• More legal trouble for Annie Leibovitz. (The New York Times)
• Canada's New North (?) as represented by the drawings of Annie Pootoogook at the National Museum of the American Indian in New York. (The New York Times)
• Roads and Rain, an exhibition of photographs by Iranian painter, poet and film-maker Abbas Kiarostami has opened in London. (The Guardian)

Evening Gloves
gouache
30.5 x 40.6 cm (12" x 16")

This painting was done last night during a three hour modelling session, using cheap paint and a restricted palette. It came off better than I anticipated.

• Was the real Raymond Carver editor Gordon Lish? (The Times)
• The ascent of music. (Commonweal)

Girl with Red Sleeves
graphite, ink, and oil pastel
40.6 x 30.5 cm (16" x 12")

Just a portrait.

• Winnipeg-based artist Diana Thornycroft takes on Canada's Group of Seven at the McMichael Canadian Art Collection north of Toronto. (The Winnipeg Free Press)
• The site Chelsea Art Galleries has undergone a change. It's now oneartworld and it has expanded its coverage. The art world still begins in Chelsea, but it now includes the rest of the world. (edward_ winkleman)

Milton Glaser: a short video portrait of design legend Milton Glaser by Hillman Curtis. (For more on Milton Glaser check miltonglaser.com)

• Discount Warhols. (Bloomberg)

• Two joint auction houses in Canada, Sotheby's and Ritchies, have split. (The Globe and Mail)
• The changing face of the news and journalism. (The New York Review of Books)
• 'America's Worst Mom." (STATS)

Model Reading
acrylic and pastel
40.6 x 30.5 cm (16" x 12")

This painting is acceptable for me, given the time I had to do it. The hand holding the bottom edge of the book looks little suspicious, though. It looks a bit like a lobster claw.

Billy Bob Beamer is an American artist living in Virginia. His small beautiful abstract drawings are a world of delicate detail and text. They are meant to be handled and examined in detail, in parts with a magnifying glass. I love looking at his drawings. There is something peaceful and reassuring about them. Two of his drawings, one with three different views, are posted below. You can see more of Billy Bob's work here and here.

Today is the last day to catch Billy Bob's work in an exhibition called Lilliput at the Walsh Gallery in Seton Hall University in New Jersey.

Landing Lights
graphite on paper

Billy Bob Beamer

Accessing the Astral Plane
(from the Green Hill series)
graphite on paper
10.2 x 10.2 cm (4" x 4")

Billy Bob Beamer

Accessing the Astral Plane
(from the Green Hill series)
graphite on paper
10.2 x 10.2 cm (4" x 4")

Billy Bob Beamer

Accessing the Astral Plane
(from the Green Hill series) (close up)

Billy Bob Beamer

Arm Back
charcoal and pastel 20.3 x 45.7 cm (8" x 18")

This is a casual drawing which I am not in love with.

• Dash Snow, an artist not to emulate. (The Toronto Star)
• Need a master's degree in art crime. (The New York Times)
• Republishing Hemingway. (The New York Times)

• Lillian Bassman, photographer. (The New York Times) (slideshow - The New York Times)
• L.A.'s Watts Towers are in need of some cash. (The Los Angeles Times) (via C-Monster)
• Winnipeg born artist, Sarah Anne Johnson, her grandmother, and the CIA. (The Globe and Mail)

Canadian Flag
ink, charcoal, and pastel
29.2 x 21.3 cm (11.5" x 8.4")

This model brought a Canadian flag with him to use as a sarong and as a spread to lie on. It seemed quite an appropriate use of a flag to the model as well as myself.

Yellow Foot
charcoal and pastel
45.7 x 61.0 cm (18" x 24")

This drawing may not be finished. It seems dull. Maybe more colour in the figure would help (and a reddish, instead of yellowish, face). If I rework it I'll post it again.

• "Spectacularly useless at best, and positively harmful at worst". Is this quote from economist Paul Krugman an accurate description of economics? (The Economist)
• An Isaiah Berlin not to be remembered. (The Times)
• 50 strange buildings. (Village of Joy) (via things magazine)

The Omo People: photographs by Hans Sylvester. (via Illustration Art)

• A really good example of how to write critically about art. (St. Cloud State University Chronicle) (via C-Monster)
• Shirtboards and how to write on them, with an example from Gay Talese. (greg.org) (via C-Monster)
• A cool castle. (Tokyobling's Blog)(Thanks, Doug Melnyk)

Weird Hair
ink
15.2 x 17.8 cm (6" x 7")

Weird hair? Weird drawing.

• The man who knew what women want. (Slate)
• Is marriage obsolete? (The Atlantic)
• The age of wonder. (Barnes & Noble Review)

Double Portrait
acrylic
30.5 x 20.4 cm (12" x 8")

This is a very old drawing. I only have a vague memory of doing it.

It was done by scratching, or if you like, scraping the image into an acrylic film which had been painted onto a clear acrylic panel. The effect is interesting, although I have never followed up on this experiment.

• Winnipeg pays tribute to sculptor Leo Mol. (The Winnipeg Free Press)
• Ed Winkleman's new book, How To Start and Run A Commercial Art Gallery, is now available either through your local bookstore or through Amazon.com. (Edward_ Winkleman)

• Oddly enough, the award for the best new tall building in the Americas for 2009 goes to a Winnipeg building. The envelope please. (CTBUH)
• Two sculptures have recently gone missing in eastern Canada: one stolen in Saint-André-d'Argenteuil (CBC News), and the other spirited away by aliens in New Brunswick (CBC News). For more Canadian mysteries click here.

Young Woman
charcoal and pastel
25.4 x 45.7 cm (10" x 18") ■

This particular young woman is a writer, poetess, and artist in addition to being an excellent model.

• The perils of self esteem. Example: Sarah Palin. (The Wall Street Journal)
• A great interview with Gay Talese. (The Paris Review) (via C-Monster)

Woman Reclining
charcoal, pastel, and oil
61 x 45.7 cm (24" x 18")

The first version of Woman Reclining was originally posted on March 31, 2009. I decided to rework the drawing by going over some parts with oil paint. It's an improvement.

The first Woman Reclining has been reposted below.

Danse Ruse : read by William Carlos Williams. (via UbuWeb)

Partial Portrait
graphite and gouache
34.8 x 26.4 cm (13.7" x 10.4")

Why is there only half a head in this portrait? I can't remember why I painted this like it is, but I kind of like it.

• Vladimir Tatlin and his tower . (The Literary Review)
• The Casual Optimist, a blog about books and the book trade.

Untitled No. 6
watercolour
26.7 x 19.1 cm (10.5" x 7.5")

The only thing to say about this painting is that it is quite an old work.

• The ARTnews top 200 collectors. (ARTnews)
• A cautionary note for artists: plastics are not forever. (Slate) (via C-Monster)

• The anatomy of an affair. (The Guardian)

Pixie
ink, charcoal, and pastel
40.6 x 22.9 cm (16" x 9")

I am neither happy nor unhappy with this imaginary drawing.
It's just a study, and an unfinished study at that.

• Leo Mol, a Ukrainian born Canadian sculptor, died Saturday in Winnipeg at the age of 94. (CBC News) (The Winnipeg Free Press)

Black and Grey
ink and acrylic
29.2 x 40.6 cm (11.5" x 16")

This is an older drawing. It was done on some kind of synthetic canvas, which I can't say that I enjoyed working on.

• The former head of finance for Dutch national arts funding is missing along with € 15.5 . (The Art Newspaper) (via C-Monster)
• The world of art blogs. (Deutsche Bank Art Mag) (via C-Monster)
• Barack Obama, philosopher. (The Chronicle Review)

Pull My Daisy (The Beat Generation) (1959): Directed by Robert Frank and Alfred Leslie. Written and narrated by Jack Kerouac. (via UbuWeb)

Here's a part of the description of the film in Wikipedia:

Pull My Daisy is a short film that typifies the Beat Generation. Directed by Robert Frank and Alfred Leslie, Daisy was adapted by Jack Kerouac from the third act of a stage play he never finished entitled Beat Generation. Kerouac also provided improvised narration. It starred Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso, Larry Rivers, Peter Orlovsky, David Amram, Richard Bellamy, Alice Neel, Sally Gross and Pablo Frank, Robert Frank's then-infant son.

Based on an incident in the life of Neal Cassady and his wife Carolyn, Daisy tells the story of a railway brakeman whose painter wife invites a respectable bishop over for dinner. However, the brakeman's bohemian friends crash the party, with comic results.

The Beat philosophy emphasized spontaneity, and the film conveyed the quality of having been thrown together or even improvised. Pull My Daisy was accordingly praised for years as an improvisational masterpiece, until Leslie revealed in a November 28, 1968 article in the Village Voice that the film was actually carefully planned, rehearsed, and directed by him and Frank, who shot the film on a professionally lit studio set.

I wish that I knew who to credit for this great history, but I don't. It comes via C-Monster amongst others.

• J.W. Waterhouse's work is currently showing at the Royal Academy in London. 'A pleasant void' says Richard Dorment (The Telegraph). For some examples from Waterhouse's void please click here.
• Art Baloney, a blog devoted to the not so fine art of writing about fine art (via C-Monster). And David Apatoff at Illustration Art has some thoughts of his own on art baloney and artistic pretension (Illustration Art).

You Suck
paper collage
23.9 x 18.3 cm (9.4" x 7.2")

This is another reworked collage. The collage was originally done at the Winnipeg Art Gallery under the tutelage of Doug Melnyk (who, by the way, is an outstanding artist - one of Winnipeg's best).

I was never satisfied with the original. This reworking is closer to my intended non-meaning.

The original was first published on March 18, 2009.

Man Wearing a Yellow Hat
ink
21.6 x 29.2 cm (8.5" x 11.5")

I have absolutely no recollection of having done this drawing. I assume that it's mine only because I found it in my drawing cabinet.

I like the colours which seem to bear no resemblance to Winnipeg. Maybe I was sleepdrawing in tropics when I did this.

• Will China fail? (Policy)