Sunday, August 20, 2006

Weekend

I didn't do a whole lot this weekend. On Friday I wanted to hang out with my buddy John who recently became single. He's been having a tough time with it and I thought it might be nice to get him out of the house. So I picked him up at his house at around 6 o clock. From there we drove over to my buddy Dave's house stopping at the liquor store on the way. When we got there we were the first ones to arrive. John had never been over to Dave's house before so he showed him around. We played a game of horseshoes as more people slowly started arriving. Last weekend the girls had planned a "girl's night" out so this was our "guy's night". Dave built a fire and we sat around the fire and played horseshoes all night. It was me, Dave, John, Dave's brother-in-law Brian, his buddy, Don, Brandon, Dave's dad, T-bone, Joe, and Steve Oquist. Pretty fun, laid back night, aside from the fact that Dave pelted me in the shin with a fricking horseshoe. I'm fine though. We all stayed up until like 3:30 in the morning. I didn't sleep very well over at his house that night for some reason. Got like 2 hours of sleep total.

I brought John home at around 7 the next morning and drove over to Kenny's. I had told him that I would go golfing with him earlier in the week. I've been practicing chipping alot lately so I was really curious to see how I'd shoot. When we got to the course there was about an hour and a half wait. So we drove into Marne to a pizza place and had some pizza. We went back to the course and chipped around a little bit till they called our name. Me and Kenny were shooting pretty well but it seemed like everyone else on the course were shooting like shit. There were constantly people shooting onto our fairways, almost hitting us. I'm pretty easy going on the course but it pissed Kenny off a couple of times. I was ahead most of the game but Kenny came back on the last couple holes to beat me. I shot a 41 and he shot a 40. But it was a fun time. Next weekend is his bachelor party which we are golfing at so I will kick his ass then. Here's the scorecard from Saturday:
Image Hosted by ImageShack.us

I am still working on the commission drawing but it is almost done now. The deadline for the drawing is next Monday so I will ship it off this week sometime to California.

Wednesday, August 09, 2006

New Commission

I worked some more on the colored pencil drawing of Tiger Woods today. I did some more of his shirt. But now I will have to put that off for a while because I recieved a commission today. It's for a guy in Los Angeles. He wants me to do a portrait of himself and his fiance. He chose a bigger size too, which is awesome because I have really been diggin working bigger lately.

I talked to Kenny earlier in the day today and he asked me to go play some golf. That sounded good to me so I got ready and took off to his house. Then we drove another 20 minutes to a golf course South of Grand Rapids. It's the same course we played on Sunday, Mullenhurst. My game was really on today though. I made some really awesome shots. When I was shooting like I was today, golf is really fun. Some days you are on, some days off I guess.

I got home at around 11 PM and started work on this new commission. It's going well so far. I got the outline done and started on his hair. This one will go slow but I am going to work alot on it in the coming days. I have to have it done by the 28th.

Tuesday, August 08, 2006

Tiger Woods CP

I am now 2 days into my colored Tiger Woods drawing. It's going really well so far. I think it's looking very realistic and I'm pretty happy with the skin tones. I have never drawn a dark skinned person in colored pencil. Hell, I haven't drawn very many dark skinned people in graphite either. I feel like my colored drawings have improved drastically recently and I hope this new one isn't an exception. I have probably spent around 6 or 7 hours on this drawing so far but it feels like I am going very slow. This is a full figure drawing of Tiger swinging an iron. I have the face, hat, arms, and part of his shirt done right now. I don't want to scan this drawing yet to show an update because I don't want the pigments to smear. I think I will wait until the end to scan it and let it be a surprise to everyone. A few more hours to work on it tonight and then i will call it a night. :)

Monday, August 07, 2006

06 Buick Open

This weekend was so cool. I really had alot of fun. On Friday I talked to my buddy, Kenny on the phone. He told me that he was going to go to the Buick Open, which is a PGA (professional golf association) event. I told him that I would love to go to that and he said he wished he would have known because he would have bought me a ticket when he got his. So I got off the phone with him and about an hour later he called back saying that he managed to get an extra ticket. I drove down to Grand Rapids on Friday night to get a frame for the Trans AM drawing and I went shopping with my mom for a while. I had planned on going to either Dave's house or Kenny's that night but decided to just go home and get some rest. I knew Saturday was going to be a long day. So I woke up Saturday at around 6 AM. Got all ready and drove down to Kenny's house. We hit the road for the Buick Open at around 8. The event was in Grand Blanc which is a couple hours away. We finally arrived. I have a little bit of a phobia about big crowds so when we got there I had a couple shots in the car. Then we got out and walked over to the shuttle busses. On the way over to the busses an event worker told us that we could jump into any of the Buick Lacernes that were lined up. So we jumped in a car and the guy drove us over to the country club. We got there and walked up to the front gates. Kenny's fiance's mom was at the Open too and we had to wait for her to bring us the tickets so we waited by the entrance and watched some of the pros on the driving range. I was really star struck at first because I see all these guys on television but it's totally different seeing them in person. Fred Funk was driving about 20 feet from us. So his future mother in law finally showed up with the tickets and we were admitted. We started walking around the place. Made our way over to the practice green where there were TONS of people. I saw John Daly immediately. It was so cool. Then John packed up his stuff and he was walking to his first hole. We followed him because his group was first. We folloed him for a couple holes and then moved on when we got word that Tiger Woods was going to be starting his day. We got over to his hole and stood by the ropes. I don't think many people knew where Tiger was going to be because it was pretty dead over there at first. We saw a group go past us but no Tiger. Then I saw a really dark guy coming over the top of the hill. Tiger?!! Nope. But it was Vijay Singh!!! He had a really tough second shot underneath a tree. He swung his club and THUMP...hit the tree and ricacheted over towards where me and Kenny were standing!!! Me and Kenny both looked at eachother and he said "dude, he's going to walk right past us!". So he came looking for his ball and I actually got to hold the rope up for him to get to his ball!! It was really crazy how close I was to him. He nodded to me too when I held the rope for him. I actually might have been on television at that part of the day if they were following him at that time. So finally Vijay figured out his shot and hit. Then the next group was Tiger!!! I was really star struck seeing him. He walked right past us and I yelled out "C'mon Tiger!!". He tipped his hat in my direction. It was really surreal. Then we followed him to the next hole. After the next hole he walked right past us...like 5 feet away from me. Again I yelled to him..."Yeah Tiger!!" and then started clapping. Alot of other people started clapping too. I started a gallery applause for him as he walked by!! Anyone reading this is probably like "what a nerd for getting so excited about this" but I love golf. I watch it whenever it's on tv and these guys are heros to me. We followed Tiger for a couple more holes and then decided to go watch someone else. So as we were walking I saw Jim Furyk on a hole and told Kenny I wanted to watch him for a while. He was a really nice guy. Always said thank you to people if they said encouraging words, always aknowledged people's applause. I yelled out to him a couple times too. Then we got a little bored with watching him. I think we were both a little sick of standing in the middle of mobs of people too so we went to watch some of the lesser known players. We made our way over to a group with hardly any spectators. One of the players hit his ball right by the ropes so we walked over to check out the lie and watch him hit his next shot up close. He came over and I nodded to him, he nodded back and conversed with his caddy for a second. Then he chose a club and hit his shot. It really wasn't a bad shot but he got EXTREMELY pissed off and threw his club and started swearing. He was a really young guy, probably younger than me and Kenny. His name was Jeff Overton. Then on his next shot he did the same thing, cussing and throwing his clubs. I couldn't believe they let him react like that in a professional event. He was like the real Happy Gilmore, hahaha. We followed him for a while and then got tired. We watched Kenny Perry then. He was a really nice guy too. Then we both were really tired from being in the sun all day and decided to call it a day. We made our way to the bus and it took us back to the car. It was a day that I won't soon forget. I really had a good time. I am already looking forward to going next year!! The only thing that sucked about the event was that you were not allowed to have a camera or a phone. I really would have liked to get some pictures of these guys :(

Saturday night we went back to Jennie's house. We just swam in the pool and went in the hot tub. Everyone was drinking but I was too tired, didn't even feel like drinking. I stayed the night over at Jennie's house and then the next day me and Kenny went golfing with his uncle. We went to a course called Mulenhurst. I brought my camera with me but only took one picture. We played 18 holes, it was really fun after watching the pros the previous day.

Free Image Hosting at www.ImageShack.us

I delivered the Trans AM drawing too. The customer was really happy with it. He liked the framing and matting too. I'm glad I got to draw another car. Hopefully I will do another one sometime.

After all the golf action this weekend I decided I wanted to do a portrait of Tiger Woods. I looked around for some pictures of him online. I thought it would be pretty cool to draw one of him from Saturday so I found one that I liked and started it tonight. I am not really far enough to show an update but I will soon.

Thursday, August 03, 2006

Finished up

Well I have finally finished the Trans AM commission drawing. I worked on it for about 5 more hours today until it was completed. It feels good to have it done now and I can relax on the weekend and come back with something new on Monday. Hopefully it will be another commission (if you want me to do a commission for you, send me an e-mail this weekend with a reference picture). Otherwise I might just mess around with my new pastels.

Tomorrow I am going to go into town early so I can go to the frame shop. I will get this Trans AM framed an matted and possibly deliver it to my customer. When I get it to the customer I will see about taking some pictures of him with the drawing, maybe even get his car in a picture too, that'd be cool.

I will probably be gone most of this weekend. But if you send me mail or anything I always check all my stuff when I get home on Sunday. :)

Here is the finished drawing:

Free Image Hosting at www.ImageShack.us

Wednesday, August 02, 2006

Trans AM Still

I have been doing sit-ups every night since the beginning of the year at 10 PM (my new years resolution) so I think I will update this blog everynight around that time too. If something becomes routine, then it's alot easier to keep up with.

The Trans AM drawing is still coming along very slowly. I am getting anxious to have it done now but I still need to slow myself down and do a good job on it. I probably have a couple hours of work on it still. This drawing has taken a very long time. I have enjoyed it but it will be nice to move on and get started on something else. Still no set in stone plans for the next project. Here's a couple pictures...an update and one of me working on it. Please look past my naked upper body...it's extremely hot here in Michigan these days.

Free Image Hosting at www.ImageShack.us

Free Image Hosting at www.ImageShack.us

Something totally not art related. We just got a call from our neighbor saying that her internet was not working and she couldn't figure it out. So I jump on my 4-wheeler and ride over to her house. When I get there she leads me to the den where the computer is and explains that it keeps saying "cannot connect to server". So I sit down and click on her AOL icon. Everything comes up fine. Then she says "Oh, I thought you just click on the Internet Explorer icon and it will be online". I then explained to her that some people's internet works like that but since we live in the middle of nowhere, cable modems aren't an option. Hahaha. It kind of cracked me up because of how computer illiterate some people are. Or maybe I'm just a fricking nerd and I need my ass beat. :)

Thanks for reading.

Tuesday, August 01, 2006

Trans AM Winding Down

I have been working on this Trans AM drawing for a while tonight. I really think this is turning out great. I almost don't want to give it to my client, haha. Anyways, I worked some more on the fender area, hood, and the other wheel. The new wheel took me a very long time. I wanted it to be very lusterous and chrome looking. Also I tried to make it very precise so that it looked somewhat "real". My mechanical pencils were used quite a bit on both the wheels. This project ate up a whole 3B pencil too, haha. I thought I'd try something different on the cast shadow so I pulled up some lines with an eraser giving a grassy effect. I should have this drawing done either tomorrow or possibly the next day.

Trans AM

My next project is pretty much up in the air. I do know that I'd like to do a sort of character drawing of myself possibly to use on my website. I haven't drawn a "cartoony" drawing in a very long time and I think it would be kind of fun to break away from realism and work freehand for a change. I have recieved quite a few inquiries on commissioned drawings so far this week which is an awesome thing. I need all the work I can get.

Hello

Hi everyone. I just made this blog. My name is Brian Duey and I am from Grand Rapids, MI. I am an artist who specializes in pencil drawings. My website is located at http://www.dueysdrawings.com/
if you'd like to have a look. My intent with this blog is to record ideas that I have for upcoming works and to talk about anything art related. I will also talk a little bit about things that are going on in my personal life. I am hoping to update this quite often.

I am currently working on a drawing for a client of his Pontiac Trans AM. It's going pretty well so far. I'd say that I'm probably about 70% done with it. I talked with the client this past weekend and he seemed very happy with the way the work was going. He really liked the wheels in particular and he kept asking me how I was able to get a "chrome" look with just graphite pencils. I always love it when a customer is as excited about a drawing as I am. It motivates me even more and makes me take some extra time to add the little details that I know he will appreciate. Here's an update on the current work:

Free Image Hosting at www.ImageShack.us


I'm really not sure what's next for me after this commission is done. I purchased a 45 piece set of Rembrandt pastels (portrait colors) about a week ago and I've been really excited to use them. So maybe I will get those out and experiment a little bit. Otherwise I have a couple of concept ideas that I'd like to get down on paper. I have alot of ideas scribbled down on a piece of paper next to my work area. I am going to type them out here just in case the paper is misplaced. If you are an artist, please do not rip off any of these ideas. They are very intimate ideas, that were straight from MY imagination. This is mostly just for my record:


*Portrait behind glass
*Portrait behind paper showing all folds and ripples in the paper
*Taped Paper
*Behind table looking at playing cards coming to life
*Matches
*Portrait with padlock in picture with key hanging down (hands shackled)
*Colored cloud background, key with gasket around it in the middle, self portrait at the bottom looking up, keyhole in forehead
*Self portrait split up into blocks with hands coming through the blocks and cast shadows
*Grayscale self portrait with colored angel on shoulder whispering into an ear, colored devil on the other
*Broken alcohol bottle with liquid all over, small self figure looking up from wreckage

Thanks for reading and I will update soon.