Wednesday, July 31, 2013
IN PROGRESS: UNTITLED 01
Here is a bit of process for the next painting or two. I don't want to give away too much just yet...
Tuesday, June 25, 2013
MAJOR URSA
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| Major Ursa, Acrylic on Paper, 2013 |
Here he is...Major Ursa. What began as an exploration of painting the cosmos resulted in a sci-fi inspired, imaginary portrait of an astronaut bear. Created with acrylic on paper, then mounted to and wrapped around a canvas. This guy will be exhibited in The Next Wave Art Salon in Elgin, Illinois from September 6th - 7th. More details are here.
Friday, June 7, 2013
Thursday, April 18, 2013
WILD
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| Wild, Adobe Illustrator, 2013 |
Wednesday, April 10, 2013
MORE LIKE A SIX-FOOT TURKEY
"Hold onto your butts."
I'm excited to share my latest project, a fun and interesting one to work on: the design for a model kit box that will hold a tiny dinosaur (rawr).
Tyler Keillor sculpted this little guy in ZBrush with the help of the supporters of his Kickstarter project, the people at ACME Design, Inc. and Exact Metrology, Inc.You can find his whole story here. We went with a design reminiscent of old Aurora model kit box art - painterly and bright - but not so silly or anatomically incorrect...
I created the background painting referencing an image of the Dryptosaurus head that Tyler had sculpted (amazing work!) and made some hand-drawn lettering, evoking a vintage museum tag look for the name of the dinosaur. Finally we included the rendering of Tyler's digital sculpture to show what's in the box, like more modern model kit boxes.
This was such a fun project to work on, I loved building model kits as a kid. My dad and I would always be visiting the model shops on weekends looking for some cool car, plane, spaceship or robot to patiently glue together and painstakingly paint to perfection. We actually ran out of room to display our models in the house. But, I think a certain Velociraptor model from a certain movie resides in my parents' living room to this day..."I'm simply saying that life, uh... finds a way."
I'm excited to share my latest project, a fun and interesting one to work on: the design for a model kit box that will hold a tiny dinosaur (rawr).
Tyler Keillor sculpted this little guy in ZBrush with the help of the supporters of his Kickstarter project, the people at ACME Design, Inc. and Exact Metrology, Inc.You can find his whole story here. We went with a design reminiscent of old Aurora model kit box art - painterly and bright - but not so silly or anatomically incorrect...
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| He looks crazy happy with that tongue sticking out |
I created the background painting referencing an image of the Dryptosaurus head that Tyler had sculpted (amazing work!) and made some hand-drawn lettering, evoking a vintage museum tag look for the name of the dinosaur. Finally we included the rendering of Tyler's digital sculpture to show what's in the box, like more modern model kit boxes.
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| The background painting, acrylic on panel |
Saturday, July 28, 2012
HIVEMIND
Finally! A new painting! Two in fact! They are available in my shop.
Sometimes there is the feeling of bees buzzing around in my head, so much commotion and noise of thoughts and ideas and fears and worries. All of these bees make so much honey that all the gears in my brain get slower and slower until I break. You have to let the bees fly and the honey fall.
This one has made me think a bit about my tendencies to draw people with no eyes, as well as other things...like why have I always had nightmares about bees crawling into my ears?... But back to eyes! I feel that even though the eyes can show a great amount of emotion, they aren't necessary to do so. A twist of the mouth, the position of hands, the angle of the head and motion of hair all can tell so much about the subject. However, I'm also very aware that I am an extremely shy person. It has taken me years to be able to look someone in the eyes while talking with them, and yet I still awkwardly look around, glancing from their face to the window behind them, down to my hands, back to their face, etc etc. I treat eyes like the sun, take a glance, get the general idea and then quickly look away as if I were to go blind.
So, I'm taking advantage of my discomfort with eyes to strengthen my use of other facial features and position to get the emotion across. In fact, it could be that very discomfort that is the reason I tend to not draw eyes; I am uncomfortable looking into someone's eyes, and to draw them you really have to look at them a lot. I could even go so far as to say that, in the case of self-portraits, I don't want others looking at me looking back at them.
Although, this painting is a severe example of having no eyes, I already know that the next set I'm working on will be more subtle. Instead of no eyes at all, the figures are more statue-like. These pieces need the extra emotion given by the eyes, but not the direction and complexity of pupils and irises. It'll make more use of the eyelids than the actual eyes behind them.
Sometimes there is the feeling of bees buzzing around in my head, so much commotion and noise of thoughts and ideas and fears and worries. All of these bees make so much honey that all the gears in my brain get slower and slower until I break. You have to let the bees fly and the honey fall.
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| Hivemind Progression |
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| Hivemind, Mixed media on panel, 2012 |
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| Companion Piece, Mixed media on paper, 2012 |
This one has made me think a bit about my tendencies to draw people with no eyes, as well as other things...like why have I always had nightmares about bees crawling into my ears?... But back to eyes! I feel that even though the eyes can show a great amount of emotion, they aren't necessary to do so. A twist of the mouth, the position of hands, the angle of the head and motion of hair all can tell so much about the subject. However, I'm also very aware that I am an extremely shy person. It has taken me years to be able to look someone in the eyes while talking with them, and yet I still awkwardly look around, glancing from their face to the window behind them, down to my hands, back to their face, etc etc. I treat eyes like the sun, take a glance, get the general idea and then quickly look away as if I were to go blind.
So, I'm taking advantage of my discomfort with eyes to strengthen my use of other facial features and position to get the emotion across. In fact, it could be that very discomfort that is the reason I tend to not draw eyes; I am uncomfortable looking into someone's eyes, and to draw them you really have to look at them a lot. I could even go so far as to say that, in the case of self-portraits, I don't want others looking at me looking back at them.
Although, this painting is a severe example of having no eyes, I already know that the next set I'm working on will be more subtle. Instead of no eyes at all, the figures are more statue-like. These pieces need the extra emotion given by the eyes, but not the direction and complexity of pupils and irises. It'll make more use of the eyelids than the actual eyes behind them.
Thursday, June 28, 2012
IF SPACE
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| "Catastronaut", Adobe Illustrator |
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