Category: Uncategorized

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

Today I picked up my new promos to send to Hire an Illustrator and to some various clients on my own. I’m very excited to have new promotional material. I think that it has actually been since college that I have had any made, and that was six years ago now!

So here they are. I realize now that I am just looking at them from a viewer point rather than a design point that maybe they should be edited, but it is a good first effort in a long time. Hope you like them!

Hopefully these work and I get a ton of illustration work out of them right?

Susan Schwake asked me to put together some small bird portraits as a sort of preview into my show “Dwellings” at Art Stream studios in October. I think that they came out pretty well. The show itself is coming along. I am still very into the hand drawn type, but I need to get more of my ideas out and on boards so I can paint different pieces simultaneously. I always do better with a multitude of canvases in front of me.

I have also been working pretty steadily on the Mighty Lark Web Comic. That is a very exciting project for me because I have always been into comics, and wanted to draw comics but have never had the confidence in my drawing to actually make a comic. But thanks to Big Illustration Party Time and Art & Story Podcasts, I have started to relax a little and just have some fun, and the work is not really disappointing me in the least. I think maybe I just needed to take the plunge and then everything comes together.

I have been talking with Mike McGee about maybe doing some writing for it, or maybe some other funny writer. I can make the Mighty Lark look like he is doing pretty much anything but I am a little less confident about the story that I have brewing in my head. Though maybe that is the same type of thing. Maybe I just need to jump in and it will be ok too.

At least I have a plot planned out. I will be posting on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays starting tomorrow night. I was doing a daily comic, but I found that a.) it was all of the work that I was able to get done in a day sometimes, and b.) I was not able to put the amount of time into the drawings that I wanted to put into it.

I would like for the writing to eventually be along a Calvin and Hobbes sort of level. I.E. One big adventure comic, followed by some three panel gag strips.

I have also been given a complete profile at Hire an Illustrator. I am trying to make something of an illustration career now, since I have pretty much avoided my degree for the past six years. I am excited about this opportunity because I can see what it is like to be represented and hopefully I can get some cool Illustration gigs out of it.

Well, I should stop blabbing and get some work done on my show now, but it’s been a while, and I had news. Life is good. I’ll be back soon.

peace
-Mike

The past couple days have been very productive. I have stopped looking for a job in Minneapolis as there is only about three more weeks to my stay here anyway. Were I to take a job I would just have to leave shortly anyway. So I have decided to devote my whole time to my show for Artstream studios, art projects for me, and my newest venture, a web comic.

I have wanted to do a web comic for a long time. Actually I have wanted to do a comic for a long time to begin with. I remember trying to put one together for my high school paper, but I never thought that I was funny enough. Now I am not sure how funny I necessarily am, but I realize a lot of the problem that I had was actually the drawing and not being able to carry a character from panel to panel. I’ve decided to tackle that and to try to tackle it on a daily basis at that. So far I have done the Mighty Lark Web Comic three days in a row. Hopefully there will be one tomorrow too.

Yesterday I also finished two paintings and started two more. It has been incredibly productive vibes going on here in the Lewis Acrylics studio.

I had actually started this painting before I moved but it still had quite a ways to go. I think I will be sending it out to the Blue Bottle in Seattle. We’ll see if they are interested. They generally seem to be my center for Mighty Lark sales.

The next piece I finished was just a small one for my Etsy store.

It’s tiny. Only 2.5″ square, but if you are interested in some small owl art for your home and you want to help out a guy who is supporting his move all over the country then stop over to the Etsy shop and grab it while you can.

It looks like I am going to have some more stuff to post tomorrow too. So keep posted. And please let me know what you think of the web comic. I am really trying to expand my drawing ability with that.

Everybody have and awesome friday. I’ll be back soon.
peace
Mike

My show at ArtStream Studios is really starting to come together. Funny. All I really had to do was start working on it and it really all came together. I am becoming obsessed with typography in my projects. I think I always had this tendency but now my typography is becoming A.) more legible, and B.) more creative.

I am trying to make type out of all different kinds of things. This piece is obviously not done, but I think will be done this evening. It has gone incredibly fast. Fast like when I was in my senior year of college and didn’t have to do a thing in the world but paint fast.

There is more to come. And I haven’t figured out every angle of “Dwelling” that I want to touch on and pursue, but since I’ve started coming up with these pieces that has felt a lot more refreshing and less entrapping than it did before.

The past couple weeks I have also been trying to work out a logo project for a company here in Minneapolis. It is going slow. Sometimes I think to myself that they would be better off finding a graphic designer, but I feel like I should be able to wrap my head around this project and get it to a good point as well.

Here are two of the sketches that I came up with today. They are not perfect but they are at least starting to steer away from what I was told and more down the path of fitting a project into my head. I mean to say that, when a person asks for a design, they will tell you what they like and what they expect. As a designer or illustrator it is your job to give them that, but also to take what they say and spin it on its head so that you come up with something new and cool. I hadn’t started thinking like that until very recently so hopefully I have some better ideas on the horizon..

I’ve got a lot of work to do. It’s time to get back at it. I will keep you all posted on what is going on though.

til then.
peace
-Mike

I did a sketch of this piece a while ago in a very small moleskine that I was working in at the Village Pizza. I loved that original sketch but have really been wanting to do something more with this idea. I either wanted to make it into a t-shirt or into a new painting or both.

Since I’ve had my epiphany with the Artstream Studios Dwellings show though, I’ve realized that several of these would work out really well and be a really cool option. It also serves as an excellent opportunity to use more hand-drawn type, which I’ve been into ever since I have been in contact with Racheal Anilyse. You should check out her typography. It’s amazing.

I intend to get a couple more sketches up this week, this is actually the almost complete drawing on board.
Soon I’ll be painting this sucker up.

Keep in touch folks, let me know what you think, and if you are in NH be planning on attending the show at Artstream Studios. It is going to be awesome.

peace
Mike

Today I spent the majority of my day working on the color finals of the The Lights Out poster coming up for next week. Hopefully the band is into one of the two color options that I sent them. If not, I’m going to have to pull something together by the end of the week, and noticeably we are halfway there.

I have two color versions for the band to pick from so far. The first is more my color scheme but I did most of the painting digitally, so I don’t know if it works as well on a psd canvas as it does on an actual canvas. The second, I really was trying to emphasize the drawing. There is a part of me that feels like I should actually paint this in acrylics, but then I will be up all night tonight as well.

I don’t know, what do you folks think?

This has been an awesome project to work on, and the guys from the band just have super good things to see. It is nice to work with a positive group of guys who seem genuinely excited to make suggestions.

I’ve also been contacted this week about being represented by Hai! (Hire an Illustrator), an office based out of London. It is operated by the same man who operates the Little Chimp Society. I have not decided yet whether to be represented or not, but it is still very nice to even be considered. I am fairly certain that I will go with them. It would be nice to reach a broader audience with my work and with my illustration.

I also became a member on Illustration Mundo, which is a website that started in Brazil. It holds a huge database of illustrators, a very nice selection of artists if you want to check it out. Also if you give me comments or say that you like my work via the site my rating increases. So if you want to show your support, you can do that here.

I hope you folks are all enjoying the sun today. After I finished my two poster selections today I have been sitting in the sun and loving this weather. Now it is off to go cook for some awesome ladies here in Minneapolis. I’ll be posting some sketches for the Artstream studios show tomorrow. I have some, I’ve just been lazy and haven’t uploaded them yet. Gotta enjoy summer while you’ve got it.

Y’all take care now, y’hear!
-Mike