Category: Uncategorized

Yesterday I took a day off. I went Christmas shopping, I sent out paintings and Christmas cards, and I watched the Islanders get their butts whooped, but I didn’t cook at the Pizza and I didn’t paint or draw. It was a good day off. Hockey night is the best.

This morning I got a slow start, didn’t sleep well or something, but I got up, had my coffee with Beth and moved over to the studio area as she was out the door. I had drawn a hand out the other day, that I liked, and with a sketch that I had done of a robot holding a birdhouse before, I started to work out a funky robot holding a bird feeder. The idea was to have birds flying about the feeder, but ideas like that are really starting to bore me a little bit, so I drew him holding a sack of seed, and well, you’ll get the idea…..

I am quite pleased with this robot and bird combo. I am starting to hit my stride a little more on the Blue Bottle show. Thats good. Maybe I will actually have the show done early enough to actually frame everything well this time. ( Have to, actually) Still the less stress the better.

I’ll be posting again very soon. I have a couple under paintings that are almost to a level that you can tell what is going on, and when they have reached that point you will see them. Til then….so long.

Today I was handed the stack of Christmas cards that I had to write on, which in my head was a task that I wanted nothing to do with. This was not so much because I didn’t like or want to talk to all of the people who these cards were addressed to, because frankly I did like and want to see and talk to all of these people, but Christmas card writing is time consuming and you always want to say more than you end up saying.

Unlike other years, however, I sat down with the cards the day that Beth handed them to me and started to write out my half. Trust me, when she gets home and she doesn’t have to wait until the week before Christmas, she will be stoked that I am, in fact, normal. Actually, no, more that she won’t have to wait for her boyfriends Christmas cheer to come out.

(The battle continues)

Anyway, I got to Michael Boston’s card and I thought to myself Michael Boston needs a new painting and I have just the thing. When I was preparing for the Concord Arts Market, I was a little lackadaisical with some of the pieces that I threw together, and I never really finished this bird in the derby piece. Today I did. And I like it so much better than I did before.

Check it out……

And don’t be surprised, if you are on the normal christmas card list, if you also get a little painting. Stranger things have happened……

Today I started to work on a piece for another Hive Gallery group show. From the original perusal of the show details, I had determined that the works were supposed to resemble some kind of drug induced feeling, but at the same time a book, “Be here now” was emphasized. Upon a little more research I found that the “Be Here Now” book was actually a guide to figuring out ones own way of enlightenment and benefiting the world. To some, I figure this could involve some drug-induced phenomenon, but perhaps not for everyone.

With the new thoughts of enlightenment in my head, I returned to a sketch that I had originally done for a book with Ivy. The sketch depicted a woman with a solar system within her chest cavity. It was kind of a reflection on the String Theory, everything infinitely big is also infinitely small principle.

I changed the character to male, because the author of the book was male, and I wanted a more haggard persona anyway, Here tis:

What do you think? This is really only the second painting of a person that I’ve even put up on the blog this year. Speaking of which, I wonder if that is some Freudian way of saying I have trouble with society? Something I’ll definitely be looking into. I’ll keep you posted.

On a completely different note, my lovely lady friend is a severe thriftstoreaholic and today she brought home a terrific find. It is now in our bathroom, and it makes me very happy. I leave you with the three innocent criminals…..

Still trying to figure out why they are all wearing pjs when it looks like they are supposed to take a bath. Must be a PC thing……..

Later

Ha, today was a good day. I finally finished what was supposed to be the first piece in my Blue Bottle show. It came together much easier than it began. I really can’t explain the block that I experienced earlier this year but I am happy to say that it is finally gone and far from me.

This piece was difficult to work with because the board that I found had some mysterious substance in it that made the paint seep into the wood. I ended up priming some of the board off with vinyl paints to seal off the seepage, and then my color started to take. The vinyl paint really works great in compliment to the acrylics. They mix together very well too.

This is more of a redo than anything else, I guess. I had put together a painting like this for my show at Gallery 070 on Vashon Island, but the composition was odd (it was a tall skinny board)
and there was a weird ceramic bit on the wood that didn’t take paint well at all.

The piece sold, but I wasn’t very pleased with it. This one I am a little more pleased with though. I really tried to work some compliments in here and pop some parts of the work, hopefully avoiding some of the flat that comes when I make too much color happen.

On another note, I drove to Rochester, NH yesterday, where I booked what will be my third major show for 2009 at Artstream Studios. So that will make one dual show at Blue Bottle in April, a show at Artstream most likely in May or June and a final show at the Hive sometime a little later in the year. We haven’t worked out the details on that one yet.

No matter how you look at it though, next year is shaping up to be big, and busy. Keep checking back. I am actually in a position now where it is a moral imperative that I keep finishing paintings and sketches.

Peace.

I got out of the pizza shop early tonight, which is awesome for two reasons.
1.) It was dead and no one really needed to be there.
2.) The entire time I had been there I was thinking about the video that I’m putting together of me working on a small painting.

Of course that led to me coming home, setting up the camera and putting in some blocks of color for an under painting. I am loving this horticulture and robotics angle. This tropism piece is pretty much my favorite idea of all of them.

Keep checking back too. One of these days I am going to have my video up and you can check out my stop motion work. I think it will be nice to do a few shots in actual speed so that people can get a feel for how quickly I usually work. Wet into wet baby.

Props to Sharon Gold, and good bye to November 08……

And so today, I did something that I haven’t done in a long while, and to an extent that I have never done. I sent a real written proposal to a gallery, with a specific show planned out. I have certainly submitted to galleries before, but almost never with a certain show in mind, and absolutely never with the show planned out prior to submitting.

I usually roll too open ended for that. But today, I was specific (thanks for the help Ivy), and I am quite pleased with that.

Check out the sketches for my idea:

The proposal was for a gallery on main street in Portland, Me. This is roughly what their front window would look like if they let my crazy brain take it over. The close up will let you see a little more clearly what we’re getting at here.

The finished piece will be a news story, broken up over several tv frames that show a massive wave about to obliterate a dome. It could be the Superdome in NOLA or maybe not. You decide. Either way, this is one of the most in your face ideas I have had in a while, and I am incredibly pleased.

Now I’m going to go have another cup of coffee.
Peace.

Three of them to be exact. It was so nice today drinking a coffee (3 actually) and hanging out with Beth, then casually walking over to my board and rocking out an underpainting today.

The events that led to this under painting are all pretty awesome. First off Markos from my job cut me two panels the other night while I was closing up, so I had two perfectly sized boards for the Blue Bottle show. Then Ivy came over to visit and we worked out our next book a little bit. While we were working we rammed through a bunch of my old sketchbooks and I saw a robot sketch that was pretty rad but way underdeveloped.

So this morning I copied what was in the sketch to board and started to work on composition, because that is where the development was really lacking. I added some screws to give the piece some space and really push the composition into something that I have been avoiding for a while. Most of my pieces come off as so flat and in a single plain.

The drawing came together nicely and I started to lay out the under painting as a value study. So far I am quite pleased….

This piece also allows me to get back a little into the Asian Art thing that I was playing with for a little while. Good things. Good things.

Also last week I titled a blog post with horticulture….and then didn’t put up the horticulture sketch because of a blogger mishap….so here you go.

I’m 90% certain that this will end up being the other piece that I do on the boards that Markos shaped for me. I dig the light from the chest as a comparison to solar light. I thinking I am starting to really feel for my new generation of robots here.

Last week one of my sketches was also included in the Free Fridayz blog from Fecal Face, an artist and gallery web site based out of San Francisco. It can be seen in the list here. Check it out and let me know if you can find mine….. This test will be graded.

I leave you with a photo of my kitty though, who was hanging out in my drawer with my paints today. He’s pretty much the coolest.

Wish him well. He cut his paw later today. Later cats (no pun intended)!

I’ve been pretty busy lately. I have to admit. And where I thought things would start to slow down and I could just take it easy, I turned out incorrect. I had promised a co-worker that I would put a piece together for him a month ago. I believe I told him I could finish it in a week, which to be honest is probably a proper amount of time, except that I have been trying to get sketches and pieces together for the Blue Bottle show so that some of the work can go up on the website in advance of the actual show.

So far I think I just have the piece done for the postcard of that show, but at least I have four or five others started so more will be coming soon. I decided to post an in prog image of the piece that I have been doing for my co-worker, because it is a rare landscape, and not looking too bad so far either.

I don’t know if you can tell from this image but that seriously takes up one corner of my porch. I think the largest piece I’ve worked on since college was three or four feet high. This is eight feet long, and I do not have brushes big enough to work on it. But like I say, so far so good. Gotta finish it tonight though, since the guy is coming over early tomorrow morning to take it away.

Gotta change that Island…….

I also decided to post a couple more in progress pieces. On the eleventh I posted a sketch and a drawing on a board, and then I stared at the piece for a while and painted over, and drew in and painted over some more, and now I have this…..

I’m pretty excited about the three little rockets in the piece instead of legs. I really am amped on a flying stereo. Thank you Beth for that little suggestion.

I have a couple more images that I will upload soon, but blogger seems to be having issues, so they will have to wait. Check back to see the sketches that I have ready from the Blue Bottle show.

Peace

Yesterday, I had an entire day free to myself, to work on art and start busting out some pieces and really get going on my show, which by the way, I am waiting on confirmation but I believe that I will be featured on the small wall at the Hive Gallery one month next year as well.

But anyhow, that was a complete aside. I was sitting around yesterday trying to be creative, which is the number one way in all of the world to not be creative, and thought to myself, maybe it is snowing in the notch. Ha. It’s snowing in the notch in June. So I picked up my someday brother in law and we drove to Littleton and hashed out ideas. Let me tell you. If you need ideas about robots take the guy who has been reading sci-fi for all of the years that you’ve lived. Steve is a wealth of robot ideas.

So I came back, belly filled, Thank you Porfido’s, and my head full of ideas, thanks Stephen…..

So here’s the first round of sketches on my robot horticulturist…..

It was a cool idea, but I knew drawing it out that the composition wasn’t quite there, so when I started to do it up on the board I would have to make some adjustments. So I decided to try looking up a little bit and started with this on the board.

And here it is. I think the composition ended up much more interesting than the original. What do you think of the shears hand and the watering hand?

Later.

I am not always in the mood for hip hop. I listen to such a variety of music while I am drawing and painting, but I find that when I am in the mood for hip hop, I am usually also in the mood to start multiple things……Or as my buddy Paul would put it “to go off”

So today was one of those days, chillin’ in the studio listening to some good tunes and just cranking through the issues…

I woke up today with a start, realizing that I need to get half of my show for the Blue Bottle done by December, which is remarkably closer in time proximity than it was the last time that I thought to myself “I really need to get going on this show”. So I started off the day anxiously transferring this sketch to a board….becoming anything but jazzed on the drawing and trying to then make it work.

So in the end I ditched the jam box and the head in the middle of the body, etc. Perhaps it would be easier just to look at it….

And this made me much happier. Obviously we are still talking pretty much under painting here, but this is what you get when you do the drawing phases on your final. I am so amped to be using a cassette in this piece. And yes, for those of you wondering, I was thinking about Soundwave when I drew it out.

After I had some color down on this one though, I just started to go, and I ended up laying out the drawing and starting the under painting on another piece as well. And this is where you can tell that I was listening to hip hop as well.

This is just the upper left corner, but hey, I only got a little bit done on it. I think I’m going to keep the very bold palette when I go into the finish on this one though. The near compliments are making me drool a little…..

Keep on keeping on. I’ll have some more stuff up soon.