Author: mightylark

I’m feeling so Freakie Fresh. Winter in New Hampshire is coming and coming fast. First off this winter, I am going to learn to ski and maybe snowboard. Second things are looking good for Lewis Acrylics. I have a lot going on, but there seems to be plenty of time to complete everything right now. Very good. Some new things that are coming up:

1.) I have started to do interviews for Underground Art School. The first interview is with Andrea Porter of Blue Bottle in Seattle. It is scheduled to run in mid-November, which as I check my ical is in five days. So I will keep you posted on that.

2.) I had to cancel my November show with Borough Gallery. It is very unfortunate, but due to personal difficulties this fall, I did not have the mental faculty or desire to finish any new paintings. On top of that, I just didn’t have enough time to create five new paintings in a new vein. The gallery has been very kind however, and it looks like I may be showing with them in the future.

3.) I have verified the theme of my Fall 2010 show at the Blue Bottle. It will be a Mighty Lark comic. I will be doing full paintings of the frames of the comic. The comic itself will be available for sale as well as the completed paintings.

4.) I have started a Society6 Account. It’s a cool site. Through them I have Giclee prints available of My Home in the Tree and Singing on a Wire. Check it out on my homepage here.

5.) I have been working with TinCan Web Works to produce a couple new websites. There will be one for the new literary magazine OVS, which I am producing the header for and offering some design suggestions, and the site for WPCR, that’s Plymouth College Radio, will be entirely my design. OVS Magazine is also still accepting submissions for art and poetry for another 9 days after today. Go submit. It’s going to be great.

6.) Lastly I’ve been doing some new design work highlighting my line. I just put together a piece for the Kitchen Sessions Warren, NH. Check it out.

Check out the Kitchen Sessions for some cool new poetry. The idea is that none of the work read at the kitchen session will have been read before. Also, the event is being held at a very cool log cabin in the middle of the woods. It’s going to be great.

That’s all I have for now folks. Lots of sketchbook work that I may post, but I’m still living in someone else’s house, so I don’t really have a studio set up right now. I don’t really want to get paint all over the place you know? But keep posted, there will be some more cool stuff soon.

Until then.
peace
-Mike

I’ve been invited to be in another show for November at Borough Gallery & Studio. At this point this year though I am not looking to do a whole bunch more bird paintings. I have really been wanting to do some cartoony figurative work again.

So I started with the Umbrella Man who I have painted before but who I feel I can always do better with. I think he’s coming out great this time. I can really see how my painting has progressed when I compare the phases of UM.

The second piece I admit is a little bit of a cheat but I have been looking to piece this painting into a show for a while now, and it is not as if I am not producing other paintings for the show as well. So the second piece is a waiting for the bus piece.

Love this painting. Hope that folks in Burlington will too. Until tomorrow. I gots work to do.

peace
-Mike

It’s Illustration Wednesday, cuz I’m a slacker and didn’t finish this on Friday. Hope you like it!

It’s done, well if I want it to be. I have two pieces that I may try to finish by Monday, or I may not try to finish them by Monday. Either way, I dropped off my show at Artstream Studios today and I am stoked. I have no more shows lined up for this year, so I’m going to work on some cool little projects for me, and try to pick up some illustration work here and there.

I’m also going to get back to work on the Mighty Lark web and mini comics that I have brewing in my head. And lastly I will be applying to the Low Residency programs at MECA and SFAI to hopefully be enrolled in an MFA program next fall, because I’m that guy. Awww Yeah.

But, you haven’t seen work from me in weeks and I have a couple new pieces for your viewing pleasure, so here they are.

Yar… I thought of this piece while maxing and relaxing in Warren, NH, because that is what you do in Warren, NH. I love pirates, I love birds, I love the Jolly Roger ( both the flag and the Maritime brew ). What more can I say?

This next piece is a diptych. I think I might make diptychs just so I can use the word. The sound of the word itself is known to make some men uncomfortable. Diptych.

Definitely got into the pipe lettering, but also was able to bring some really colorful painterly background into this one. Amped all around. I’m beginning to realize that this particular blog post is an English Comp professor’s nightmare though. And now for another round of colloquialisms….

The last piece is The Burbs #2. I have been feeling very free with the paint application lately. Perhaps I am enjoying the entropy of joblessness. Anyway, I will keep folks up on some future happenings soon. Comic and painting madness are on their way, as well as a couple treats for Halloween and Christmas.

peace
-Mike

It has been a busy two weeks as I’ve been preparing for my move and trying to finish up the Dwellings show. This will probably be the last that I post to the blog even, since I am going to my parents house for my birthday, where telephone is the height of technology. I love them but there are times when I wonder if they are ok with these moving pictures and what not.

Anyway, last week I was asked to do a poster for an R&B band called the Rhythm Method in New Hampshire. They have a really good sound. Kind of a moving funk beat to it all. Unfortunately as busy as I was the best that I was thinking of for the longest time were plays on the rhythm method procuring babies. I didn’t really figure that the mid forties individuals in the band would really appreciate a fetus dressed up like John Lee Hooker so I kept the type and changed the image to a very nice turtle.

Here it is.

Hope you like it. I was stoked just to draw a turtle. Lets be honest.
See you folks in a week.
peace
-Mike

Living in the Slums is a piece that I have been working on for the “Dwellings” exhibit which is coming up far too soon. I have had some issues with this piece on its surface, i.e. it was feeling empty, because there wasn’t enough color and it was entirely too peaceful for what I was trying to say. Now I’ve resolved that. I used direct color compliments to really amp up the struggle of the piece, but have still kept the bird itself in relative calm and midtones. It is after all the environment that is the conflict, not the individual.

As in real life, most people will come to find whatever is their home as normal. They will consider their station in life, get used to it, and albeit they may want more out of life, they are still comfortable with what they have. It is more for rich, domineering individuals to come and tell the lower classes that they aren’t living well.

Anyway, that is what I was thinking about while making this painting, and although the digital copy has been a frustrating loss of my color palette and its delicacies, hopefully you will get an idea of what I am trying to get at.

I guess in the end, the moral of the story is that converting your images to digital is kind of like seeing a painting through different eyes. Perhaps it would be better to compare to translations of language. No matter how good a translator is, there is something lost in telling a story in a different language. Take for the instance the Bible written in Hebrew. I was once told that there were roughly 6 ways to translate a four word excerpt to English.

When thinking that way, maybe my colors don’t look so bad in the digital copy.
Til next time.
peace
-Mike

The Dwellings show is coming up fast, and somehow my paintings are slowly coming together, but I think that this is going to end up being a super crunch time painting show reminiscent of sleepless college projects. I am feeling very good about the paintings though.

I managed to turn a board around from a painting that had no value to me to the beginning of a cool little subset of Dwellings. It is going to be a burbs mini series. No birds in these pieces, just stacked houses. I feel like it will really get the idea across better without any characters in the piece.

Here is the first:

Not only did this turn into a cool little piece, and afford me a small sub-series, but I also started to work with a palette that I have not used in several years on this piece. I think it will balance off of the blues and browns that I have become so predominant in my other work. Very exciting.

The second piece that I have to post today has really been a long time in the coming. I have had the drawing done for this piece for a couple months now, but was hesitant to paint it. I think I was worried that I wasn’t ready yet technically to do a good job with it, but these proved to be false apprehensions as I feel like I completely nailed it yesterday. I rolled from start to finish from about nine to seven in the evening.

And here it is:

I’m having prints made of this piece and will be giving them away with every commission that is ordered before October 15th. So if you’d like a print, be sure to get on the phone and have me start a painting for you and we’ll get you one!

Now my brain is fried, so I think I will call it quits for the day. Be sure to check back in the next couple days. There is still more to come.

peace
-Mike

I finished my first poster for the Stone Church on Zion Hill, in New Market, NH this last weekend. They apparently liked it, because I have a second project for this week. I am really liking this type of work. It depends much more on concept than my painting work. Painting work is very much building a body and then figuring out how some pieces of it go together, and illustration work is more starting within somebody’s elses parameters and going with it.

It is nice to have the dichotomy in my work right now. This piece, I worked up digitally, with some confidence that I absorbed from reading and listening to people that I have found through Escape From Illustration Island. If you ever need inspiration as an illustrator, or need to find fonts or someplace to get work. EFII is the place to go. Thomas James has put together an amazing resource and is quite the illustrator himself.

Anyway, without further ado, here is the most recent gig poster:

I have also finished my piece for the postcard for Artstream Studios, “Dwellings” show. I am so stoked with these hand drawn type pieces. I started another one today that is even cooler, and it kind of blows my own socks off, cuz I didn’t think I could pull it off.

Anyway, here tis.

Hope y’all like it. Let me know what you think. Pretty soon I will have a bunch more images up in just a little while, all of you New Hampshirites can come catch the opening and see the whole thing.
Take Care.
-Mike

I have actually got a whole bunch of new work going right now, which is awesome. It is very much overdue, but better late than never. This show is really going to be amazing. I am quite confident in that. Here is the latest piece in the series of Dwellings:

I like this piece a lot, though I know that it is much simpler than some of the pieces that I have been doing recently. I also put a quick Mighty Lark piece together for my Etsy Page, which is available here.

It’s just a quick piece, but I think it’s pretty cool nevertheless. I still have a couple pieces available through the C.A.V.E. gallery here. These are both fairly inexpensive pieces and pretty cool. Be sure to check those out.

Lastly, I’ve got another poster gig for the Bruce Bartlett Trio, who is playing at the Stone Church in about a week. I have to wrap that up in the next day so that there will be plenty of time to print and flyer the area. Here is the preliminary sketch.

What do you think. I really dig the electric pole bit. It’s making me very happy. I will have some more stuff up for you soon. Especially if I get some batteries for my camera. I am working on a couple pieces that I am not so sure I want to scan in pieces because they are bigger than I usually work. I will try to get those up soon.

Until then, y’all take care now.
peace
Mike