A + FOC = Tacos

Buying frames at thrift stores is a dicey proposition - most have mildly offensive art in them, but this one was a double whammy.  I got a great wood frame for "Unbearable", and this print by SOI Hall of Famer F.O.C. Darley - all for $18.  It's a lithograph on great aged paper and I couldn't resist painting with gouache on top. The best paintings I did in college were on top of old paintings, so I thought I'd give it a whirl again.  I think there still some left to do on this one, but for now, here it is.

Mama's Boy

Mama's Boy - 11" x 14", microns on bristol

New extended doodle.

Map Madness! Jan 5th, G1988 Melrose!

Getting psyched for the January show with Bennett Slater at Gallery1988 Melrose!  Here's a small version of my Empire Strikes Back map.  Each character is represented as a colored line, and follows their progress through the entire film.  The alternating colored lines represent characters traveling together who have a special bond, sometimes for only a short time like Chewie(brown) and 3PO(yellow) when Chewie is repairing him.  Han(navy) and Chewie have a bond, R2(royal blue) when co-piloting for Luke (light blue),   R2 and C3PO . . . 

     All three of the Star Wars movies will be available as full size prints (sorry, no price yet) which are 18.5"x22".  Im also doing all three of the first Indiana Jones movies.

Analog Arkanoid

"Analog Arkanoid"
8" x 10", pencil and gouache
on watercolor paper

Here's my submission for "The Old School Video Games Art Show Level 2" at Gallery1988's Venice location.  I was one of only three kids in the continental U.S. who grew up in the eighties without any video game console, so I loved the simple games.  I didn't have 300 hrs to put into Zelda, or Castlevania - so I loved the games where all you needed was hand eye coordination: Space Ivaders, Centipede, Spacewar (oh yes - the oldest game on the books), and of course the Pong revamp Breakout, which eventually became my beloved Arkanoid!  Given how low tech my childhood was, I thought I'd pay homage to the simple joy of destroying something effectively, so here's my "Analog Arkanoid".

Aquariums

Here's a little sketchbook project I've been fooling around with for the last few weeks.  I feel like I've been a bit lost - pursuing things more technically than artistically . . . ?  Anyway, I thought I'd try to mess around with something a little abstract.  So - I love aquariums.  And that love has led to the death of many fish.  But I thought it was an interesting problem - an ever changing rectangle of shapes.  So here's the beginning of a little side projects.  I present to you - AQUARIUMS!!

The Fox and the Crow

Here my new piece for sale at a great show at Chicago's Gallery 27, called "Dreaming Child" which opened on Friday, August 31.  The show is all artwork based on children's stories, fables, and fairy tales.  I based mine on the Aesop's fable of the Fox and the Crow.  The crow has a piece of cheese and the fox coaxes it away from him by at first praising the crow's physical appearance, and the inducing him to caw and drop the cheese by saying that the crow must have a beautiful voice to match it's beautiful appearance.  The crow, so flattered and full of pride, opens his beak and caws his caustic caw, dropping the cheese to the waiting fox.  Fox wins.  The painting itself was created by tea staining a background tone, and then gouache on top.

"The Fox and the Crow"
11" x 14", tea staining and gouache on watercolor paper

For Alice, 1925 - 2012

My grandmother, Alice, passed away this week after a long bout with dementia.  This painting is based off of a photo of her from 1950, right after the birth of my mother (sorry to date you Mom!).  She was a very kind, independent, and complicated woman, and I wish I had been able to spend more time with her.  She had a great laugh and she will be missed.  This one's for you with love, Alice.  Rest in peace.

At Last!!

"Cancer", 22 x 22
gouache on paper

So I finally have a good scan of "Cancer", a piece I did a few months ago for the "One Hour of TV a Week" show.  I knew I wanted to do piece about cancer - there's been a lot of it in my family, as in most, but it took me a while to figure something out.  I definitely wanted a feeling of a whimsical sadness- and something that was a bit medical but not too trite.  Eventually I thought of a tree house - something made of itself, it's own material, but different - and then found some nice medical illos to work from to get the heart/lung interaction right.  Turned out to be a little trickier than I thought.

"North by Northwest Passage" for Alfred Hitchcock Show, "Suspense and Gallows Humor"

"North by Northwest Passage"
22" x 22" Gouache on paper

 I've loved "North by Northwest" since the first time I saw it - the visuals, the music, the tiny razor gags, but most of all, the urban/rural scene hopping, from New York, to Chicago, to South Dakota.  So - I thought I'd throw together a sort of scenic chart of all the actual locations in the movie - the only fictional one being the Northwest Airlines terminal, which no longer exists and I couldn't find reference for (but for "North by Northwest", I figured I'd take a little liberty).  Also not included are the 1212 Michgan Ave Auction house and the hospital in Rapid City, as they were shot on soundstage in Hollywood.    Even with that, it was a bit of a beast.  Lots of research, lots of windows . . . The cars are also accurate from the initial 57 Skoda 440 cab to the '51 White Freightliner the plane crashes into, to the '52 Ford Customline Cary Grant rescues the girl in.  I took color from the footage to get some of that "technicolor" feel, and blatantly ripped off Saul Bass' opening credit arrows to show the action.

Anywho - the show opens at the Gallery1988 Venice location on April 13th!

(detail)

progress - pencils to color blocking, to black line on top

The remnants of my notes.

It's Sweater Time!!

8" x 10" Gouache and ink on Rieves BFK
Fun to do some .005 micron work:)

Portrait of author, funny-man, and super nice fella Lucas Klauss.  My lovely sister-in-law commissioned the piece to commemorate Lucas' first novel - Everything You Need To Survive The Apocalypse, which you should buy.  I had a good time splicing together some facts from Lucas' personal life: his childhood cats - Johnson and Johnson, harmonica enthusiasm, his love of killing white things (watch out honkies!), and of course his amazing knowledge pertaining to when it is, and when it is not sweater time.  Jealous of his success? As well you should be, but you should know, success lives in his hometown in Gwinett County, Georgia - a county so great it has moved beyond the need for punctuation.  Gwinett is great.  Period.  So no period.  Congrats Lucas, and hope you like it.

Is This Thing On?

Here's my submissions for this year's "Is This Thing On 2: The Weird Year" Show at Gallery1988 show in LA - HOSTED BY WEIRD AL YANKOVIC!!  I had . . . maybe too much fun on these guys.  I grew up on Bill Cosby records, and Peter Sellers has been a sort of hero for me since the first time I saw Casino Royale and had my mind blown.  

This one is "Go-cart Championship of America" - 19 3/4" x 15 3/4" gouache on paper.

detail

And this is "Man of a Thousand Mustaches", same size, gouache on paper.

detail - yup - all fake mustaches.

Rumbletoid and LostAtEMinor

My friend and Philadelphia consiglieri Josh Longo is now posting for LostAtEMinor and was very generous in throwing up some of my Freddie Mercury portraits for the New Illustration section.  VIVA FREDDIE!! And thanks, Josh!  But enough about me - let's talk about Josh.  Josh is an industrial designer and teaches at Pratt in the ID studios next door to the Communication Design Dept and sometimes stops by my class on Mondays.  We share bus rides back and forth from Philly to Pratt in Brooklyn - and like schoolgirls on a sleepover, we say we should sleep and then talk the whole time.

     Josh has a pretty amazing CV based mostly on his 3D work in Longoland, but for the past few years he's been doing what most of us illustrators talk about, but never REALLY do - and that's branch out.  He's been developing his 2D work and is doing some amazing stuff.  Not to say that Josh wasn't already great at drawing - he was - but moving from drawing as a preliminary for 3D work, and doing drawing and painting as a finish in and of itself is a really interesting difference.  It's been fascinating to watch.  We have a lot of similar influences and his stuff has inspired a lot of the more recent painting I've been doing and vice-versa, which is a blast.  The way he attacks pieces and compositions reminds that it's supposed to be fun - that the if a piece doesn't have intuition, that it's probably lacking in inspiration, too.  If you haven't already, check out rumbletoid - and check out his sketchbooks.

Trout

Here'e the full image of one of the pieces for the "One Hour of TV a Week" Show coming down this week.  I've wanted to have an excuse to do a big trout for a long time.  I'm one of those kids who wanted to be a marine biologist, and did a fish dissection for my second grade science project.  I remember catching trout with my father and thinking the outside of trout was beautiful, and then (because I had to after I was 6 or 7) cleaning them and finding all this great stuff inside.  It was a little gross and lest I sound like a serial killer, I want to convey the tragic aspect I felt for the fish.  But - the mechanisms of what fuels this beautiful little animal machine were astounding from the tiny heart, to the contents of it's stomach, to the bladder it uses to regulate buoyancy.

"Magic 2",  22" x 22",  Gouache and pencil on BFK

If you've never been trout fishing, get a liscence, go find a small, cold, spring fed stream after it rains, wear a heavy pair of jeans and long sleeves, a pair of old sneakers you don't mind getting soaked in the stream, lots of bug spray, a creel with a frozen bottle of water in it, a three dollar pack of 18 trout worms, extra hooks, and an old rod and reel.  The worst that will happen is that you spend a nice summer afternoon walking a pretty stream.  The best case is you walk a pretty stream, fool a few wily trout, and have a nice breakfast/lunch/dinner.  They are damn good eating - especially after working up an appetite crashing through underbrush to get to a steam and back:).  

The Show!! Jets! Boats! Squares!

This weekend I had the pleasure of setting up my "One Hour of TV a Week" Show at Gallery 543 in Building 543, a communal space for the headquarters of URBN Inc (which for the uninitiated encompasses Urban Outfitters, Anthropologie, BHLDN, Free People and Terrain) in the Philadelphia Navy Yard .  The space is . . . pretty amazing.  Coi ponds?  Yup.  40 ft tall bamboo indoors?  Yup?  Handy parking for WWII era aircraft carriers?  You better believe it.  You can also get a good cup of coffee and tasty lunch if you want to make a day of it.

I want to extend a big thank yous to: Lauren Addis for her support of the show and allowing me to do an extended setup (and make an extended mess), Josh Longo (of Longoland fame) for helping paint boats and put on the finishing touches, and most of all to Michelle Provencal who not only put up with my turning our apartment into a disaster zone, but who also helped out this past week with all the last minute preparations that I never would have been able to finish on my own (as well as my manic stress-isodes).  Thank you, thank you, thank you.

On to the show!!  So - some of you may recognize a few of the pieces from the "History of the World" show that was up earlier this year created with Owen Sherwood.  Initially, this show was going to be my half of that show, but - I like doing work - and wanted to repurpose some of the more autobiographical pieces from "History" into a different slant. So with a few new pieces and tweaks on old ideas, here's the "One Hour of TV a Week" show.

A little stage setting . . .

Is that . . . ? Yes, you're correct.  That is an aircraft carrier
looming outside of that large glass window.

"I'll Stop If You Stop", Latex Paint (thanks Josh!)

"National Little League" and "Bicentennial"

"I'll Stop if you Stop" detail

"I Hate Brian Smith", 6" x 6" drawings on paper.  

The story is - I got beat up by Brian Smith a lot.  Many bloody
noses - most of them deserved - I was a tag-along crybaby.  And I'm
still trying to get the last word in 23 years later.  Eat it Smith.

"Cancer" and "Magic 2"

"Magic 2" detail

"Cancer" detail

"A Concept of Four at Two" and "Magic" with the model planes I made and painted,
with help from the lovely Michelle Provencal.

p.s. - Do you know how small the landing gear is on a 1/144 scale plane?
About the size of this "I" with two "O"s on either side.  Teensy.

On the left are two new paintings - "Duplex" and "Ghostrunners" (shown in
my previous post)

"Duplex" detail - That's our old duplex featuring our upstairs duplex mate, Mrs. Maynard.
She was a nice old lady who kept to herself - we rarely saw her but well into her seventies she'd be
out shoveling snow at five in the morning if there was snow to shovel.

"Mango's, 1988", Latex Paint.  This is my squad from 1988 when I was ten and my
first team after I left National Little league for Twin Town Little League in the hinterlands
of upstate NY.

My little workstation for people to make cannonballs featuring: gliders as a reward for cannonball making,
my old D&D wallet (thanks Kate Glasheen), a vintage Queen postcard (thanks Colin O'Higgins), an old gas can I love (thanks N.C.), Wiffle Ball boxes (thanks Jen and Jed Heuer) and some childhood favorite books from Mom and Dad.

And to finish, I'll take an aircraft carrier and jet combo.

Make it a double.