Some scans of a set completed on February 6, 2014. This set is a recent favorite and I ended up using some tile grout as texture for a few of these. The results were pretty nice and I'm really feeling like a shift in materials is going to happen really soon. 

I'm including some process and overview photos as well.

As always they are just beyond the old Read More break. Have at it.

The small set that I did on September 24, 2013 is really nice. This is an example of where I really set out to do something purposeful and almost ruined it for trying too hard. My birthday is September 23rd and when my kid sister was first pregnant she was due on my birthday and I was really excited about this. It turned out that my niece Ali wasn't born until the 24th but I was ecstatic all the same.

My niece Ali is already an adult just about. And I don't get to see her very much anymore and I was hoping to do something nice for her. I ended up overworking and over-thinking these pieces when I first began working on them and later on after just letting go of some desired outcome I just painted and the results were close to perfect.

I love this set a lot.

Included behind the old Read More link down there are the scans and some overview photos too.

So this set I finished the other day was one I labored over and I'm not sure if I like it entirely or what I really think of it at all. It's weird how things from your life kind of seep into your art and I recognize now that I subconsciously pulled in some stuff from Carl Jung and Love and Rockets.

I had been reading this Jung book that I bought the other day at an estate sale and I was listening to Love and Rockets a whole lot during this time.

The Jung book was laying out and I am sure that I pulled some stuff from it. I'd also, as I said before, been listening to a lot of Love and Rockets and had been talking about the lyrics to Express Kundalini with Katherine. They have been such a monumental influence on me in many ways and I really value their music and lyrics. [I cannot express this properly in words without sounding syrupy or contrived.]

Anyway, this set started out really fantastic and then I got frustrated with it. And then managed to save it some until I just stopped where it was before I ruined them completely. In looking at them a bit later as I scanned them I do like how they turned out though.

The scans and some progress photos are included below.

A small set done on September 17, 2013.

I'm always really hesitant to use purples for whatever reason. Each time I do the results are always really terrific and I need to just get over it.

This whole set is fantastic.

Some overview photos are included.

A small set completed on September 16, 2013.

Some overview photos are included.

I have this love/hate relationship with technology. I'm confident that my great friend Kim would probably say it had something to do with the fact that I am born on the cusp of Virgo and Libra. I'm not sure about this but I do know that one of the things that I like about the One Thousand Thousand project is that it hits on both a technical and creative level which appeals to me greatly.

When I'm creatively tapped out I can switch gears and do the technical stuff like documentation and web updates and that sort of thing. And one of the major aspects of this project is the documentation of it. The dreaded scanning of the work.

I complain about the scanning a lot but the truth is I kind of make it my meditation for the time and I certainly don't hate it. But what I do find really frustrating is the fact that quite often the pieces I scan end up not looking exactly like the actual pieces. The color is sometimes a little off. And ultimately I try and correct the things with software and am mostly satisfied. [The pieces I end up posting online for sale are always reviewed to make sure the scans are accurate.] But I've constantly run into trouble with some colors. Hot pinks and bright oranges just never seem to translate and until recently I've sort of just accepted this as the way it is with scanners and certain colors.

This morning I got a nice email from artist Frank Phillips and he let me know that the piece I sent him had arrived and that I had included an extra piece and he wondered if I had made a mistake. He scanned the piece in question and I was floored by seeing the colors of it represented so accurately in his scan.

My scan of piece #324,987 is above. And the scan of the same piece from Frank is just below.

Some process photos of two separate sets that I've been working on for the last two days. The blue set is finished and was completed on September 16th and the green-ish set from September 17th is just now finished but I'm waiting for the ink to dry.

I loved figure drawing class in college and was really, really good at it. I loved using the little ink pot and I could get some of the most amazing results using India ink and some stick I found on the ground and kept all through college. I like that I've started playing around a bit more with the ink.

Anyway, these look great already and I'm looking forward to you seeing the finished pieces.

I'm never not surprised by how good this set is each time I see them.

If you search online for terms like "why does my scanner never seem to be able to correctly scan colors like hot pink and bright orange" you'll find plenty of instances where people seem to be frustrated about the same issue. This set is a classic example of such a thing. The hot pinks I used in these does seem kind of muted.

The photos included with these scans do a bit better at capturing the colors.

Anyway, these are some of my recent favorites.

I did this little set of 12 in near record time. I think that from start to finish I was done in about an hour and a half. I say this not to serve as some sort of accolade-seeking accomplishment but to make it clear that I really didn't allow myself much time to overthink things. [And then overwork things.] When I just sort of turn off any though

Anyway, I'm really pleased with them as a set and individually I think they are all really, really strong. I'm opting to keep this entire set as 6 separate pairs.

The scans and some process photos are just below.

I'm not sure why I'm slowing down a bit more lately. It's not that we're trying to make a million pieces of original art and we're running out of steam. It's something internal I'm feeling about the latest pieces I've been doing and the most recent approaches I've been using. That's something that I'm working on figuring out though and I'm having some really productive dialogues in my head about the whole thing. And that's just another aspect of this project that causes me to appreciate it so much.

So I have been doing these smaller sets and for this one I used the matte side of the boards as opposed to the glossy side. The matte side works better for more delicate mediums like watercolor and I have some turquoise ink I wanted to use.

I really like this set and it's great to have a project or exercise such as the One Thousand Thousand project to kind of serve as a reason to keep pushing through whatever rut you feel you might be in. The results will not always be what you expected and they won't always be perfect but they'll still be results. And just having results is, in some Socratic sort of way, perfect by default.

Scans and some detail and overview photos are included.

A ceramics teacher announced on opening day that he was dividing the class into two groups. All those on the left side of the studio, he said, would be graded solely on the quantity of work they produced, all those on the right solely on its quality.

His grading procedure was simple: on the final day of class he would bring in his bathroom scale and weigh the work of the "quantity" group: fifty pounds of pots rated an "A", forty pounds a "B", and so on. Those being graded on "quality", however, needed to produce only one pot - albeit a perfect one - to get an "A".

When the class came to an end and when the grading began and a curious fact emerged: the works of the highest quality were all produced by the group being graded for quantity.

It seems that while the "quantity" group was busily churning out piles of work - and learning from their mistakes - the "quality" group had sat theorizing about perfection, and in the end had little more to show for their efforts than grandiose theories and a pile of dead clay.

[This little anecdote is attributed to David Bayles and Ted Orland and I'm not sure of much more than that.]

I did this really nice little set on June 21, 2013 and although I really liked it a lot I still felt like they weren't entirely finished. One issue I had with them was that as a group they seemed only slightly different from one another. So I kept them around with the intention of revisiting them in some way. Around six weeks later I looked at them again and couldn't see the what I saw before. Looking at them with fresh eyes I really loved them a lot and I think they are some of the more rich pieces that I've done in a while.

Still, in the interest of addressing my earlier concerns about them I brought them along to the studio the other day to print over some of them.

Some photos of the studio and printing process are included.

Another series of photos that show the process used most frequently to create a bulk of the pieces in the One Thousand Thousand project. In this particular set I used some collage material as background for some of the pieces.

The finished pieces are posted here.

This is a large-ish series of photos and I'm tucking it away behind the trusty old Read More link.

This set was completed on July 22, 2013 and I am incredibly pleased with every single one. I remember feeling a bit overwhelmed this day and was probably anxious about the show that was coming up on August 2, 2013. I had a lot to do that week and was not really into making more paintings.

I decided to do something different and I used a jar of school paste to generate some texture. I colored the white paste with brown acrylic paint and just sort of added it around in areas. The results are fantastic and these look really nice. It took a day or so for the glue to even dry completely and I ended up grabbing these pieces and using them in the show without ever scanning them first. I sold some of them before I remembered I hadn't scanned them all.

I pulled the rest and kept them aside and I just now had time to scan them. Some additional overview and detail photos of this set as it was being completed are also included.

Some detail and overview photos of this set are posted just below. It got dark outside as I was finishing these so some of the photos are certainly not the best.

Some of the pieces that were done on August 1, 2013.

I was doing these outside in the garden and I tossed a little handful of sand onto some layers of the paint. The texture is really terrific and I am really excited about the idea of doing more along these lines.

I was rushing to get things ready for showing at South First Friday on August 2, 2013 and didn't have time to scan these sooner. I also sold off a handful before I could scan them and these are what I have left from this set. [One of the reasons why I am seriously in the habit of photographing these things at most every stage.]

And speaking of documentation I'm including some of those overview photos of this set as they were being completed. The photos just about always look better than any of the scans I typically produce. I really wish I had an easier system for documenting each of these pieces in a less headache-inducing way.

And the individual scans are here:

Apparently I overlooked scanning this set and I realize that a good number of them were sold off at the show last weekend. This is precisely why I have tried to get into the habit of photographing these things as I finish them.

There are 21 pieces in this set and they are #325,194 through #325,214.

Anyway, I'll scan whatever pieces I have left over. Until then here are some overview photos.

Still another set from July that I really like a lot. The image at left is a detail of the group as it was being completed and I'm also including a handful more of those in-the-process shots.

Most of these went pretty quickly at the South First Fridays event over the weekend and I'm glad that people liked them as much as I do. The texture on these is pretty great and I realize that I want to do some more that incorporate some seriously tangible textures.

The photos are just below the Read More link.

The set that was done on July 19, 2013 is kind of a mixed bag for me. About exactly half of them I am incredibly happy with and the other half don't entirely work for me. I dunno. It happens like that sometimes.

I used a portion of the colors that I had still laying out from the set done earlier and in that sense they look like they are related to the July 18, 2013 set.

I have learned a lot from making art over the years and one thing for sure is that just because I love a piece doesn't mean everyone else will. And just because I'm not entirely won over by some of the work doesn't mean that others will feel the same way. Whatever. I don't know why I feel the need to make excuses for any of my work. It's ridiculous.

The rest of the pieces from this set as well as a couple of overview photos are just below.

This little group was one of three sets that were completed at KALEID Gallery. They were actually done on July 16, 2013 but I accidentally stamped them with the wrong date.

Working in collaboration is pretty great in a lot of ways and it forces you to contend with outside input and produces results that you'd probably not achieve on your own. This was a fun set to do and some of the pieces turned out to be really, really nice. A few still need a little bit of work and I'm planning on adding a lino-cut print over them. Maybe.

The rest are just below behind the good old Read More link.

Sometimes when you're making so many paintings in such a short amount of time you'll invariably feel like some of the pieces just don't click for you. It happens all of the time. To every artist regardless of some project.

A solution for this is to pass the work on to someone else. But it's mainly just to get them out of your mind in some way.

I frequently send my pieces like this off to Christopher and he'll do the same. So recently Christopher completed a set and he just didn't feel like they were somehow finished so he sent them to me. He asked that I add something to them. But when I got them I really liked them the way that they were and wasn't inclined to really add anything more to them. So they sat around until just now and Katherine and I used some of them to print over.

The image gallery is just below.