Done-ish

My camera and I are not friends right now. I have to read the manual again to get the settings right, because all my pictures are very low quality. If you were to try to zoom in, you just see sad pixels trying to be a painting. Not cool.

Anyways, here is a grainy image of my most recent work. I'm calling it done-ish. It's amazing how your favorite parts of a piece will be the areas that are the least worked on. Not the areas where you slaved on and made you feel completely terrible about your life choices. I guess its not so weird.

stupid math

Here is a new equation for you:

new painting  -  any amount of success

-------------------------------------------      =   decreasing amount of hope

A crucially wasted weekend

Blogging break over. Now, back to that painful grind called failure.

Snipets and trinkets.

Its just a peek at a new large painting for my independent study. I wanted to "play" with keeping things soft and maintaining  a tighter value/color structure. It turns out that its not "play" at all. But I have a new friend to help me. Juliette Aristides just put out a follow up to her Classical Drawing Atelier that should be placed next to Andrew Loomis in terms of Bible-hood. The title of her most recent amazing-ness in print form is Classical Painting Atelier. 

It's about a tree, right?

Here is a book cover assignment that I did for Pratt. He gave me some good crits on it so I've tweaked a few things and c'est ca. It's for A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith. It's a good heartbreaking read that I recommend that everyone reads at least once in their life.

JA chybił ty, Pastel!

Here is an illustration that I've been working on for Pratt. It's a book cover for this story about a female Polish spy on this one Nazi officer. Its full of secret-y secrets and intrigue-y suspense. I worked in pastels and now I am forever and completely in love with them. If they were a person, I would marry them.

This one goes on the fridge

Here is a final image of this event poster I've been working on for a NASA show back home. They are basically just sending around space images taken from the Hubble. It's very cool that my mom got the show to come to her library. It's not cool that I won't be able to see it. 

**hint: I feel like I deserve a present from my mom. I can send her a wish list of acceptable things.***

Haunted Dream House

This is my sculpture from Brandes' Adv. Media. I decided to sculpt a quirky haunted house because I thought it would be too much fun not to. Well, while there was plenty of fun, there was also plenty of work and near broken-hearted moments when the sculpture nearly bit the dust. Funny story, but I almost tripped with the almost done sculpt in my hands. It wasn't funny until my heart started beating again.

Red Couch

Here is just a look at the finish of an older piece. I had some corrections that I wanted to make on this painting that unfortunately had to be put on a back burner. I'm pleased with it.

Get rich selling wigs to bald eagles.

I saw this in Target the other day and instantly geeked out. I love Red Nose Studios and I love to see Chris Sickle-ness  any chance I get. The crystal ball part has funny fortunes that add to my smile factor. 

Char-zilla

Here is the beginning of my next ind. study piece. I decided to block in my composition and color with acrylics this time so I could get to the real painting quicker. This time the size is 40x48 inches. One drawback... my turps gelled into a terribly smelling thing in my brush cleaning container. I am currently cleaning my brushes with an old olive can. The olives will be eaten soon.

Watercolor is fun again!

It was always fun, but playing with this technique is extra enjoyable. Here I did a portrait of a Bedouin man, Audrey Hepburn singing "Moon River," and some fancy geisha lady. I still want to play around with this but for a first serious initial attempt, I'm kinda sorta digging it.

rediscovered oldies

some paintings from a past sketchbook.  i need to get back into doing this.

shhhhh

Almost done with the majority of this painting for Hodges. I meant it as a study for a larger painting, but my reference isn't good enough for it. The size is roughly  18x30-ish???

{something witty here}

Hey, so I've been going from blog to blog and stumbled on some new, for me, artists. A bunch of them worked on Coraline and have some of the production stuff posted. Very cool. 

Other than that, I am painting and working like a street performing monkey on a unicycle with an accordion. I'll get smore things posted soon.

Final???

Hey, so here is where I am now with my portrait commission. I'd like to say that it's complete, but in working on this piece its just so clear how much I still have yet to learn.

Crits would be great on this piece as I have to send it off.