 | ||
 | ||
 | ||
| Artist's Life | "Art is life, life is life, but to lead life artistically is the art of life." | ||
 |
|||
 |
 |
||
| by Ross and Nan Netherton |
Vienna Elementary School by David Skibiak, © 1983 |
||
 |
|||
 |
|||
 | |||
| Unfettered access to
The Great Outdoors is the number one benefit of an Artist's Life.
An art in itself is the close observation of nature, and generally an inexpensive one as that.
A forest can keep a pose for a century. Whether using a pallet knife, a scribe, pencil or a digitized mouse, the right tool for the right job is always true. The way you see the world is uniquely your own, as is the way you respond to it creatively. Allowing your very own uniqueness in the universe to work through your art will guide you and deepen the power of your experience. |
|||
 |
A prerequisite for making art is love and respect for Mother Nature.
I've always loved painting
and drawing trees and now I've discovered another tool
for drawing trees - computers!. Whether you use a Mac or a PC there are vector based
drawing packages that make drawing with a computer a whole lot of fun. Here are several inspired examples of trees in
different media, pencil (above) pen and ink (left), aquatint etchings
(below) and computer generated. Computer grafx and photography are obviously the media d'jour of the internet era, but they will never replace traditional artistic methods or relegate them to nostolgic terms, but, it is always nice to be able to "undo". |
||
| "Elm Tree" © 1984 | |||
 |
 |
||
| "Freeman Store" © 2007 | "Looking Up" © 2000 | ||
 |
 |
||
| "Bare Tree in Winter" © 2008 | "Palm Tree" © 2008 | ||
 |
 |
||
| Computer Generated Image © 2001 | "Pallet Knife Tree" © 2006 | ||
|
Welcome to DS Grafx.com, a small business located in the suburbs of Washington, D.C. | |||
|
 |
||
 |
 |
||
| Learning to see in a new way, I created a vector drawing (left) of the three ships for Jamestown's quadracentenial anniversary; it later became the official Christmas card of Vienna, Va in 2006. I then traced the computer graphic and tried a traditional method of that time period, so, I made a two color etching (right). I don't know which I like better. | |||
 |
|||
| "The Battle of Vienna, 1861", watercolor by David Skibiak, © 1991 | |||
| On June 17th, 1861, at six o'clock in the
evening, Vienna became the site of the first ambush of the Civil War,
one month before the Battle of Manassas. A slow moving train carrying
500 Union soldiers, on three flatcars and two carriages, was fired
upon by two regiments of the South Carolina First Volunteers, about
600 men, including cavalry. According to a letter of Charles Minor
Blackford, CSA, the Rebels had been at the depot since four o'clock
that afternoon, destroying "all railroad property which could be
of use to the enemy." While the cavalry, guarding the perimeters,
galloped over the rolling hills, the marauders wrecked the water tower
and carried off the main pipe. The soldiers thought this was all the
action they would see that day when they fell into formation for the
march back to camp. The Federal train, coming from Alexandria, had been deploying troops |
along
the tracks all day without incident. The commander, Brigadier General
Robert Schenke, had been warned by a farmer of the situation further
down the tracks in Vienna, but for some reason, chose to ignore it. Half a mile away, marching towards Fairfax, the Rebel Army was alerted by the train's whistle. Colonel Max Gregg suspecting that the train contained Federal troops, ordered an about-face and moved three artillery pieces into position for an ambush. The first blasts from the cannons emptied the train and sent the federals running for their lives. The artillery used "grape"a mix of nails and other metal scrap, and "cannister," miniballs inside a casing. An account from that time in the Cleveland Plain Dealer read: "The awful effect of the shot threw the men into inextricable confusion." A short stand was made but the |
majority
of the men took to the woods for cover, and the conductor put the
train in reverse and fled. With the Confederates in pursuit, the skirmishes
continued all the way to Alexandria. Considering the amount of action,
casualties were few. Only eight men were killed, all of them Federals. On the one hundredth anniversary of the ambush, in 1961, when the tracks were still in use, a train was used for the re-enactment of the Battle of Vienna, at the actual site, which is the present day location of the Community Center. The train and the tracks are now gone, but the W & OD bike trail runs over this historic ground. If you would like to journey back into history, take a stroll along the bike path and think about the brave men who fought that day. Who knows, if you look hard enough, you might even find a souvenir of that historic event. by David Skibiak |
||||
|
There, down the valley where the morning strode, The trees are interwoven tapestries, In purples that illuminate the day. - Denis Devlin
|
||||||
SGRAFXDSGRAFXDSGRAFXDSGRAFXDSGRAFXDSGRAFXDSGRAFXDSGRAFXDSGRAFXDSGRAFXDSGRAFXDSGRAFXDSGRAFXDSGRAFXDSGRAFXDSGRAFXDSGRAFXDSGRAFXDSGRAFXDSGRAFXD |