New Year, New Series

Reflecting on this past year, I've noticed such a change in myself.  There was a lot I wanted to accomplish that I didn't get to.  There was even more that I could've done if I had found the motivation.  Words such as love, success, happiness have changed meaning, for the better I hope.  A series like this may not have been possible in years before because of the deep emotional impact the themes have on me.  As an artist I admit I was afraid to explore them.  I was afraid of being exposed.  I know that artists before me must have felt this when they created.  Art may be a reflection of life, but more accurately, an artist's work is a reflection of his own life.  How can I ignore what is important to me?  For what reason do I create, if not to express myself?  My work has dealt with pain before,  but not the cause of it.  That is, the love that was there first, and how it grew into all its beautiful complications. That is the initial concept, and what I will be investigating in the coming year.  I hope you find it relevant to you.

Lucille

 

Portrait of Lucille Ball.  Approximately  5"x7" Watercolor.

Bohemian Rhapsody?

Acrylic 16"x20"
Commission for my friend Alexis.

Mellow Yellow

 

Acrylic 3'x3'

Commission for my friend Alex.

Thor?

I found some nice color combinations in an illustration I saw and thought I'd apply them to something more to my aesthetics.  This was some experimentation in my sketchbook that I thought was interesting. Funny how it just reminds me of Thor now though, which wasn't really my intention, if he was a golden model. Haha.

Self-Portrait

4x6, watercolor, ink

Owls Owls Owls!

 

There have been quite a few owl commissions. The top is a sketch in watercolor and was a little too serious for the patron, and so the bottom 2 were made on wood panels, stained, and painted with acrylic. There is a 3rd in the set I was unable to take a picture of, of 2 owls, hopefully I can get one soon. 

Dogs Of Law

Commission in watercolor 17"x30" for my friend Alex. Models: Sandwich, Pickles, Phoenix. This was a real pleasure to do, animals don't often make it into my work, but there will be more soon!

Website

I've made some updates to the website. Some minor, but one major change being the addition of the portfolio page. At this time there are only 9 images and a link to my Dripbook porfolio which houses the majority of my works for viewing. After reading what others thought and deciding to make this change I feel its important to have at least some works to view on my website. The ultimate goal of course being to completely house my portfolio on the site instead of having a redirect at all. It make take some time to fully transition, but I think I can have it done by the summer. I'm sure I will have to dust off my Flash skills.

Unfortunately until then I will only have thumbnail views on the website. It was frustrating at times getting the template to work with me but I eventually found alternatives to my ideas of the layout. I decided to go with a simple grid as opposed to putting a functional scrolling widget from the Dripbook site for the simple reasons of quicker upload. I'm all about quicker upload. Not to mention I wouldn't have to integrate the look of the widget to my site, as I like to keep it simple.

Commission - Dogs of Law (thumbnail)

I recently got commissioned to do an animal piece depicting the pets of a friend. I don't often do pieces consisting of animals since humans are where I feel more comfortable but I love exploring animal shapes and textures. Here is the progression of the thumbnail from this upcoming piece. This is about 2"x3".

I hope to accomplish more works delving into other creatures and/or creations. I have a few sketches I'll post soon on elephants, inspired by a friend's nightmare. I thought it would be nice to reconcile the two and perhaps they wouldn't scare him so much :)