Saturday, June 28, 2008

Saturday Is For Art






This week I am posting some pencil drawings that I then placed in old wood window frames. I don't know why I like to use old odd shaped wood window frames to frame my art, but for some reason I do. First, they are free and free frames are nice when you don't have much money to throw around. In fact, even when I had the money, I still liked using old wood frames when I found something that excited me enough to do a project with that frame. The first piece I drew in 1995. The houses are in downtown Dayton, Ohio on a street in the Oregon District where I parked my car for a number of years when I worked at a couple of banks in Dayton. The Oregon District is a historical district with lots of neat old homes. My idea behind this piece was to first photograph the houses and then do a pencil drawing so that when placed in the wood window frame and hung on the wall, it would look like the viewer was looking out of this window at two houses across the street. The drawing was an exercise in using a wide range of pencils with some very soft black lead and some with a harder lighter finish. The drawing is done on foam core board with a drawing surface on one side. The paperboards were cut to fit the frame with some minor woodworking so that two boards measuring 16 inches high by 22 inches wide could fit nicely in the frame.

I always liked to draw with a pencil from the time I was a little boy, but when I was a teenager, I did not think I drew well enough to pursue art. As a result of that feeling about my ability, I went in another direction. The last drawing is also framed in an old odd shaped wood window frame that came from the apartment building I lived in while I worked in Columbus, Ohio. I titled this piece My Icons. I finished this drawing in 2007.

5 comments:

Justpeachy said...

You should do more pencil drawings, they're very nice.

moneythoughts said...

Thank you Kathy for your nice comments. But it seems you and I are the only people that like my drawings. :)

Unknown said...

Wrong in that there is at least one more.

Unknown said...

I like the clarity of your objective : drawings of architecture, inserted in an architectural frame. Works pretty nicely, if you ask me!c

moneythoughts said...

Thanks for your comment Christopher. I never thought about this drawing like that, but I like your thinking. At the time I put this little project together, I just thought it would be clever, cool or neat (take your pick) to have this window frame giving the viewer a view of two house across the street. I remember in 1995, using my Nikon with black&white film (how ancient that seems now), and standing on the sidewalk across the street from my subject houses. I did exhibit the piece in late '95 at the old court house on the square in downtown Dayton for some historical art show about Dayton, Ohio.