Owen William Weber Illustration

A Winter's Dream , 17" x 11", Oil on Paper on Masonite, 2015. Back in August, the 6th to be exact, Sarah and I welcomed our baby girl, Dagmar, into the world.  She is now turning 6 months old and I am just now getting around to posting the first blog post since the summer.  She's a lot of work, but not enough to excuse my laziness about this blog.  Anyways, for the past three years I have done a Nisse painting as my Winter card, but for some reason I just wasn't in the mood to come up with a new Nisse painting, and I just didn't feel like I had a great composition in mind this winter.  So I looked to my new muse.  I took a picture one morning of her sleeping, and worked in some creatures, new and old, real and surreal into the winter landscape around her.  I've always wondered what she dreams, I can't imagine her dreams look like this, but I thought it was a cool idea. Also, I have been doing a One Sketch A Day sketchbook since New Year's, so ...

Highmount from Fleischmanns , 13"x10.875", oil on masonite, 2015. Every year, Sarah and I go up to the Catskills for the Fourth of July.  There's just something nice about being in the woods, grilling and seeing local fireworks instead of the Big City fireworks.  If I'm lucky, which I usually am, I can get away from the house and do some landscape painting en plein air.   This year, I went to this spot at the top of a little valley, overlooking a mountain that used to have a ski resort called Highmount.  You can see the green lines on the right side of the mountain where the trails still leave their veins.  This piece took two days, about 3 hours of work each day.  When I am outside, painting in the middle of nowhere, I think I'm at my happiest.

The World is Old , 40"x 20", oil on paper on masonite, 2015. This is a new painting in my "Creationist Series".  Back in October, I had started painting this piece; it was almost finished but then I had to paint Winter cards and another playing card.  I finally picked this piece back up at the end of December in order to finish it by the deadline of the Spectrum and Art Renewal Center annual submissions. This piece is depicting a Bible study group, blindfolded, as a group of Dreadnoughtus "shadows" pass by.  The Dreadnoughtus was recently discovered down in southern Argentina, and was declared the largest sauropod ever discovered.  This immediately ignited my imagination.  I had wanted to do a large piece for my series, and showing a herd of these creatures and showing the scale of them in relation to the creationist group seemed like a perfect opportunity.  I wanted to show the group of Dreadnoughtus passing by the people in varying degrees of op...

Magaretville, NY , Oil, 7.75"x12", 2014. Back in June, we were upstate, in the Catskills for a long weekend.  While I was busy relaxing and taking in the beautiful scenery, I took some time out to paint this landscape.  It took about 3 hours.  In my opinion, there is nothing as pure as painting en plein air.  One becomes completely zen with the surroundings and painting becomes less about depicting a particular scene or composition and becomes more about the feeling or nature of the scene.  It's hard to explain, and can sound extremely corny, when describing the feeling that comes with painting en plein air.  I am constantly moving the brush, painting things that happened 30-45 minutes ago, changing things on the fly, building up paint as it dries.  It's totally different from how I normally paint.  Very freeing, very rejuvenating. Also I will, again, have a booth in the Art Show area at Gen Con Indianapolis this year.  It's a wond...

Hemelhaven , 7.25"x11", Oil over Ink, 2014. A couple months ago, I was very bored and was having a bit of artist's block.  So to kick myself out of this rut, I started drawing castles on big rock cliffs in the middle of the ocean.  This is a composition I drew all the time back in high school.  I got quite imaginative with some of them.  So, after getting back from the Netherlands, I wanted to do a castle city in a more Dutch aesthetic.  This isn't too important of a piece for me, just a fun exercise.  I was also playing around with doing an ink drawing and painting on top of it.  So I did the ink drawing, sprayed it thoroughly with Krylon UV Archival spray, then mounted the paper to a board using acrylic matte medium.  Luckily, it did not smudge at all.  So, this is the final image, but I thought I'd show the black and white version also. Hemelhaven , 7.25"x11", Ink, 2014.

A week ago, my wife and I went upstate to the Catskills for Independence Day.  Being away from the city is a necessary ritual I have every few months, whether it be the Berkshires to see my family or going to Fleischmanns, NY for a long weekend, it is an easy way to control my sanity living in one of the largest cities in the world with a constant onslaught of crowds.  I need silence, mountains, trees, farm animals, and the occasional bear threat.  The Catskills are the perfect getaway.  Though, because it is never for that long, I rarely have the chance to draw and almost never paint.  This time I got an entire week off from work, so we got an extended vacation up there, and I finally got to do a painting en plein-aire. Roxbury, NY, 11.5" x 9.5", Oil on Masonite, 2013  I found a spot, with the help of my wife's knowledge of the area's vistas, on the side of a road, near a nice old barn, in Roxbury.  The first day was very overcast, and whats nice...

No Further, 14" x 24", Oil on Paper on Masonite, 2012  Finally, I have finished this piece.  I photographed the model back in October, finished the drawing in November, then got a couple jobs, planned a wedding, got married and went on a honeymoon.  Once we got back from Croatia, I finally had some time to paint. This piece is meant to be in something of a series that I'm slowly working on with "December Maple".  They both have a similar feeling, with a figure reacting to and interacting with nature.  I want to show a sense of memory with these paintings, a feeling of solitude, oneness with nature, and a slight sense of longing.  This piece is more tragic than "December Maple", there's more despair and loss with this piece.  I can't wait to work on more of this series, it really gives me fulfillment as an artist.