New Drawings
Some recent drawings since I retired from the library in January: all images copyright 2023 by Michael D. Smith
Continue reading →Category Archives: Art Process
Asylum and Mirage: A Note on the Cover
The novel’s cover comes from my June 2005 abstract painting show at Dallas Public Library’s Bradshaw Gallery. As the previous posts about the book describe, I’d had the image of Dave’s art warehouse for many years, long before doing this … Continue reading →
Asylum and Mirage: Current Conditions
Artist Dave Raavenscorr picks up what he thinks is a college girl, but flees in panic when he discovers she’s Dr. Marina Nunn, chair of the Lake University Music Department and a refugee from the Reunion brainwashing catastrophe at Linstar … Continue reading →
The Super Colossal Mess Jungle 2.0
Following up on the building of the red stretcher and stretching its canvas, here’s the sequence of the completed painting, though as usual I forgot to chronicle all of it, so we see just a couple major steps and the … Continue reading →
Stretching the Canvas
This almost has to be demonstrated in person before it makes sense, but I’m giving it a verbal try here. First, vacuum the floor to get up items like cat hair. Unroll the canvas on the floor. Place the completed … Continue reading →
Construction of the Red Stretcher
This will be a non-adjustable stretcher. It doesn’t allow further adjusting of canvas tension as with commercially-made stretcher bars, which have corner slots that aren’t glued, along with pegs which you hammer into these slots to take up slack. However, … Continue reading →
Uncomplicated Redefinition
I had the idea of painting a 12” x 9” November journal drawing onto a 50” x 32” canvas, but when the morning to paint came and I studied what had been a fun and meditative drawing, I found myself … Continue reading →
Either the Orange Rhinoceros Tarot or the Sortmind Tarot
A new Tarot Card page on sortmind.com showcases a handful of the seventy-eight cards in my eccentric Tarot deck, which really doesn’t have a name so I guess two rough draft names will do for now. Sometime in 2000 the … Continue reading →
The Official Portrait
Jack Commer, the Official Portrait overpaints a despised pencil image. I’d entered the original October 2006 drawing, “Jack Commer, Supreme Commander, United System Space Force, ca. Summer 2036,” into a “Superheroes” art contest in Denison, Texas that fall and I’ve … Continue reading →
Trip to Mars, the Picture Book, or, How the Ship Became a Fantastical Theater Stage
My first “novel,” Trip to Mars, was fifty-five penciled pages in a small yellow notebook, starring Jack Commer and outlining the horrors of a 2033 World War IV and the evacuation of Earth’s surviving population to Mars. Was the sixth … Continue reading →