Old Men

This Sunday was General Conference, one of two times a year where every good Mormon is expected to sit and watch TV for 8-10 hours in a weekend, and since it's not the most entertaining television ever, it makes a great opportunity to do some painting.

go to onehundredone.dk to see the photo reference.

I suddenly like painting on cardboard

Getting Pumped for V-day

Historically, Valentine's day and I haven't been on the best terms. The holiday seems to have an unfortunate tendency to coincide with breakups, defacing injuries, and other tragic events. I realized not too long ago that I was probably going to spend yet another Valentine's being just as single as ever, so I decided that instead of whining about it, I would make super awesome valentine's day cards and then give them out to everyone I know.




I didn't like this one, so I decided to redo it, but then I decided I liked it again.

Merry Christmas, One and All

For one of my figure drawing sessions at work this month, we had Santa model for us, and I decided that it would be great to bring out my gouache paint set and make a postcard out of it

Our Santa is a pretty cool guy, the kind you would drink a beer with, If you were a beer-drinking kinda guy.

This is the staff of Cordovan School of the Arts.

Sunday Painting: Ugly Christmas Tree Ornament

Last year, I was at Hobby Lobby with my mom, looking through the clearance isles and laughing at the failures of interior decoration, when we found the grand daddy of bad design, a Christmas ornament of an unusually dark-skinned Indian with green and red war paint who was fondly caressing his horse, who had a large red circle painted around each eye. We had a good laugh at it and were about to buy it, but then the lines were too long, so we just put it back.
I went back to the store later and bought it as a cheap gag gift for my mom, who later took it to work and showed it off to her coworkers, who smiled and nodded.
When I went off to school, my parents started playing a little game with the Indian. My mom wants to hang it on the fridge, but my dad hates it and thinks it's the ugliest thing ever, so anytime my dad sees it on the fridge, he hides it somewhere where it will get found several weeks later.
I decided upon a great way to settle this: I would make an actual-sized painting of it on a postcard. That way, my dad would still have to look at the indian, even when the original was hidden away under a car seat or in a less-used pocket of my mother's purse.

the front side was done in gauche, and the back was prismacolor.

Happy Birthday, Caplin Rous

Caplin Rous is one of the few rodents in the world with his own facebook/blogger/myspace accounts. Everytime I see him online, I always have this as a mental image, since I'm sure this is exactly what he looks like when he's on the internet. The only way this image could be anything less than perfectly accurate is if he's a rodent with a preference for Macs.

Poolside Plein Air

I just got invited to join http://pleinairpaintinggroup.blogspot.com , which was created by a few of the folks from Junction Point Studios. I discovered that this is a whole new way of painting for me, which is a polite way of me saying I'm no good at it. I also discovered that it's fun going outside to paint and getting strange looks from the lifegaurd, who undoubtedly was wondering what the heck I'm doing with a paint set at the neighborhood pool.

Sunday Painting: Bunkey is an Alien Entity

This is what happens when I combine Bobby Chiu with M.R. Weaver.
Acrylic on postcard.

Sunday Painting: Proboscis Monkey

I've got church that starts at 2:00, so it leaves me with a tone of time in a house all to myself. It makes for the perfect time to do a painting. Here we have the most magnificent of creatures, the proboscis monkey. Part of my postcards for Mom series, done in acrylic.

What I did yesterday, what I did seven years ago.

As of late, I've become a stylized digital painter, and I've been wondering if I can paint as well with traditional paint as I can with a computer program. I feel like I've done most of my learning about how to paint within the last year, with Corel painter, and never learned how to produce portfolio pieces with traditional media, and part of me feels like I need to go back and get some hands-on time with the old paint sets I bought as a freshman in college.
Also, for all you true believers, here's the masterpiece of my angsty teenage years - a portrait of Ellen Ginsberg, from back when I thought photorealism was the epitome of what an artist can achieve.

Tribute to the Internet: Hampster Dance

Postcard-sized acrylic on paper.

Traditional Painting

I haven't done any traditional painting for a very long time. I decided that since I'm not taking any classes at the moment, I might as well do some traditional painting. the color wheel is guache on top of watercolor, while the tiger is watercolor, marker, pen and ink, with latex house paint disguising itself as gesso.
As a Christmas present, I promised my mother that I'd send her snail mail on a weekly to monthly basis, so you can expect to see more postcard-sized paintings in the future.