Sunday, June 28, 2009

Michael Joseph Jackson

(August 29, 1958 – June 25, 2009)

More faces


Faces......




So, I have been sketching trying to get some mileage in my sketchbook and getting the rust off my hands.I'll be honest its really fun to sketch for fun again into the wee hours of the night with some good music on. I'm focusing in faces at the moment trying to improve on them, I'll post a couple up as I finish them. They are all done with a medium ballpoint pen referencing photographs that I like online.

This one I'll show you in stages, nothing fancy really but maybe someone finds it interesting.












Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Summer break





OK this will be less chatter cause I don't want to bore anyone. I am basically just dropping in some base color in the background. the background wont stay this colorful but I may let some of it show through in there as I put in the clouds, well see how i feel about it later.

I'll be leaving for holiday soon so there will be a little break but ill try to post some things up when we get back.

later blader haters






Details shot





Friday, June 19, 2009

Ego poena proinde Ego sum




Alright I'm finally am getting around to categorizing the progress pictures for what I am working on now. I'm not exactly starting from scratch on this one. I started it a while back and it didn't occur to me to document the progress till after I started. Hopefully there will be many more paintings which I will show from start to finish so for now this will have to do......


Here is where I picked it back up again once i got my studio set up. "Los Luchadores" the wrestlers for those of you Spanish impaired. Oh the title of this post is in Latin just in case you were wondering ( I know pretentious isn't it)

Day 1







Time to break out the brushes.I started by blocking in some dark shadow shapes in the figures.






Then I started to rough in some of the wrestlers outfits.









Then i begin to rough in some of the flesh tones on the fellas.





When I started filling in fat guy number 2 on the upper left side he really started bugging me. I wasn't feeling him at all.

You always struggle with wanting to keep on working on something thinking you will pull it out later on. That definitely happens but there was some basic stuff wrong that homie so I thought it would be better to fix it now cause no amount painting will fix that later.I didn't like the legs on the guy below him so started them again as well........................

Time to bust out the tracing paper.






Still didn't feel right. I got in a redo mood so the little falling guy on the upper right got partially painted over again, it happens. Added some white gesso and started all over on some sections.

The best thing to get over is that fear of making a mistake, you don't really make mistakes in my opinion, you just end up self adjusting through out the process. Sometimes it's less adjustment and other times its more, either way I am always learning from each brush stroke, especially since I am only just getting back into things after a really long break.








It started to feel better, finally, so I began blocking them in again.






At this point I wanted to add smaller figures in the background to add depth so I sketched some in roughly. They aren't going to be as detailed as the ones in the foreground, they aren't the focus, and when I put in the clouds the will be hazy figures anyway.




Thursday, June 18, 2009

New stool


I've got a new stool for sitting my fat ass on and painting and "Das ist der Hammer". If your not a native Berliner that just means it's rad. I was using a small fold away camping chair but I managed to break that baby a couple painting sessions back, luckily not in mid brush stroke.

These new ones were quit a find (we bought twins) on markplaats.They are some old French stools from a hospital. We bought them a couple of weeks ago from a really cool Amsterdam couple who have a great place here in town. They were sooooooooo cool, they showed us around their spot and when I told here that I needed a chair for painting and it turned out she was a painter of sorts too. She paints using textiles, and she was kind enough to show us some of her work.

Here's a link to her work http://www.nicoleladrak.nl/ The pictures don't do her work true justice they are really amazing to see in person.

alright I'll post some painting pics soon.









Wednesday, June 17, 2009

what I've been doing




So, its been a while I know, and many people have been wondering what I'm up to. Besides trying to start our new life in Amsterdam I have been trying to maintain some form of creative endeavor. So I have decided to go ahead and join the interweb and start this blog in order to try and document that effort.

So what does an ex footwear designer do when he moves to Amsterdam ? He paints, or at least tries too.

I will be updating as much as I can as to what I'm doing and working on so that you might get a taste of what I'm up to. I hope you enjoy