Art auctions.

Hi everyone,

I've started an 'official' Facebook page for my work. You can find it here.

One of the things I will be doing with the page, are bi-daily semi-daily auctions of a piece I make right before I post it. It is an excuse for me to make something quick and fun every couple of days, without any real direction, and perhaps make some money in the process. The first one sold for about ten bucks, so the art can be bought for far less than I would normally sell it. Assuming the bidding doesn't get crazy.

Anywho, the next piece up is this little fella, and the bidding will start at $10. The bidding will end Thursday morning at 3 AM, so jump on it:

8 x 10 inches, roughly.
Watercolor and gouache on
hand-made cold press paper.

The Homelands Series

Here are the final framed pieces from the Legends of the Midwest show. The show itself went splendidly; it was a real honor to show with such a talented group of artists.

Enjoy!

The Woodland King

Here is the first of a trio of paintings for the upcoming Legends of the Midwest show as a part of Art Downtown. It finally broke me as far as acrylics are concerned. I am a convert now.

I also made frames for them. Stay tuned for the rest.

Solid Snakefood

ALERT!

A gouache demo for my sketching class. This is the risk you run when you ask your class what they want you to paint for them.

Skull Prima

I am going to start posting things I make for purchase now, so buy them.

On the block:

Here's an alla prima sketch I did the other day. 

BONEPILE.

Oils on Paper - 8" x 12"
For Sale
-= 100.00 USD  GONE =-

Alpha Strike

Here is a portrait of a cat named Alpha. He is a dapper lad. Gouache on paper.

man-tits

And other chesty bits.

More progress on the Nyarlathotep painting. Still a lot to address, but it's getting close. Bottom half not shown, because I hide my insecurities. Deal.

BEES!

Here is a new painting. I just slapped the varnish on and the colors are lookin real nice-like. A big thanks to entomologist extraordinaire Christy Bell for letting me use her image for reference and inspiration. 24"x36" oils on maple ply.

Here's a beetail (hahahahahahahahaI'msofunny It's a detail. Of a bee. A Bee-tail.):

Back at it! (narl.)

Oh man, oils, where you been at all these months? After an unintentional hiatus from oils, I hit it hard this afternoon (I'm only pausing to post and get some food in my guts). It turns out that getting good(ish) at drawing makes painting a LOT easier. Weird how knowing something, and doing it are two totally different things. WEEEEEEEEEEEE!

I'm back, Bitches!

IF: Identical

I decided to get this done a bit earlier (read: on time) this time.

spongy.

T-T-T-Tarot Time!

Hey boys and girls! It's time to get your tarot on! Check it out, and pre-order a deck while you're at it, as they will be a limited edition.

Here's a peek at my offering:

things with horns.

imalazyblogger.

The gazelle was done as a demo for a painting lesson I was giving; oils, chromatic black and titanium white on canvas.. The Satyr was done for the love of it; oils, raw umber and a rag on canvas.

cheers.

MEGAFAUNA!

Since I missed Friday's post, and am late for yesterday's I thought I would make a new piece to make up for it. I wanted to do something adorable. So I did.

Behold, Glyptodon, Giant Armadillo of the Pleistocene Epoch!

kisses.

According to Wikipedia: [Glyptodon] was roughly the same size and weight as a Volkswagen Beetle, though flatter in shape ... Glyptodon is believed to have been an herbivore, grazing on grasses and other plantsfound near rivers and small bodies of water.


The little guy is 8x10 in watercolor. I sometimes forget I actually like watercolor a little...

Reenactin' all over the place.

This is a little oil painting I did of one of my closest friends in high school. I haven't seen the man in years, but he still hold a prominent place in my frontal lobe (read: heart). He is an excellent historian, and has a fondness for reenacting. Here he is in full regalia, via a picture I stole off his facebook.

I wanted to go very subtle in the face, and I think it worked out ok. Whole thing is 8x10ish, oils on maple ply.

Every day I'm alterin'

      For the few of you that don't know, I am a massive nerd. I like all the nerdy things your mother told you to avoid if you ever wanted to find a nice girl (or boy) and settle down. It should come as no surprise to you, then, that I like a little game called Magic: the Gathering. What is it a gathering of? Magic, I assume, but also great art. On a scale of 1-awesome the illustrations for the cards in the game are completely out of hand.
      That said, I was approached by a friend of mine to deface some of these cards with little paintings of my own. Some being roughly 90 of them. These little pieces of art are refered to as "card alterations" and are basically considered the "pimping" of the MtG scene. If Magic was at all considered cool, Xibit may have even made a show about it (yo, dawg I heard you like card art...). I have a good chunk of them down already, and they can be found here, but I thought I would share a few of my favorites so far. Keep in mind that the cards themselves are a whopping 2.5"x3.5", and the area in which I work on them is a fraction of that amount.

They are really, really small. The other challenge, beside the size, is that - due to the need for flexablilty - the cards must be done in acrylics. Those who know me well enough to know how nerdy I am, also likely know that I hate acrylics. Or, hated, rather. I've come to respect them for this sort of work, because it does allow me to paint impossibly thin (another requirement for these little guys), and very quickly.

So there you have it: one more thing that is hardly a marketable skill, but that I decided I needed to be able to do. Enjoy.

plein air at the park.

My painting demo from today's lesson:

Hey, I made this yak...

...just for you.

Water-based media is fun sometimes. I don't do much of it, but current studio limitations what they are, it's either that or no painting at all. I think it's good for me, what with the learnin' and all. Sure beats video games.

Here's a detail for your optical nuggets:

Fantasy Landscapes - Now with 100% More Gouache!

 

 

I thought I would give gouache another go. Both of these sketches are about 4"x6", and were completed in about 20 mins. Not the best things in the world, but they did make me want to play around with the medium a bit more, so there's always that.

PAINT!

warning: this one has the swears.

      Sometimes I do things so tremendously stupid that I stare back at them slack-jawed as a thin trail of foamy spittle makes a trail down my chin. For instance, not painting for months. Months. The last time I slung mud was the end of this past December. I've been living in an apartment best described as small. This has limited my opportunity to paint to, um, no opportunities. Unless, of course, I didn't mind a bit of asphyxiation (not even the erotic kind). I finally had enough though, and said, "Well, fuck you brain cells, I don't need you," tossed open my tiny window, and busted out the pallet.

      Goddamn, it feels so good. Orgasmic. I forgot how much I love this thing I do. I went for about five hours without stopping. It was sweet.

(feel free to take that last paragraph out of context)

      Anyway, here are the goods. One is the first couple of passes at a copy of the portrait of Cornelius Van der Geest by Anthony Van Dyck. The other one is the first coat of a picture of a awesome old photo I found online. Nothing says 'Merica like a nine-year-old girl with Old Glory and a Glock. Don't worry, her legs aren't as freakishly stunted as they look in the photo.

Here's the setup:

Sheep Mountain - Colors

I picked up a copy of Jim Gurney's new book a while back, and it has proven to be one of my better book purchases. Had Color and Light been my college Color Theory textbook, I am certain I would be many times more confident with color than I am today. Well, it didn't exist back then, but now that I have read it, I decided I need to give it's lessons a go.

I thought that the sheep mountain piece would be a perfect opportunity to try out some of Jim's sound advise on how to handle both light and color. I started with a small color study, and decided to implement two of the color restrictions Mr. Gurney outlines in his book. The first is a simple color gamut based on the Yurmby wheel. For those of you unfamiliar with the Yurmby wheel (as I was until I read the book), it is a color wheel that employs six primaries of both the print and light spectrums: RGB and CMY. The wheel goes like this: Yellow, Red, Magenta, Blue, Cyan, Green. It provides a much fuller range of colors than is allowed with the standard Red-Yellow-Blue color wheel. Anyway, my color gamut looks like this:

(the image was made using photos of the wheels in Jim's book)

The idea behind the gamut is to limit the number of colors you allow yourself, in order to create a strong unity in the piece, and as a safeguard against overwhelming the viewer with too many colors. It also is a quick way to develop a strong mood in the piece. My gamut for this painting is fairly neutral, with the strongest chroma falling somewhere between pure blue and pure cyan.

The other method I am employing to limit myself is to use a very limited pallet. The only tubes of paint I am using are Vermilion, French Ultramarine, Cadmium Yellow light, and Titanium White. This is a huge hurdle for me to jump. I am really used to using about 10-15 different tubes of paint on any given painting, and cutting back to only three colors, plus white was a huge challenge. The color study for the painting turned out pretty ok though, and I am excited to get cracking on the actual piece. Here's the study (sorry about all the white spots, photographing canvas with overhead fluorescents is a bitch):

Oh, and I didn't forget about the self-portrait, I just am not at a point with it that I am ready to post anything. Maybe after the weekend.