M I C H A E L G R I F F I N

A great mind once said...

“Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working.” - Pablo Picasso It’s hard not to regret time spent idle… it’s easy to see that time as wasted. I just have to learn from it and try to see it all as part of the journey. A lot of time was spent looking around and wondering how I could do work that I could be happy with – thinking about what I wanted to do and not doing it. The problem is… ideas don’t develop themselves. Skill isn’t something that just shows up by its self

Silver and gold..

Silver and gold..

I finished that silverpoint portrait I was working on today and am quite happy about the effect it has… I was struggling to get deeper contrast between light and dark and going over and over areas to get more dramatically shaded areas but I think that’s part of the beauty of this medium… it takes a very light hand – at least when drawing in this style. I was thinking about drawing with gold and silver earlier today and about how cool it is when I realized something – I’ve nev

My nephew

For beauty..

I stumbled across a blog just now and read an entry that was made just after a big school shooting in Connecticut. The author of this blog focuses on figurative art and does a good amount of model drawings and figure studies… He posts pictures of work by a lot of old masters and like me, tries to learn from them – working on his technique and style. This entry that caught my eye was about beauty… it was worded very well and had some pretty cool quotes that I thought I’d share

Another silverpoint... with a twist.

Another silverpoint... with a twist.

I decided to tint my gesso and highlight a drawing done with silverpoint and see how it turned out.. I was pretty happy with this one. I used a white wax pencil to highlight the legs and some white ink on the sharper details but I think in the future I’ll just go with the white ink unless the background is really dark…. the wax is too soft of a highlight. voila… Like I said… I’m very excited about this medium and figure I’ll most likely be doing a lot of this in the future….

Learning never stops..

Learning never stops..

I found myself out of luck one semester in art school… I thought I’d try Industrial Design because I figured with my past in the movie industry I could get a job designing props and sets for movies but it turned out that I.D. just wasn’t what I’d figured it would be. After a semester in that area of study I was completely screwed (for lack of better words)… probably one of the things that led to my disappointment in the school. The problem wasn’t in the Industrial Design prog

FIRED UP!

FIRED UP!

I’M EXCITED!!!! I’m drawing in silver right now and it has a better quality than I’d even imagined. Much like the ballpoint drawing that I’ve been doing recently, it seems to be an unforgiving medium but it has a magical, ethereal quality that can’t be achieved with pencil… and it doesn’t smudge. No toxic sprays are needed to fix it and make it more permanent… it just is what it is. Another cool thing is that over time it tarnishes and turns a beautiful sepia colour. Looking

Some old sketches..

Some old sketches..

I am in the middle of moving my stuff from one studio to another and came across some of my old sketchbooks… Lotsa stuff in there that I wouldn’t care to share but there are some things that I don’t mind if people look at… There were a few good drawings that I did while I was in Italy… Most of the time I spent taking pictures cause I just needed to capture as much as I could. There’s so much all around you there that you could never ever see it all, let alone draw it. One day

Treacherous ground... alone.

I was called by a friend today who lost a relative to suicide…. I feel like I’m being pulled to do some work on depression. I believe that this is a topic that a lot of people need to talk more about. For me, it was tough to talk to people about it for a number of reasons. One thing that stopped me was that I didn’t want to bother people with my problems… (I told a buddy a while ago about a close call I had when I was at my worst and he asked why I didn’t call… I said that i

An amazing machine

An amazing machine

The human body is an amazing machine and the more I learn about it the more interesting it gets… I am moving on to the bones and muscles of the neck finally and am beginning to realize how much I have forgotten. All the names of these muscles and bones have a familiar ring to them as I read them out and get flashbacks to my third and fourth year of Art School… digging into anatomy books and drawing models – eating bagels, instant noodles, apples and weak cafeteria coffee on m

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