Oil Pastel and Paint Stick

I tend to use oil pastel in a non-traditional way, layering colors and scraping them away, then adding, then scraping. The scraping acts as what I call 'reverse shading', where the scrapes themselves represent the light tones and I scrape (draw) them in, in addition to shading with pastel around them. The process takes time, but I think the results speak for themselves!  -  All artwork on this page by Wayne R. Flower - Prints for sale: Email waynerayflower@gmail.com for Pay Pal information. Please specify which drawing(s) you want prints of and quantity. Please support artists!

Akhenaten's Return

Based on an idea I had about the Egyptian Pharoah Akhenaten reincarnating and ending up as a street-person.

Oil pastel - Original = 3' x 2' - prints available (11" x  24")

Man Leaving His House For the Last Time But He Doesn't Know It

Based on the idea that when we walk out our front door every day, it may very well be the last day we are alive. This idea stems from almost dying myself a few times. Even though I created this person from my mind, as I finished the drawing, he began to look more and more familiar and then it hit me that it was a combination of my mother and father, who are both deceased, I did this entirely subconsciously.

Oil pastel - Original = 3' x 2' - prints available (11" x  24")

Spokane

Loosley based on my memories of Spokane in the '80s

Oil pastel - Original = 10" x 10" -  prints available (11" x  24")

Girl on Steps

I suppose this was inspired by all of the low income children of single-parent families who were my peers throughout my youth.

Oil pastel and paint stick - Original = 10" x 10" -  prints available (11" x  24")

Garden of Remembrance (revisited)

This is a drawing based on a 'digital etching' (what I call black and white drawings I have done in the primitive drawing program Microsoft Paint, chosen for its single bit rawness) called 'Garden of Remembrance' (see this drawing in the 'Digital Etching' section of this blog). The original drawing was based on a woman I saw at the Garden of Remembrance in Dublin, Ireland in 2003. She was facing the setting sun and it seemed she was remembering a relative who had passed in the Easter Uprising.

Oil pastel - Original = 3' x 2' -  prints available (11" x  24")

Morning News

This drawing is special to me because it represents the first large-scale oil pastel drawing I ever did which put me on the path to drawing a few others. I drew it for an art class I was in at the time, in 1987 at Boise State University. When it hung in the hallway at the school, it was the first time my artwork was hung and viewed by the public. I did my first art show shortly after, a show which was put together by my professor, mentor and friend, James K. Russell, and was made up of the artwork of his promising students. The sweetest moment was when one of my art teachers from my junior high school (who had been a notorious bitch to me and my friends) and another renowned painter who also taught at the same school were very closely examining this drawing and discussing it. This picture also shows the beginnings of my fascination with urban settings and with trees, which continue to be themes in my work.

Oil pastel - Original = 3' x 2' - prints available (11" x  24")

Black and white ink drawings

My biggest influences in terms of this meduim are Robert Crumb, Maurice Sendak and Edward Gorey.  -  All artwork on this page by Wayne R. Flower - Prints for sale: Email waynerayflower@gmail.com for Pay Pal information. Please specify which drawing(s) you want prints of and quantity. Please support artists!

Boy on Light Post

From a 1998 sketch book. It has been by far my best selling and most popular ink drawing at art shows I have done.

Pen and ink (fine ballpoint) - Original = 3" x 5" - Limited prints available 

 Seattle Street Scene

From a sketch book. The title is pretty self-explanitory. This is based on a 'mental snapshot' of a street corner I saw one day the Pioneer Square area of Old Town in Seattle in the late '90s (probably '98).

Pen and ink (fine ballpoint) - Original = 3" x 5" - Limited prints available 

 Salem

I had just been to Salem, Massachusetts for the first time, around 2005 (I lived in Boston then) near Halloween, when the town was ramping up for its biggest holiday. There are tourist traps everywhere, all based upon the famous witch trials. 

This drawing went through various alterations. Originally it included little girls selling flowers door to door, as that is what the girls who began accusing people of being witches used to do. That part of the drawing didn't turn out very well, but the other part with the buildings and the 'village idiot' looking guy turned out pretty good, so I cut the girls out of it.

I spent hours drawing in the individual cobblestones. Then, I had drawn some ravens into it, in the area above the man's head, the birds were on the ground, standing on the stones of the street. But the birds were terribly drawn. I was dismayed, until I came up with the solution of cloaking the area between the buildings in shadow. Then, it was done.

Pen and ink (fine ballpoint) - Original = 11" x 18" - Limited prints available 

 Milton and the Leaves

Milton Fish is a character of mine based somewhat on myself, he appears mostly in my writing (for instance, as the main character in a novel I wrote called 'Voice of the Bone-fed Moon' and one I am currently working on). The whole idea of Milton came from this drawing, in which I randomly named him Milton, and then I came to realize the drawing was based on me as a child. As character in my writing, Milton is much more calm and cool than I am.

Here is an excerpt from the novel which was inspired by this drawing:

"...He has spent a good deal of time alone, being an only child. He remembers days playing in the park in leaves on the grass, remembers covering himself in the wet, gold and red masses of sticky wet goo, making a hole to the sky in the pile so he can breathe, and laying perfectly still until he hears people in the park walk by, conversing amongst themselves, not knowing he is near; a devilish secret that only he is privy to, and this makes his stomach tingle..."

Pen and ink (fine ballpoint) - Original = 3" x 5" - Limited prints available 

Digital Etchings

Digital Etchings - This medium title is one I came up with to describe drawings that I compose in Microsoft Paint, which I chose specifically because it is a raw, old-school, single bit, bitmap program, and as a result, a 'hand-drawn' look is achieved (ironic, I know). The etching part of the title refers to the process of starting with a black background, mapping out white shapes, then drawing on to the shapes from there. I tend to spend many, many hours on them  -  All artwork on this page by Wayne R. Flower - Prints for sale: Email waynerayflower@gmail.com for Pay Pal information. Please specify which drawing(s) you want prints of and quantity. Please support artists!

  Garden of Remembrance

This drawing is based on a woman I saw at the Garden of Rememberance in Dublin, Ireland in 2003. She was facing the setting sun and it seemed she was remembering a relative who had passed in the Easter Uprising.

Detroit

I worked for an advertising distribution agency for a decade. I had a large client that did all the advertising creative and production for Chrysler and moved to the Detroit area for a few months to implement the client. I spent hours in their office awaiting uploads of commercials and in the meantime I worked on digital etchings. This one was based on an actual area I witnessed near the 8 Mile bridge; an abandoned church and burned down houses, which I later learned had been there for many, many years. Detroit is currently (it is now 2015) making a slow come back, but this was in 2003, a year after the Eminem film '8 Mile' came out. I saw this scene while flying down the highway in a car driven by a saleswoman. We were approaching 8 Mile, and as I had just seen the film, I was looking around. A cop car screamed past us on the shoulder of the freeway, and then we approached a scene which the cop had been rushing to; a car had driven off of the 8 Mile bridge and was on its roof. 3 white kids were being questioned by the officer of the car which had streamed past us.

Man

This is one of the early digital etchings where really I figured out how to layer textures and effectively utilize the limited tools of the MS Paint program to create a a hand-drawn feel.

Woodcuts

This is a new medium for me, I took some printmaking classes in 2010/2011 at Portland Community College in Portland, Oregon taught by the master print-maker, Gene Flores (see his work here: www.geneflores.com)  -  All artwork on this page by Wayne R. Flower - Prints for sale: Email waynerayflower@gmail.com for Pay Pal information. Please specify which drawing(s) you want prints of and quantity. Please support artists!

The City Dweller

This was my first color woodcut print (come to think of it, my only one at this writing). It looks pretty good black and white, too. I was happy with the gradient in colors fading

The Warrior

City Eyes

The Slow War

 

My favorite woodcut I did in my printmaking class.