Labels

Thursday, June 9, 2011

Pee Wee's Big Adventure

Movie poster for Pee Wee's Big Adventure. Really difficult compared to how I thought it would be.... Not a lot of good reference material out there. It turned out better than I thought it was going to but worse than how I wanted. One of my favorite movies so its hard to do justice.

Thursday, May 5, 2011

Tai Chi Shirt Design



Shirt Design based on Tai Chi concept of Rooting. This is a concept I have wanted to express for a while and decided I would tackle it for a class I was taking. I would like to eventually sell these shirts on www.taichishirts.com and have decided to make it a goal to produce a new design each month. There are some minor corrections that I need to make on this one, for instance the foot should be straight up, not bent. I will fix this one this month and begin concept design on a new shirt. I think this will help me get back into my tai chi practice if I'm thinking about it more and working on tai chi art.

Wednesday, April 13, 2011

The Smoker


I smoked for a long time and quit and started again and quit again and I guess this is about the strange love affair we all have with addiction. Smoking may have been my vice, or one of many, but we all have something. I think its just human nature. Maybe the fight against our addictions is what makes us stronger or wiser or happier. Maybe its pointless and just shows how stupid we act on a daily basis.

It is strange how much you can love a habit. Plan around... it becomes a way to measure the moments as they go by and then one day you've had enough and you want to let go but... its tangled in your thoughts. Its like an old lover where you wanna stop but you just can't...

I'm glad I'm not a smoker anymore. I just hate thinking I can be a slave to anything...

Art is Life is Art

I still have an entire series of pictures in my mind that I'd like to do eventually... a story of sorts. The art self coming to life and questioning his creator, his own existence and everything else...

Untitled Watercolor (Speak to Me)


I don't know what it is that I love about this one but I really do love it. Its one of the first big watercolor paintings I did after college. I just like the rhythm and color I guess... One of the few watercolor paintings I've done without pen or ink.

 A digital work using the watercolor above... self portrait... by that I mean, my mouth my nose my art.

How I Learned to Love Photoshop



A more gruesome version of the inner light images from before with a photo shopped version. When I first moved down to Southern California I had a strange fear and obsession with the freeways... Time lapsed photo makes up the light exiting the chest, lots of digital coloring...

Inner Light

 






I haven't really painting on this subject in a long time... These are old but some of my favorites from long ago. A question of truth... Subjective or factual? Personal or political? Seems like its always changing so maybe we make it up as we go.

I lost my faith a long time ago but its only recently that I stopped feeling spiritual... the inner light. Maybe I just see it differently? Like chi? Developing with practice and time? I didn't want this to happen...

I even remember asking, do you just stop caring or do you get numb? And all she said is that, you just learn to deal with it. After a while you're no longer surprised and I guess I just hoped that wouldn't happen to me... but maybe that's what it means to be wise...

Maybe I will tackle this subject again in the near future and see if there is anything new to say.

Mushrooms and Ink


Another stream of consciousness composition but done when my conscious was being regularly stressed by psilocybin... seeing too many connections and listening to, too much Pink Floyd haha. While I am grateful for those times I'm not sure I am the person I was when I was making this... This was one of the most difficult pieces for me to finish and for me I see many variations of my style all melding together... this is the piece in which I lost control... or learned to control the chaos and allowed myself to really let go.

I suppose I should really upload a better version so you can see the intricacies in better detail... Original is 18x24.

Wargasm (title stolen from L7)


This drawing is quite old at this point... 10 years at least... 3 months I worked on this and I can't remember a single second I spent working on it. Isn't that life? A big huge deal until its over and then.. its nothing.. a memory and I wonder... how long before my entire life is just a memory in another's eyes?


I made this my junior year at UC Davis, a stream of conscious composition, I started at the bottom and just worked my way up... I'd just started an obsession with pen and this was a challenge. I'd mostly worked in notebooks up until this point so to do a full sized image was pretty daunting for me at the time.

When Bush 2 invaded Iraq I remember feeling prophetic... tapping into that cultural obsession with war, it was just a matter of time but now it just feels so... normal. I don't even remember when we weren't at war at this point in my life... Peace almost feels like a fairy tale my parents read me as a child.

Are we the problem? Are we the ones fueling this obsession? I used to just think it was those at the top but we all seem to get a little something out of it huh?

The Paint Drip Experiment

I call this the Paint Drip Experiment for what I hope are obvious reasons. Sometimes painting is therapeutic... sometimes its thoughtless and all about the process and this is just that... a process. You set up the conditions and watch what happens.

Nonsense? Beauty? Destruction? Nothing?

Ordered chaos?

Is this evidence of what I want? Answers to questions that have never fully been answered? Maybe we just answer the questions for ourselves and truth is individual.

Maybe its all bullshit.

In the Mouths of Babes

The title comes from an old Smashing Pumpkins song I loved when I was someone else in a life I've forgotten so long ago...  I never intended for it to be this way its just that... sometimes these things happen. Sometimes you just let the work be what it wants and its usually better for it. This is one of the first and only acrylic pieces I've done in my life.

"You can't break what's already broken... in the mouths of babes comes nothing..."

Monday, April 11, 2011

Bloated Egos






Sometimes it feels like the American Dream is dead... like the guys up at the top took it away from the rest of us... We prop them up because of the promise that one day we'll be like them but we're not greedy enough... or maybe we're just weak. I feel there is this strange relationship where we somehow were fooled into thinking we need them more than they need us and I just can't believe this is really the case.

There is power in numbers and they know this... I just hope we find our voice before they take our ability to speak.

Sunday, April 10, 2011

Beautiful Violent Thoughts

I swear I didn't want this to be violent but I broke a red pastel and it needed to be used... this is the result and I honestly am very happy with it. This is another self portrait I expect, revealing things about me that shouldn't be said. I guess most people wouldn't understand this anyways...

Stupid Animal Thoughts All Stacked Up

I am not even sure how to explain this painting... I'm not sure I want to at this moment, I guess I would be willing to talk to anyone who asked but... out here in the middle of no where... we go unquestioned, unnoticed... unloved and we're mostly ok with it, just so long as we get to do what we love...

I don't know why I'm here anymore...

There are things I enjoy but overall, I just wonder if its time to go... It just seems like so much is about to happen... all these years of effort have slowly built up and are all ready to pay off if I can just hold on.. or let go.. I don't know what I'm supposed to do at this point.

I just want to paint.

Self Reflection in the City

I recently went to New York and had one of those strange life changing experiences where I felt this sudden duty to throw myself in harms way. I've been painting 15 years (at least) and I've never really shared my work... I guess it was a fear that I've let get the best of me and now I'm trying to overcome that but its scary. Why do we fear rejection so much when its just part of the process?

We're all so different, it doesn't matter is someone refuses to accept us because there are many others who would love to have us in their lives. But still... that act of reaching out is so difficult.

Keeping it Together

I swear there are times that I feel schizophrenic, like I'm too many persons, all just fighting for some face time. I just feel sometimes I am fighting against myself to find out who I am meant to be... Am I the computer guy? Or the graphic designer? Shirt seller or artist extraordinary? Am I all of them? Am I anything I choose to be? Am I ready to start taking REAL risks and putting myself in harms way to be the person I want to be?

A Self Portrait Carved From Cactus

I'm not sure if this is entirely finished but it is definitely at a stage where I can let it go and be happy with it. Its a self portrait and I know that probably doesn't make sense but I see myself in this... every part of myself... the good and bad all twisted together into one. We take up three dimensions but pretend we're one. Always hiding the sides we think everyone else can't handle... Honesty has become a rare commodity in our society. No longer do we seek truth, only distraction, run faster and faster to escape that voice inside you that asks the hard questions. Who am I? I'm certainly more than the face I put on each day... I'm more than skin and thoughts and sex... I'm more than all this... much more, almost infinite and yet a spark... a blip on the timeline of life, so long and so short... its all a matter of perspective and maybe this portrait is just me at different moments on the timeline... maybe its just different sides of the same coin or die... who you get is a matter of chance? How much control do we have over it?

Hang on to your Ego


The city paintings have been taking on a different meaning lately... Its almost as if the buildings have come to represent the ego. The biggest is tallest, a capitalist commentary, look how bloated and fat we've become... The public props up the elite. I feel like there are more of these to come in the future, just so much to explore in the city...

Saturday, April 9, 2011

Green and Red

Study in Green and Red. Almost depressing... scummy feeling... I love the way these colors bleed together. Subtle transitions, a touch of brightness, hope? Is this the world we live in? Will the green one day conquer the red and hope be lost in the transition?

Blue and Orange


Studies in Blue and Orange. I love the way blue and orange interact with one another. Its one of the most natural color combinations to me. Orange street lights at night, sunlight off clouds, we see these colors together so often but I don't know if most of us are aware...

I have a friend who does professional printing as his career and he loved this image so much he asked if he could print a copy for himself. I told him I was happy he wanted to print it and please go ahead. He ended up printing it on Bamboo. It turned out phenomenal, so much so that he asked for another so he could hang them both in his house. So I did a second, a reversal. The top feels like daylight, the bottom like sunset or night...

My gift from him was my own print of the bottom painting on bamboo. Its amazing and gets the head spinning at the possibilities just opening up to the world of digital art. My next experiment will be on either stone or metal... I'm thinking metal would be fantastic.

Tiny Cities Made of Ashes

This is the first digital skyline I did after experimenting a lot with this concept in journals and canvas. Its a study in Violet and Yellow. I'm not really sure what to say, I only wanted to share the image. Its part of a series that I have become obsessed with... these strange abstract cities... studies in color and shape... pattern and rhythm... Its a concept I seem to keep pushing, new mediums, new messages... This one is the first and feels so simple in comparison and there is something soothing about that simplicity.

I figured I'd just begin at the beginning...

The next question is, where do we go from here?