feet.

I haven't yet done any finished art with my left hand, but I do have a pile of sketches I've been working on.

In other news, I just finished two zines, which I handed out sporadically at the Small Press Expo two weeks ago, and which I will be debuting at the Richmond Zine Fest this weekend.

The Studio

 Starting at the beginning of this month, I was inducted in as a member of the McGuffey Art Center's Incubator program, in Charlottesville.  This comes with a third of a studio (you can see one of my neighbors to the left) and a year of reduced studio space rent. I view it as a job and attempt to spend at least 7 hours a day there, not including lunch, when I bring it.

   

To keep a schedule of good habits, I'm working on doing one sketch every day, and at least one painting a week, in the hopes that eventually some of them will be commercially viable.

I've also started working on daily social media updates on my art.  I'm now on Twitter and Instagram, @phostetlerart.

 I'm also committed to drawing one enormously fat man every two days.

And as a member of the McGuffey Artists collective, I'm designing their ad for the upcoming "Best of C-Ville" annual magazine thing, too.

Wilson's Plover

From the sketch book.

Awesome Con Aftermath

A few weeks ago, I went to Awesome Con, DC.  I'm just now recovering enough to post a couple of the commissions I did that weekend.

Inktober Day 16

"Will You Dance" and sketches.

All of these were done with no pencil sketches, which is a skill I need to work on more, since I quite like the super-loose vibe you get from them.  Mistakes will crop up, but that's why you must not be afraid to fail and try again.

"Those people"

 You know the kind of people I'm talking about.  The kind that have eyes and wear shirts and walk around and do stuff and drink coffee sometimes.  There's just something about them that just ain't right.

The "Beefy"

 The "New Barista"

 The "Impatient"

 The "Nose"

 The "Goblin"

 The "Tendons"

 The "Shaggy"

 The "Studious"

 The "Ball"

 The "Freckles"

 The "Plain"

The "Marion Cotillard"

Coffee napkin sketches

Names provided when known, names made up when not.

Emily Masterson: Public Health and Economics at UVA

Victoria Petrone: fashion clerk, possible icon

Winston Raimy: Hardware store owner, retired

Samantha Rubestein: waitress, Bijou lunch bar

James Chow: Masters in e-Communications, UVA

Marissa Grenside: middle school student, ice cream aficionado

Sonja Mellany: Teaching assistant, women's studies, UVA

Mike Russoll: Master's in aquaculture, UVA

Enzo Bernalli: bike repairman

Carl Garcia: accountant, mountain biker

Jerry Pillsbury: music store clerk, Side Tracks LPs

Katy Gehred: Student of Jeffersonian history, Rochester

Frederick Caspar: Literary critic, Richmond Daily News

Eileen Wrunoss: nonfiction author

Summer Rolland: poet, English student, Piedmont

Baristas

Okay, from the top, some of the current and past latte-slingers at the Mudhouse, Charlottesville. They put up with me, and everybody knows my name.

Anna, JT, Megan, Hunter, Montana (retired), Phil, Eric, Laura, and Selena.

At some point, I'll get to the rest of you, if you ever slow down enough for me to catch you in ink.