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Lately at work I have had quite the opportunity to sit around and do nothing, which as you well know turns into me drawing. Usually at work I start to get pretty elaborate with my sketches too. I think it is in response to the monotony of 18 cheeseburgers and nothing else, but recently I came up with some ideas involving robots and type.

I have been interested in type ever since I first started to pay attention to graffiti and concert posters a la the flat stock art scene. So when I started thinking about pairing robots with quotes that were quite obviously boiled down explanations of human philosophy, it gave me a chuckle and I had to start to bring it out a little.

Here’s the first. There are more to come.

Gotta go. Going to be late to my big day of not much.

peace
mike

Today seemed like a day that I wouldn’t achieve a thing. Turns out I ended up finishing the drawings for pretty much my entire feature coming up at the Hive Gallery.

I am supposed to build on the birds with headphones and bird house theme, which admittedly I have been reluctant to attack, but after a morning of relaxation, I was able to start banging out a couple drawings, and I just got on a roll. Without further ado:

Decided to show a little more close up view.

Thought I would show the passing of the torch from one older bird to a teenager. Kind of like a kid discovering punk rock from his older brother.

Decided to throw in a boom box instead of headphones in this one. Give it that nice eighties feel for all you crazy birds out there.

Another change of point of view. Hopefully it makes things a bit more interesting.

This one may well be my favorite. It didn’t look the best in my sketchbook, but on the panel it is starting to gain a very nice personality. Hope you folks enjoy the little preview. I’ll keep posting the new paintings as they pop out.

good night.
-Mike

Thought I would post the promo image for the Blue Bottle show. It is very exciting for me to see my work on the Blue Bottle site and on the card. It makes me feel pretty successful. On top of that, I have already sold a piece via the online show. So if you’re interested in some, you should stop over to their site and pick it up now.

You can access the online gallery here. Stop in and grab something. Thanks for your support throughout the making of the show. I will have images from the upcoming Hive feature soon as well. Take care.

peace
-Mike

I was instructed to make a piece with my Avatar in a heroic act, which I’ve already told you about. I finally managed to finish that piece up and sent it to California today.

Things have been crazy here. The shows are starting to just blend together now. It’s nice to be so busy, though economically it is difficult to tell how busy I am. I have a couple new pieces in the works for my Etsy page, which I’ll be posting in the next couple days and also I’m working on one of my first prints ever.

I have also just started working on my show for May at the Hive. I’ll have a couple scans of that up in the next couple days as well. For the time being, here is the piece I finished for this coming months group show:

I like it. Hope you do too. Keep checking for more stuff.

I’ll leave you with a Hank III line.
“Workin’ real hard ain’t hard to do, when you got you a lotta money coming to you. But I ain’t got a dime so I’ll just sit here. Even though I’m broke I got a six pack of beer.”

Have a wonderful friday. It’s beautiful.

Living in New Hampshire, you learn to find your own ways to jam, quietly if you don’t want any trouble with your neighbors. I’ve been trying to work some pieces up involving logs and trees, and trying to make them a little more cartoony but also thinking of the logs and trees as a little empire. Kind of like the Ewoks in Return of the Jedi.

This is all started with a drawing that I was working on, while ridiculously slow at the pizza shop. I drew my typical bird, but was growing frustrated, maybe it was the atmosphere of a pizza shop, but started to try to really piece together the environment and also think about some typography at the same time. The result was this:

I was very pleased with my attempt at typography. It felt to me like a mix between a Jeremy Fish feel and a little old skool New York train throw up. When I started piecing in the leaves, I realized that I could make a little more environment though and that the depth of the environment could be created by limbs and leaves.

So then I started thinking about the log jam:

The typography in this one seemed a little more clean, and I then just started to think about the stereo as the accessory to any birds treehouse dwelling and came up with this:

All in all, I think I can keep within the framework of what I was told was my next show and still do something a little bit new, which is really the goal almost every time.

Catch you later
-Mike

Here I am sitting in my living room, listening to NIN and pondering this life, and how weird it seems to have made it as far as I have. Yet still there is so far to go. I’ve stumbled in the past year, was given a second chance (Thank you Blue Bottle) and picked myself back up, dusted myself off, and started to work smarter….not harder.

Yesterday I shipped my Blue Bottle show via the man in Brown. I was just made aware of the show preview which is available on Blue Bottle’s website, here. I am very pleased with the show that I amassed for BB. I think it is my best work yet, and I hope everyone who sees it, likes it as well.

This weekend I also needed to get my Avatar piece started for The Hive Gallery. It had been kind of waiting in the wings since the Blue Bottle show was more pertinent, but I finally had some time to work up sketches last night, and came up with this:

We were supposed to use our Avatars from last years’ show, so the Mighty Lark was the only detail I had to start with. My Avatar was also supposed to reside in the dark forest region of “Hiveland” and be performing a heroic act. Hence this flying bear.

I started to think about the dark forest, and then extended my thinking to why it was dark. I began to think of it as kind of a Camille Rose Garcia forest, covered in oil. So I started to draw out my rendition of the La Brea Tarpits crossed with the Red Woods National forest and came up with this underpainting this morning.

This really is a nice piece for me to work on right now, as it really isn’t held down by any constraints as to pieces I’ve done in the past that gallery owners would like me to replicate or anything like that. I’m stoked to finish it and will keep all of you folks updated.

Thanks for stopping in, and for the continued support. Y‘all come back now, ya hear?
Sincerely
-mike

My show is done. I’m sending it out tomorrow morning. Now I can move on to other work that I need to get going. It feels amazing to have wrapped up this show. If you ask me, it is the best that I have put together yet. Hopefully that remains to be the trend for the rest of my life.

Here it is. The Culmination.

This one, may have been my favorite to work on. It was definitely not going right for a couple weeks though, so I am incredibly excited that I got it working without pushing my time limit too much.

Everything is going exactly as planned. The Death Star is nearly completed. Soon the Rebel army will have no hope…….
or maybe I could pretend not to be a complete nerd and say “It feels like a job well done”.

roll out
-Mike

Today was super busy. I spent the morning attempting to back all of the pieces for my show. I finished all but three but then had to go to the eye doctor so’s I can see for the rest of my life and whatnot. Apparently my prescription is not at all the same as when I was twenty. Sad Christmas, since I still have those same glasses. All to be fixed soon though.

Later I came home and started to make some decisive moves on the three remaining pieces that I had started for the show, and would you believe I finished them. I’m posting two of them for you tonight, and tomorrow I will post the last, but I’m not feeling up to scanning in parts tonight.

Here are the 11th and 12th pieces for the show:

I am amped on this piece, because the atmospheric business that I usually do in the background is much more non-objective than I usually pull off. I miss making non-objective paintings. There is nothing better to really enjoy your color with.

The second:

I really didn’t think this piece was going to make it into the show, but it was nagging at me and I found what was wrong. Now I think it is pretty successful as another fairly simple piece to add that balance.

Three more backers tomorrow and then I can send this out. Then on to another Avatar piece and a bunch of pieces for the Hive in May. This is officially as busy as I’ve ever been. Wish me luck. I really need it.

peace
-Mike

This morning I woke up next to a beautiful woman, the birds were singing and the sun was high in a blue blue sky. Now to qualify this former sentence, I wake up next to the same woman every day, so don’t get any ideas, but it was very peaceful nonetheless.

I am ready for spring, so when I started to work on a piece for Blanket Magazine, I had robins on the mind. Robins are supposed to be the sign of spring, which is only complicated a little by the obese robin that has been hanging around outside of our house for the past four months. And yes obese is the right word. He is the built like a linebacker, or like one of Emmit Smith’s offensive lineman.

Anyway, for the communication issue of Blanket Magazine, I incorporated a tin can phone and robins. Hope you like:

That’s all for now. Be sure to check back later this coming week. I’ll have the complete show preview up for Blue Bottle, my Avatar piece for the Hive and the beginnings of the pieces for my feature at the Hive going down in May.

Peace
-Mike

I did not wake up today expecting to finish two pieces, but that is indeed what I did. I’m amped. That officially leaves me three pieces, all of which I’ve started, to work on for my show to send out next week. I am so far ahead of where I usually am by now.

To top it all off, I love the piece that I’m posting, and it has purple in it. Real purple, not burnt siena and ultramarine blue. This is the first time that I can recall using this much purple since college (6 years ago shhhh).

What do you think?

I promise soon it will be something different than robots and birds. I have one piece with just birds in it, a show lined up for my birds with birdhouses theme, and a couple ideas for pieces involving my kitties.

If you’re interested I did a WhoHub interview which you can view here.

Until then.
Peace
-Mike