Ryan Jacob Smith has a lot going on right now. He is part of Tiny Showcase’s Winter Print Collection, has a new silkscreen which sells at his etsy shop, made a few guest t-shirts for Receiver gallery and Reform School, is having a solo show and giving an artist talk at at the IPRC in Portland, and has a bunch more shows coming up. You can watch a short video of his recently past show at Reform School here or read an interview he did here. I asked Ryan to contribute to the sketchbook blog because I love his imagery. Besides being beautiful, it always has an interesting message or juxtapostion of things. I especially like when the flat profile silhouettes are full of something more 3-d like in this piece Stone Face. His palette is also so satistying in retro feeling pastels. And I think graphite is a great medium for him too as you can see from these sketchbook pages below. Also don’t forget to check out his site here. Thanks Ryan for sharing!

© Julia Rothman 2007