Bearded Skull Study

For some reason for a while I had been obsessed with the idea of doing a series of painting with skulls with mustaches and beards, I had done several sketches of celebrity skulls. I want to get back to the idea someday, but this is the first one that I did, it could use some more TLC but it's a good start.

Giant's Head

I dislike selling paintings, they feel like they need to be something more then what my hands can make. However they needed work for the auction and I think I usually am underwhelmed by what I make because I see what it is not instead of what it is. Though I am excited for a severed Giants Head to be in a silent auctio0n at Arts Benicia. Usually the show is filled with flowers, landscapes and abstract pieces, so I am interested to see if any one makes a bid on my strange piece.
The origin of this piece had to do with a threadless design competition for Adventure Time I was drawing Finn the human slaying a giant and I drew a few really cool severed giant's heads. It was really fun I kinda want to do some more and really develop something here.

Giant's Head Study

I am working on a painting for Arts Benicia's Annual Benefit Auction and before I started working on the larger final piece I decided to do a color study of the work first. I busted out my water color Moleskine, which I had been neglecting. I am really happy with it and I plan on doing the big one tonight, because it appears to be due tomorrow.

Cup Cake Skulls: Sprinkles of the Dead

Sprinkles of the Dead

Cup Cake Skulls: Deadly Frosting

Deadly Frosting

One of Laura's co-workers, Martha, gave me a great idea to turn these into birthday cards. Happy birthday you are one year closer to death!

Cup Cake Skulls: Hostess of Death and Inks

I wanted to participate in Arts Benicia's Small Works art show this year and I had planned to submit 4 pieces though do to my own poor time management (and usually putting too much on my plate) I was only able to get one done on time.

Hostess of Death.

When I started working on this project I knew I wanted to do something with skulls. I started doing some Dia De Los Muertos kind of sketches, but I couldn't get them to look the way I wanted and I asked Laura what I should do. She said I should so something like the Gloom Cupcake painting that I did for her last year. I thought that was a good idea, but I wanted to incorporated a better skull into the piece. So I drew a cupcake with a skull on it. It kinda looked like a Jeremy Fish, piece who has an awesome graphic style, so I went ahead and designed 4 different Cup Cake Skulls.

Now I just have to wait to see if my piece is excepted. Though I have an in with one of the judges, so I am optimistic.

I have the other 3 started, they are already inked I just need to paint them. I plan on painting them this Sunday, After I get my homework done and get ahead on CT

Deadly Frosting

This was the first one that I drew that made me want to create the other ones.

The Gourmet in the End

I guess this is my gourmet one seeing as it has the cinnamon stick in them.

Sprinkles of the Dead

SPRINKLES! That is the only thing that this one is missing, when I did the original sketch for this one I did a little burst with the word SPRINKLES which was one of my favorite parts though I feel like it would break from the style of all the other ones.

Now I just need to find some frames that these pieces will fit into.

Papa T

I was commissioned by my friend Pat's mother to do a portrait of her father as Mr.T, since he appears to have been obsessed B.A. Baracus from the A-Team. This was a birthday present for her daughter, who found it rather hilarious that her Papa was so obsessed with Mr.T. in the first place.

I sent these initial sketches to Nancy and asked which one she liked, and she said that they were all too awesome to pick. She told me to pick which ever one I thought would work best; the last one was my favorite so I went ahead with that drawing.

Pencils
At first I had started the drawing on another piece of paper that reacted poorly to water, it would just instantly buckle when I applied the watercolors. So I had to start over and as I drew in Papa T and I decided it needed something more. And what would be more appropriate than a giant explosion?
Ink
I had decided to add some bullet holes to the inked version to make it look like the A-Team logo. I also decided to carry this onto the matte and cut bullet holes into the matte and colored the insides with ink.
Paint
I wish my scanning bed was a little bigger it seems that everything I paint is just a little too big for the bed. I couldn't get a good scan but here is the general look. I had planned this painting to fit in this gold frame that I had in my possession for a while. I figured that a picture of Mr. T could be in nothing else.
Matte and frame
Originally on the matte I had painted the words "I pity the fool" in gold letters in a stencil font. However, I didn't take into account that the frame covered the matte so much and it cut off the bottom of the words. I didn't really know what to do about it, Laura suggested that I just paint the whole matte gold, which turned out awesome! I think Mister T would approve.
Nancy really liked it, Kelsey really liked it and they told me that Papa could recognize himself, so I count it a success.

The Skull and the Bees

Here is the second painting that I completed for the Bees at the Bee show on May 8th.
This one is my favorite. I kinda hope it doesn't sell so I can keep it, it looks so metal! Reminds me of the Anthrax album Attack of the Killer Bee Sides. I think I will paint this one again, maybe do a whole bunch of skulls with beards paintings. Because dammit, I think they look cool.
Save the Bees!

Beeing Dead

This is the first Painting that I completed for the Bees at the Bee show on May 8th (Second Saturday) in the front court yard of the Sacramento Bee. You can find theme there for 200 dollars, half of that money will go to me and the other half will go to the "Honeybee Research Program" to help save the bees. The requirements were that the pieces were bee themed.
Both of the pieces I did were centered around bees and death of humans. These were a lot of fun to paint and got me back into painting outside of the computer. I need to do it more. Though the lack of an undo or layers is irritating, limits my experimentation, but I must say, there is more room for happy accidents this way.
Turning in the paintings today.
Save the bees!

Little Monster

On Sunday Laura went to the baby shower for our friends Sarah and Wes. This was the card that accompanied the gift that we got for them (hooded towels, tiny hats, burp cloths...you know, exciting stuff). On the back of the mini painting I wrote "We look forward to meeting your little monster." Congratulations you two!

Bee and Dead

Laura really wanted some cutesy bee art, so I obliged. She came up with the idea and the concept for the piece and I simply executed it. This is also a rough version of a painting I want to do for an art show coming up in Sacramento in a month or so all about Bees. Expect more bee postings coming soon.

Single Cell

Way back in 2006 me and my friends in college came up with a concept for a short film that we gave the working title of Single Cell. The idea of the short film was that human civilization had ended and the single cell microbes evolved from our ashes. The story takes place where their evolution had reached a tribe level. For awhile now I have been working on compiling a concept art portfolio; Laura was looking at my old Single Cell designs and sketches and said that I had a lot of good stuff here and should try and use some of this for the aforementioned portfolio. I looked at it and I did have a lot of things going but I remembered a lot of the details about the world. Though looking at the old stuff I knew I could do better so I started working on it again. Here are a few paintings that I did for this project.





















This is Ero, he is the main character a young boy who would rather play his flute then participate in his coming of age ceremony. He is reluctant to grow up and become a warrior/ hunter like his father.



















Here is Ero making an expression, I figured that for the most part this would be a short film with little to no dialogue making the performances having to tell the story. I knew it would make for stronger animation and look better on all of our reels.





















This is Ero's dad, who we never gave a name to (if any one has a suggestion I'm all ears). They live in a hunter and warrior society and Ero's father is a revered warrior, there is a blade hidden in his walking stick. Ero's father being a proud warrior wants his son to participate in the ceremony and doesn't really understand why his son isn't excited to become a man, so to speak.




















This is a pen and ink drawing (that I started to paint, though I'm not a fan of the painting) of Ero meeting the Shaman (who also should have a better name or title) for the first time in the Shaman's hut.

There will be more of this world coming up. I have decided to to start posting it now to share and get feed back and get any one who remembers this to get excited about it again.

A Boy and His Pig

I spend a good chunk of time every day looking for jobs; when I run across postings that want an art test, that always stimulates me to create something different then I usually would. Here is one Laura found in Portland craigs list for a a children's book illustrator. They wanted a test drawing of a boy kissing his pet pig.
Here are the sketches that I did.



































After I showed Laura the first page of sketches she said that the kid had to have a stripey shirt. The guy didn't express if this was a city kid or a country kid so I tried to keep it pretty neutral with his clothes.















With the last page of sketches I started to play with shapes and I also started looking for reference of kids kissing other animals like dogs.




















I took some of those sketches and I drew them onto water color paper and inked the drawing and painted it. I only painted 2 because the guy wanted just one example of the boy and his pig. I picked the two pieces that I felt represented two different takes on the same idea. I decided to not add any back grounds because I felt that they would take too long and that there wasn't a setting to put them in so I thought these would work well as like a little corner illustration of the boy and his pig.


















I really liked this one I liked the relationship of the boy and his pig where the pig was bigger then the boy. This is the one that I sent in, and I also sent in the one I made in Illustrator.


















Here is the version that I did in illustrator, I think the way that I did the shadows gives the whole piece and really soft edge to it and makes it feel very warm and inviting. I like how all of these came out. I have yet to hear back but you never know.

Gnomes: PIG RACE

In December I was commissioned to do a painting of gnomes hunting for mushrooms for a friend of mine and it turned out really great (I forgot to take photos, so I still need to ask for a photo of that particular work). When working on it I did five different sketches for the piece, and I quickly became obsessed with drawing the gnomes with pigs because pigs are used for hunting truffles. One of them was of gnomes riding pigs in a race.















Here is the sketch of the gnomes riding pigs in a race.



















And the final painting.
This is a photo so the colors look weird, I'm not the best photographer. I am pretty happy with the results; I'm trying to to have more of an emphasis on lighting and tone in my newer pieces, so I did some small lighting effects. This is the 3rd painting I have done using watercolor pencils (I forgot to take pictures of the other 2) and they give me really good results. I'm really enjoying painting and drawing gnomes right now, so I'm sure there will be more to come in the future.

I have submitted this to the art of a community show for Arts Benica which runs from January 21st to February 28th. This peice, which is framed, can been seen as well as purched at the Arts Benica art gallery at 911 Tyler Street, Suite 144, Benicia , CA 94510. Any one who can should come up or come down and check out this art show it is really great.