Quick post

This was a quick painting while my class working.

Process of Peace

This is something I did for an upcoming show called "Process of Peace," in which artists were asked to investigate how they try and find peace in their own lives and world around them.
The show is curated by the ever-engaged and evolving Sarah McCann. She also curated the "What's Your War" show here in Baltimore last year. I'm a big fan of hers.

Mock Turtle

This is one I finished a bit ago and didn't post.

So here it is.

Circus - Progression

Thought I would throw some progression shots up for the Circus Piece.
It's good to look back where a piece came from. I'm not sure, in certain states of mind, I would pursue a piece that started like this one, but for some reason the place that I was in kept me at it and thinking about it.
It's easy to walk away from pieces, from seeing something through to the end, but sometimes that's what makes lessons concrete.






Another image I was using to compare hand and arm positions. This was really interesting to me. Simple changes of rotation and placement created entirely different moods. Ultimately, I went for the one that made her seem the most formidable and rebellious.

Sometimes the number of choices we can make that can affect the feeling of a piece boggles my mind. At any point, we might make the smallest adjustment that turns our little ship of a painting into waters that truly sing, or onto a submerged rock. Still, we must go sailing.

Cirque Final

I've posted some works in progress of this one for awhile now, but finally knuckled down in my free moments for the last couple of weeks and made this piece pretty complete.
See what you think. I've got a story about all of this growing in my mind, so I might pursue it a bit more.

A few things I listened to keep myself in a Circus/surreal mood while painting:

• Rupa and the April Fishes, Extraordinary Rendition
• Beirut, The Flying Club Cup
• Laura Marling, I Speak Because I Can
• Amelie Soundtrack
• Devotcha, Little Miss Sunshine Soundtrack
• Jonsi, Go

Thanks for checking in!

2 WIPS

It's a bad sign that I have more WIP posts here than finished pieces. I'm in a time of transition, I think, and struggling a little. That's where the lack of focus is coming from, something I should try and remedy, but the struggle and transition aren't bad things. Often, I've found that looking back these are very productive, interesting times for me work and growth.

It also might be that with work going as it is I only start painting at 11:00 pm or later.

Regardless, an idea for a series I've been tossing around in documents and my head for awhile is getting to come out and and play with mixed results. See what you think. Still some drawing problems to resolve I get too impatient with early on. They won't all be girls.

I like trees lately

My sister had her first child last year around this time, and I was supposed to make a tree painting for my nephew. I have it now, for his first birthday, and it's going home for Thanksgiving for him. So this is for Elliot.

I like painting trees. They're not exactly easy, which is surprising considering how often we see them. People can imagine trees very easily, but actually looking at one and drawing it makes you realize how very weird they can be. This a bit of a fantasy tree, so I can make up a lot, however.

Jess told me making the little boy float is weird. I like it, but I'm going to think on it.

Three works in progress

Nothing finished. I've hardly made it to my studio at all in the last month. Work at Big Huge has been great, but incredibly busy.
Still, a small number of things I played with. The more sustained projects will be updated soon.

Pancake Breakfast Album Art

A couple of months back I did some album art for my friend Mike Midlo. We worked together on Time Team, but he also runs this awesome, rocking band called "Pancake Breakfast" out of Oregon. The album is called "Fire in the Barn," and Mike asked me to make a painting to go inside the LP and CD of a barn on a hill that had something unearthly going on with it. For inspiration, he sent me the 1937 Disney cartoon, "The Old Mill," which you should look up on youtube if you haven't seen it.
I love working with musicians. They almost always have such different ideas than visual artists, and such good feedback. I had tons of fun working on this piece, too, and I dig the music, so I hope I get to do more projects like.

Here's Pancake Breakfast's website. Check them out.
http://www.pancakebreakfastmusic.com/

I thought I would show some process work on this one, since it was such a good back and forth.

First, I sent Mike and another band member (and the web/album designer), Christa, the following thumbnails. These were all fast, simple color and composition studies to get some broad stroke feedback from them and get a sense of where their minds were going. It also helped me figure out what I wanted to do with the piece.

We took the ones liked best from the thumbnails and I developed them further, testing the waters for what we'd want to push further into the final piece.


From there, we combined elements that we liked as inspiration for the direction of the final, big one (and I do mean big. This went into an LP, so it was a large file).

After looking at it, though, we didn't feel like it was otherwordly enough, so we tilted everything and added a lot more value and strange light. The idea was to make it feel like something ominous and fantastic was on the very verge of breaking loose.

Then, with that settled, it was time to polish it for the final piece. Mike had one last bit of feedback, which was to add the feeling of wind. That's actually very difficult in a still image, but I'm glad he pushed for it. It made the final painting a whole lot better.

And that was how it went.

When he mailed me the finished LP, Mike wrote me a poem about the piece, posted below:

A storm mounts. Bones ache ... Howling souls. The wind heaves a heavy sigh.

¡There's a Fire in the Barn!

And a murder of crows scatter into the watercolor sky.

Thanks for the chance to do this, Mike, and good luck with the album release!

WIP for a friend

For fun, for a friend.

New landscapes and getting back into things

I'm going to be doing a show at a very cool wellness and acupuncture studio in Baltimore during the Baltimore book festival, so I'm working on some new pieces for it. It's a small space, so I'm making digital prints instead of oil paintings, and I'm teaching digital illustration at MICA this semester so it's a decent excuse to get some more time in with Photoshop. CS5 is a crazy, new beast, anyway, that's worth getting used to. I'm not certain I agree with some of their changes, but it looks like all the core stuff is intact, if a little hidden.
I've been terribly busy in the last few weeks, and I got engaged, but I'm working on a number of things again and should be posting more. As always, thanks for any feedback.
These are seasonal. I'm nearly done with Summer and Winter here, but Autumn is only half way there. Spring is next, obviously.

That's a guy in a suit, falling underwater.

This is a piece for a show I might be jumping in on.
Or it's a piece for a show I missed the deadline on.
Either way, it's a piece.

Lunch painting

Quick study done over lunch.
I've been thinking about fish a lot lately.

New painting study

I know, I've still got all of those other pieces to finish!
The last few weeks have just been insane so I've not had many chances to get down to the studio. I'm playing with ideas, instead, like this one.

Here's something I've begun to notice: In my traditional work before now I always painted landscapes or figures. Now, in this new more illustrative work, I paint surreal landscapes or figures. I'm not sure why I didn't catch that before.

Lots to do with this. It has to do with letting go of wonderful things in our past and continuing on.
Or, it's how our dogs are wiser than we are.

WIP for Jess

I'm having fun with this. It's for my girlfriend, Jess.

Some more portrait studies

Some portrait studies

I've been doing these about once every couple of days to keep myself busy when I don't have time to plunge myself into one of my larger projects going on right now. Some are of friends, some are just from photos I found and were drawn to. Not all end up great, either, but that's not their point.

Tree WIP

Not pleased with this one completely. It's an idea for a wedding present for an old friend. It kinda became a mess. I'm moving on, though.

Circus update

I'm beginning to understand this girl's story. I think she ran away to the circus, and this particular circus is very magical, very beautiful, and very, very dangerous. So now she's thinking of running away from the circus. I think it would be fun to explore this story in several more images.
Still much more to do to this, but I'm learning something each time.

More work on Circus piece.