Some doodles and, yes *sigh* another self portrait (I'm not vain, the art overlords make me do them I promise!)

First up is some cat and robot doodles. The top doodle is observed from the real life hatred that once in a blue moon stems from my loving pets. Normally they get along swell.


Next up, is what you've really been waiting for (come on folks admit it)... ME!
Done in charcoal in one class section. I'm particularly proud of the lighting on the cloth of the shirt. I might look mean, but that's just eye strain setting in. I set my mirror on a low chair and had to scoot the thing far away. Charcoal is quickly becoming my favorite drawing medium.



Thank you for indulging me by viewing these pics. Artists are creatures of fragile self esteem so we like the boosts of having others look at our work- makes us feel important.

A Monday Update

Thought I'd throw in a bit of an update for Monday this time. My first piece is traditional medium- acryllic paint on illustration board cut-outs. It's supposed to resemble a stage with a play going on, but I threw in some crude humor for the fun of it. There is an all cool color scheme with just a touch of red and yellow to contrast and better show the horror of what is happening


The next piece is another of my self portraits. (you'll be seeing a lot of these because I have to do so many for school) This one is a digital study that I did to prepare for a finished version in pastel.

The last post is more my usual type of stuff and features, Dennis the Dinosaur. It is digital- "inked" in Illustrator and colored in Photoshop.

More traditional medium stuff

Here's some more of my non-digital stuff. The first is a bit of a departure for me in that it is 3 dimensional sculpture rather than two-dimensional drawing or painting. Here is my Norse themed robot. My objective for this project was to visualize a story where the norse god, Thor died before he could fight in Ragnorock. I decided the gods would either need to recruit or have the dwarves build a replacement. What would a Norse designed robot look like. In retrospect, there probably would have been a lot of Urnes style design about his body, but I was on a deadline for this project. In these pics, I've tried to crop out the background to give you a better look at what I did. I hope to take some better pics of him soon.

By the way, his eyes do light up with a switch I hid under his cloak and all of his clothing was sewn by hand. I embroidered the tree design on his tabard myself, which is no small feat since I was using a sewing needle to penetrate leather! I also hand sewed the tabard itself as well. The robot's skeleton and parts were made from metal, wood secured with screws, old computer parts and plumbing pipe doodads.

As always, click any pic on this post to see a larger version.


I completed the above piece in October, by the way.

My second piece is another ink wash, but I did lay pencils down first. I came up with this bucket headed robot that hangs out with my cat, Skeletor and they keep each other company throughout their various adventures. I'll also include my initial concept sketches for the duo.


The last piece is an acrylic painting I did- specifically some detail shots from a painting I did. There is also a horrible photo of the painting as a whole so you can see what it looks like, but the quality is wretched. Please do not judge the painting based on this photo.

Something different.

To clarify, these posts are made with traditional medium and are not digital. I like doing digital work, but it's been really nice to work on the actual paper again since I've been back to school.

The first piece may well be the most successful drawing I've completed to date. It is made with charcoal, ink and paper cut-outs and was my final for my drawing class last semester. The dimensions are probably around 45" by 27" if I had to wager a guess. This piece is also very personal to me as it makes a statement about my father's hearing disability and the way even those who love him can sometimes alienate him.
Click an image to see a larger version

The next piece is part of my "Cat and Robot" series, called, "I Was in the Wild". It is about the way nature and technology co-exist and how technology is now widely used for entertainment and pleasure. This work was done with ink washes on watercolor paper. I experimented with spontaneous mark making using no initial layouts for placement. Everything was rendered as I went.

The last piece of this update is an acrylic painting. The digital photo I took of it is rather poor and much of the subtle qualities are lost, but I wanted to post it with these others today. I'm proud of this painting for the experiments with color even though not all of my attempts were successful.

Two Self Portraits for the Price of One

I decided to post some new stuff for all to see. Here are two self portraits I did for a drawing class. The first is an experiment with shapes and the second is an attempt to use an iconic character like Charlie Brown to Communicate more about myself.

I've been doing a lot of work in traditional medium so I'll try to scan some of that in so I can post it really soon.

Thanks for looking!

Please click the pics if you'd like to see them in a larger format.