Artist spotight: Tom Bob - NYC street artist

I love this style of art: finding everyday dreary Street Furniture (as he calls them) and having the vision to see how they can be made to look like something new and fun. I am showing a few here but check out this article  for the whole story  and more acts of creative vandalism that helps make the city a happier place. 
making a  mess of utility meters look like a lobster trap

 or making two manhole covers look like 2 Pacman figures gobbling up power points

the snake is my favorite

New Painting: Tisbury Sunrise - Marthas Vineyard

Hi, I am back
I had a bit of a painter block for a while, but that is over now.  To begin again, I turned to one of my favorite muses - Vineyard Colors FB page
Love Marthas Vineyard and I am becoming rather good at doing sunrise and sunset on water pictures
This painting is called Tisbury Sunrise - Marthas Vineyard. I rotated the picture because I want to do a 2018 Art of Jack Mckenzie Calendar. As usual you can buy a mug with this image from Zazzle

more art memes to encouage us

This is an ongoing series of art memes 
We artists can be a moody lot sometimes. We question what we are doing and why and need some encouragement to keep going on.her ar a few art quotes I've com across that do just that. Check them out.

New Painting : Moon Over Great Bay Beach

(I painted this a few weeks ago, but I was having trouble getting into the blog)
My usual subjects are barns, covered bridges, Nantucket & Martha's Vineyard to name a few, but occasionally a picture pops up on social media that piques my interest and begs to painted. This is one of them.
One of the artists I follow on FB, Twitter and and Instagram is Lori McNee. She lives in Colorado and she paints, write books, has classes on many places, the most recent was a plein air trip to Monet's Giverny  Gardens . Check out her website Fine Art Tips.
She vacations in the Virgin Islands and she posted a picture on Instagram of her standing out on the Great Bay Beach at night looking across the bay in a full moon. I decide I needed to paint it and I posted that on the picture and she said go for it.
I checked out a few Youtube videos on painting moonlight on the ocean  and came up with this

from the original picture

Not bad for a first time at this type of picture. I may revisit this in the future for a better version. For now, I'm happy with it.

New Painting: Nantucket Main Street Snowfall

Have I said before that I love Nantucket? I agree with Holly Finigan of NantucketBlACKbook (one of the Gray Lady's premier bloggers) that it is my happy place. It is one of my favorite subjects, usually summer or sunrise/sunset scenes. Then the Townpool Nantucket Store Posted an after snowfall photo on their FB page and I had to paint it. Its all the basic Nantucket white or gray houses but on the right hand side was a red brick building and I had to paint it.  Check out their page with lots of drone based sunset shots and some interesting merchandise
And as usual, you can get mugs from Zazzle of this image

Mourning Tyrus Wong - Bambi Artist

When an artist dies who has had an impact, despite being relatively unknown, it needs to be noted. 106 year old artist Tyrus Wong died, whose artistry was essenttal to the success of the old Disney movie Bambi. He was also known around the Santa Monica beach for his amazing kites.

As for Bambi - “He basically created the look of the film,” said Michael Labrie, director of collections at the Walt Disney Family Museum in San Francisco. He curated an exhibition of Wong’s work in 2013.  “Everything you see on the screen -- the other artists were trained to draw like Tyrus for that film.” Walt Disney made the final decision to use Tyrus's art to create the look of the film.
Check out  the Tyrus Wong story here.

Art Quote Memes - to encourage us

We artists can be a moody lot sometimes. We question what we are doing and why and need some encouragement to keep going on.her ar a few art quotes I've com across that do just that. Check them out.