Nate Dray at North Water Street Gallery update

 North Water Street Gallery Nate Dray solo exhibit extended to 

Sept. 9, 2023.

My paintings will hang at North Water Street Gallery a little longer now. Cool.

https://www.standingrock.net

 Nate Dray at North Water Street Gallery

 

So here's a thing. Grateful to Jeff Ingram of the North Water Street Gallery in Kent, Oh. for setting this up. Jeff was actually the first person to show one of my pictures in a gallery outside of a school event way back in 1999...or was it 1997? Either way, great guy who runs an excellent community arts organization called Standing Rock Cultural Arts. 

Check them out online at: https://www.standingrock.net/

"Copy of Klee's 'Vogel Garten'" 

mixed media on newspaper on cardboard, 31 x 40 inches.

I love Paul Klee. Brilliant designer. Unsurpassed stylist. A very special human being. I worked through the better part of his notebooks and Bauhaus lessons and while I'm not saying it was a complete waste of time, it was almost a complete waste of time. Not sure if he was a hustler or was sincerely attempting to document and explain his process in earnest technically, but the teachings amount to a whole lot of psuedo-intellectual hot air. Couched in exclusivity jargon and fancy terms for brick-simple concepts, the bulk of the materials aren't worth the time for a person trying to improve his or her craft. People claiming his writings on Art are on par with da Vinci are lying or confused. Whereas da Vinci informed generations of not just artists and craftspeople but also engineers and technicians, Klee's writings are thousands of pages the end result of which can be better internalized by understanding the golden mean and a brief survey of his artist's statement/manifesto. Or better yet, study his pictures. I imagine it was a combination of needing to justify his approach and teaching position, keep pace with the intelligentsia fashions of pre-Great War Germany and fill time when asked to speak publicly on his work that led to his prodigious overly complex prose. That or he was sincere and extremely neurotic. His math exercises take the student on long tedious journeys of arithmetic that end up illustrating principles that if not patently obvious or intuitively graspable are demonstrable by considerably more direct and simple means. That and they aren't particularly helpful to a person trying to improve his or her design powers.

Regardless, he's great. My favorite of the...whaddya call it? Was he Cubist or Expressionist? Whatever. I'm glad he defies classification. That's a hallmark of Quality, in my humble opinion.

Oh, also, like Klee, I made this frame by hand for the painting and the mat area is part of the painting itself. Note that the original is around 10.5" x 15.5" whereas my loose interpretive copy is a bit bigger at 31 x 40 inches. It hangs in my home above the landing on the stairs.

 The ALBUM "Psi-Witch" 

by me for ALBUM

 "The American Schematic"

watercolor, ink & gouache on paper, 15 x 20 inches

Wars of Beleriand board game. The Silmarillion wargame.

 Wars of Beleriand board game. The Silmarillion wargame.  

However you want to say it...

This is the rulebook for a sort of late stage playtest copy of the unpublishable Silmarillion board game I designed. There are just two of them and they are each unique one-of-a-kind handmade prints. The rulebook itself is 136 pages divided into 53 sections. It uses a case system for easy reference. The game maps are printed on canvas (again, two of them, each unique), maybe not the best choice of materials, tbh.There are a few hundred counters and chits and markers and some card chart thingies too. It's a two-player game. One side is the Noldor and co. and the other player is Morgoth and all his baddies. It's asymmetrical in that each player plays a very different game. 

But this is as far as it goes. All the components are stand-in roughs. Lots of hand drawn things and visible corrections. Also some blatantly swiped graphics including a piece by Tolkien himself, a John Howe and the cover of the Ronnie James Dio album "Lock Up the Wolves."

Though unpublishable, I would like people to know that someone made a quasi-simulation of the Silmarillion in the hex and counter form of tabletop game. It's 20 turns long. And Nienor is in there somewhere too. 

And now it goes in a box on a shelf until the year 2090 or something.

 Playing card size ink & watercolor drawings of woods and trails. 

 

Over Lincoln Highway

by Nate Dray

watercolor on paper, 17 x 22 inches

 

Wars of Beleriand.

The Silmarillion board game, aka WOB.

Or...The Dispossessed.

Anyway.

Another unusual and interesting (to me) situation. 

I was playing as Morgoth and my opponent marched Thingol and a sizable host of Sindar out into the open onto Anfauglith and sort of left them there, sitting ducks. They were annihilated and when Thingol dies in WOB, Melian follows (though no VPs are awarded to the MorP for Melian's elimination under these circumstances).

Consequently, with no Melian deployed on the Game Map, the Fence of Doriath (or Girdle of Melian) is deactivated and we see here a very lonely Luthien all by herself in Menegroth with only an adjacent Galadriel unit to keep her company. The Edain haven't arrived yet (this is Turn 7) and it's just an unusual situation that amuses me. Shows the value in having diversity in playtesters. 

I would never have allowed this to happen as the Noldor Player, but I am pleased that it did happen. 

 

 

"One of the Watcherwoman's Clock-Trees"

ink on paper

Illustration of a type of tree found in Lev Grossman's book series "The Magicians."

"From Star Trek's 'Mirror Mirror'"

--Sort of revisiting the theme from "The Enemy Within." 

"Just Outside Town"

An Old Red Barn
by Nate Dray
12" x 18" watercolor on paper

"Epic Earth Comics Online or I ain't Gonna Make Weird Comics No More"

 "Epic Earth Comics Online or I ain't Gonna Make Weird Comics No More"

 

 Album Cover color rough.

Soon after doing this drawing, I lost it. Disappeared. Months later it surfaced. Then it sat stretched on a board 3/4 of the way finished for a year or so...

This is a color rough for the back cover art on the band ALBUM's album "Majestic Silvereye."

"Carb Complex"

“Green Wave Break over Mike Lusk’s Lock (no, his kid isn’t buried in it)”

“Green Wave Break over Mike Lusk’s Lock (no, his kid isn’t buried in it)”

Lusk was an English engineer who built beautiful locks. Contracted for a couple in the 1830s for the Sandy and Beaver Canal. There are sad stories about how this work in the howling Ohio wilderness adversely affected his life and family.

Did some drawing for this year's Yo-Ice...

Album's new album "Majestic Silvereye" was long in the making. It's amazing thrash-rock-metal-pop (whew!). Getting great reviews and— to totally use a grand cliche— an instant classic.

Get it on itunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/majestic-silvereye/id1036318347

Check it out on google play: https://play.google.com/store/music/album/ALBUM_Majestic_SilverEye?id=Brf5dsgmw3mrpyi4wrcu53i53ii

Recorded over several months at Mindrocket Recording Studio in West Middlesex, PA— the album is an epic technicolor guitar saga.

I did the artwork. It was an honor. :)

New comic for August, 2015. Debuting at Steel City Con, with cartoons from Nate Dray, Robbie Vegas and Doc Springer.