She Sings From Somewhere You Can’t See

So today I went to the 11th Annual Gage Drawing Jam.

Here’s my output:

Sometime in August, John and I were wandering through the University Bookstore in the U District when I had an attack of the art supplies. You know the kind? Where the art supplies cry out your name in piteous tones, begging you to make a project with them. In this case, I was beguiled by the tiny canvases and some paper maps, and in a wild brain wave, I decided to make tiny paintings for wedding favours a month before my wedding.

Yeah. I know. But I’m just the kind of crazy to pull it off. And anyway, we only had fifteen guests. And it’s not like the paintings were full-sized either.

So here’s the finished shots of all the wedding favour paintings:

And here’s a few in-progress shots

First I gave each canvas a base coat colour (randomly chosen from whatever I felt like, since I have no idea what I’m going to even paint yet).

Then I decoupaged bits of map to the underpaintings:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/pixelfish/4982080770/in/photostream/

Then I sketched on the canvases and painted over the sketches:

We distributed the finished paintings randomly to our guests. Randomly, I suspect, to everyone except my brother, who miraculously ended up with the painting he’d been coveting. Yes, he was involved in the distribution of gift bags, why do you ask?

…

Here’s three more pictures I’ve done, post-wedding.

My grandfather (recently deceased) in his old Army uniform:

Seahorse 01

Lionfish 01

Paper and acrylic on canvas.

The reference shot is mine from an earlier trip to the Seattle Aquarium.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/pixelfish/3493087260/in/set-72157617485589129/

Current state of Machine Intelligence. (Okay, that’s not true, I’ve since inked the lines of the cloth and done more, but this is the most recent screenshot.)

Sketch:

Inked Figure:

Value Flats:

So there’s this meme going around, where folks post their influences. You can do anybody you want, although this one of mine is strictly visual arts only. I think I’ll do another one later with a wider scope.

How many artists do you recognise?

(If you don’t wanna guess, the answers are on the Flickr page. You just hover over the section, and the notes will tell you.)

It’s been a while since I posted to my poor dusty blog. Alas.

But I have worked on some art here and there, and here’s one piece in progress:

This marks a broad departure from a lot of my work in the last decade because it’s traditional physical media and not digital. Acrylic on gessoed board, to be precise. It’s kinda weird getting used to physical artifacts of art again. Getting used to there being no control+z, no zooming in. I forgot that the hairs on the brush can tweak off at the last second, spoiling your perfectly curving stroke, or sometimes creating a happy accident.

BTW, this sketch does not constitute endorsement of Chertoff or his policies. It’s not “fan-art”. It was just a study because I thought his face would make fantastic reference for the Prototypically Gaunt Creepy Mad Herr Doktor. I think he needs an Igor to be completed. I found the pic at Boing Boing, and it seems to be the photo associated with his wikipedia profile and the official DHS pic as well.