michael james armstrong » sketches

3 layer drawing

Michael James Armstrong — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 23:42:34 +0000

36″ X 12″, spray paint and rapidograph on 3mil double matte mylar

5 more art night sketches

Michael James Armstrong — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 05:10:32 +0000

i love the paper in this book.

11 art night sketches + 1 spankin new painting

Michael James Armstrong — Mon, 12 May 2008 02:21:06 +0000

here’s some sketches from my art night book. the last time i posted stuff from this book was back in january . so these have all been done since. i usually try to do one every sunday. they’re all done with a 7b graphite pencil and a white charcoal pencil. i love the look and texture of this paper.

in order of completion:

i just finished this painting today. it’s 12″ X 78″, spray paint and paint marker on aluminum. it’s titled “A.D. – 14″. excuse the horribly blurry photo, the ol’ camera’s on it’s last leg.

31 on the job sketches

Michael James Armstrong — Sun, 02 Mar 2008 00:08:12 +0000

when i used to work at MCASD as a security guard it could get pretty boring. there would be stretches of up to 2 hours sometimes where there would be absolutely no one in the museum. thankfully, during those times we were allowed to sit and read. i did a lot of reading when i first started. titles such as “the master and margarita”, “1984″, “hunger”, and one of my favorites, “the confederacy of dunces”. after awhile though the museum got a little busier and it got harder to concentrate on reading when you’d have to stop and put the book away every 5 or 10 minutes. so i didn’t read on the job too much anymore and went on to doing crosswords. well, i suck at those so i went on to just drawing. i’d carry a clipboard with a few sheets of printer paper that i’d get from the front desk, and whether i was sitting or standing i would draw (usually with a ball point pen, sometimes pencil). i amassed quite a few drawings during those long boring days. most were complete garbage that i’d end up tossing out as i left to go home. but some were worth keeping. most of these are smaller than the picture implies. i blew them up in order to see them better.

this was my view across the street of the new museum location at the santa fe train depot from the front desk of the old downtown location at one america plaza. “concept is king” was a stab at the museums choice of the jenny holzer permanent installation on the front of the building. not my cup of tea. same thought was behind this drawing which is based on the museums “X” logo:

this is about as controversial as i get in my work. heh. on to less agenda oriented drawings like these:

want to see the other 26 sketches? check out my FLICKR page.

new sketch book

Michael James Armstrong — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 22:44:51 +0000

i got a cool new sketch book at “stationers” in hillcrest

the dimensions are 5.5″ X 8.25″. it’s made of butcher paper and string, with a corrugated paper cover. pretty cool.
i did a few sketches in it last night at art night. here they are:

building a chair

Michael James Armstrong — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 09:54:55 +0000

i know, i know, it’s been awhile. but i’ve been busy trying to build this chair:

(ignore the circle design in the top left corner – it has nothing to do with the chair)

i should have it finished in 2 weeks, just in time for MY NEXT SHOW

i’ll post the finished product and pics from the show after the 30th.

some old colored pencil drawings and stuff

Michael James Armstrong — Sat, 13 Oct 2007 05:15:42 +0000

here’s some colored pencil drawings from a couple years ago:

this one was done during a past art night – it’s a collaboration by myself, joeygold, and gubba:

nice lounging bean by GUBBA

this drawing i did for a friends (an ex art night core member, NICK) short lived ZINE:

it was an art zine, and you had to do a piece that was based on a theme. i don’t remember the theme, but this drawing was based on that theme.

close up, just cuz:

new drawings on fish paper

Michael James Armstrong — Sat, 13 Oct 2007 05:14:41 +0000

fellow art nighter, FRIDA, gave me some of this great paper she got while in mexico. it sat in the studio for a couple months until i finally put something down on it. i did these four drawing the same day i made my “black power” collage. here we go:

on these first three i drew the paint marker lines first at random, and then i did the graphite lines to bring it together.

the texture of this paper is cool:

macro, just because:

new from my sketchbook

Michael James Armstrong — Wed, 12 Sep 2007 04:34:48 +0000

these sketches were all drawn at art night*.

first lets meet my sketchbook:

it says hello.

the most recent one (from this past sunday)

i usually draw in non-photo blue pencil but i didn’t bring any instrumentation this art night. so joeygold let me borrow a ticonderoga hb #2 (which i only had to sharpen once, and it stayed sharp all night. boy, that dixon sure makes a fine pencil)

these were drawn at past art nights (they’re all non-photo blue pencil and micron .005 pen):

*art night is a once a week gathering of like minded artists. there are 5 core art nighters as well as a rotating group of sometimers who meet every sunday night at bassam cafe. activities include; lots of shit talking about contemporary art, hour long semantic debates about the meaning of subjective, a fair amount sketchbook drawing, and of course, the drinking of coffee (chai for me since i hate coffee).