Running in artistic circles

Ok, enough with the mouse tales! Let's do some of that promised art! (Yes, I forgot to post this yesterday... and now it takes up today's post instead!)

This piece of work is the one I've been playing with for quite some time - with very little success. Keeping with the tradition, my hours of work on this bugger ended up making the painting look... uh... exactly the same as it did when I started. WHATEVER, THERE'S MORE PASSION IN IT NOW!

Let's not be blue

Work continues on my latest neurotic painting! As it shapes up, astute observes will note my old friend blue is not hanging out with the other colors. This has been quite the color theory challenge, but it's been fun. I rely on blues far too much and I need to branch out a bit and try to solve, say, the red menace.

Now watch this painting end up with blue as the background color. I have been thinking about it, especially if I do the planned yellow blitzkrieg. As it stands, a neutral color like bamboo of buff titanium would look best, but that was not the goal! Then again, the original goal was purple in the background and I've tossed that in favor of just using the danged thing. Eh, this is what one gets when one improvises in painting. I have very little control over myself.

Now that the base colors or down, it's time to start refining everything. That means lots of black, white and general outlining! It's therapeutic! I may or may not finish this one right away, as I have lots of painting commissions to do. It would be wise to focus on the art I'm getting paid to do, but since when have artists been rational?

Back, with a loving family!

Hey, y'all, the blog's back up and running! To commemorate my return, I present to you the *almost* final version of "A Loving Family."

The camera needs to painted, and a few places on Harvey needs a second coat, but I'm about one night's work away from having this done. I had thought of going pink with the background, but I have no pink paint. Since I wanted it to be uniform, I went with pistachio. It might not look it, but it's really hard to "draw" characters in paint, so I'm looking forward to going back to painting my modernist pieces.

Let's see if I can keep this daily blog going again. Also, let's see if that hiatus left any readers...

The friendly hermit

Work on the "I hate everyone" painting is continuing - in spite of some people being nice to me! I think it's becoming more of a "this is what I can do" statement than the "so shove it" part of the motive. I still may start mass murdering or supervillaining at any moment, but at least I'll do it with modernist flare!

On the comic front, I'm trying to get a few days ahead. I'm pretty bad at using my free time right now. I've been playing too hard, so free days end up "sleep like the dead" or "walk like a zombie" days. It's Friday, though! While normal people go out and play, I use the silence to get as much work done as I can.

Variety spices up my life

I am a great artist! I am versatile! I can draw modernist masterpieces! I can draw cartoon animals! Today: Cartoon animals win. Maybe I can get back to my fine art roots tomorrow.

Enjoy a random husky dude and poodle gal. See, I can draw other characters. No, they will never make it into Precocious. That's sort of an insular group.

Drawing inspiration from strange places

I started work on a new large-format painting! Hey, after the bite-sized babies, 3'x2' is MASSIVE!

Why did I start painting instead of working on all the Precocious stuff I need to do? Blame my iPhone.

I was connecting it to charge when I looked at my current wallpaper. It's a dim shot of one of my bite-sized paintings. (This room has terrible lighting.) I wanted something brighter, so I searched the room for something well-lit. No dice. Maybe if the painting was bigger it would show up better... so I grabbed one of my giants from the other room and snapped a shot of that. (Lighting was still too dim, but it's a NEW dim wallpaper!)

Holding that massive work of art in my hands inspired me! I had some bigger canvases lying around and it was about time I started working on them. Screw Precocious, I want to paint circle-ish things! In Precocious I have to draw things I am rather unskilled at drawing, leading to unsatisfactory results. In painting, I can do whatever the heck I want!

It's a nice start, but I'm not certain where to go next with it. Oh well. It's not a problem as I'm sure I'll have something in mind by the time I can get back to working on it.

Now, back to drawing some Precocious strips! Dammit.

Creating a connection

Don't glare at me! I'm up here (in part) to prep for dinner. I'm in charge, so it's fried rice for all! It also coincided with a break in painting, so I'll do the progress post. I happen to set up a stepladder for my laptop, well, I have do something while the rice simmers. Why am I not cutting chicken and veggies while the rice simmers? SHUT UP! STOP LOOKING AT ME! I AM NOT A HOPELESS ADDICT! *sob*

The concept for this painting is, well, connection. Two forms -be they buildings, land masses, weird blogs of paint, whatever - are connected by a bridge the melds into them both. We grow dependent on our connections, eh?

How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Sell My Soul

It's time for more HOT flower action!



Here is my "finished" poinsettia painting. Hotel walls everywhere are about to be classed up!



And here is flower painting part 2: Poppies or some shit. I dunno, they are made of plastic so there's no guarantee they are proper flower replicas. Plastic flower taxonomists could be fucking with me. I just don't know. (Plastic Flower Taxonomists: Bad name for a band, or BADDEST name for a band?) As you can see, I got halfway through the the first treatment of the leaves before Monday Night Football got awesome and distracted me. After that, I had to hurry and put the entire studio away so the cleaning lady that came today would have surfaces to clean.

At the time of this writing, I have been too lazy to pull the art supplies back out from their storage places and set 'em up again. Chances of me doing any more painting tonight: Slim to none.

Oh well, this just means more sexy sketchbook time. Can you believe I went two days without drawing a cartoon animal? Earlier I was bullying my grandmother into keeping a diary and writing childhood stories when I found myself filling the notebook I brought up for her dictation with Jacobs. THE HUNGER RETURNS!

Edit: Fuck the hunger, I watched a movie instead and all I doodled was some ART thing. I wanted cartoon animals and got modernism. I HATE WHEN THAT HAPPENS!

A distinct lack of cartoon animals

While Precocious has occupied my life, I *am* still an artist if the fine variety.

Today I found a box of colored pencils that I used to make my labels when hanging my art at the Martinsburg Arts Centre. Hey, what the hell; it's Friday - GO NUTS! I'm just so wild that I draw pictures instead of, y'know, have friends.

I'm calling it "Tango" because the original few shapes looked like two figures dancing. (Obviously.) It's a tad overworked, but that's what I do. It's the first me-style art I've done in a while, so yay?

Someday this will be a t-shirt!

Ahh, such an inspirational message for the children...




It's a variation on a tried and true theme, which has been broached in both The Incredibles and in my rationale for not driving medium-weight racers in Mario Kart.

If Roddy wasn't such a jerk, you'd almost feel bad for him. See, Roddy is one of those well-rounded geniuses. He's the guy who scores evenly in all standardized testing and has a knack for several of life's disciplines. Problem is, in a world of geniuses and prodigies, there's lots of specialization. (Heck, even the dreaded normals can have one attribute that is excellent!) No matter the competition, Roddy will always be trumped by a specialist in the field. His awards wall may be larger than anyone else's, but there are precious few #1 honors hanging. As Roddy is ultra-competitive by nature, this leads to inevitable frustration.

As all characters are a reflection of their creator, Roddy's struggle is my own. In art school, I hated the idea of specializing and suffered the consequences for it. See, you need to establish a stylistic identity to make an impression on people, and if you spend your time showing off how you can work in several styles - guess what? NO ONE CARES!

I eventually found my compromise. I have my own style that is present in all my work, making all of my pieces recognizably mine. With that identity, I can use my style as a base on which to expand to suit my need for variety. The major I chose, printmaking, is more of a consolidation of skills. It can incorporate drawing, painting, photography - any combination of techniques can be used to produce a print. For graduate work, I'm focusing on illustration - a discipline where versatility is key! It's a balance in life that keeps on moving forward. It took me until 25 to learn this. Roddy's 10, so he's screwed.