Merry Christmas: A little holiday humor in my head.

This post is fifty percent dedicated to my friend Kelly Bartell, because she rocks and we always used to talk about how when we were kids we were convinced that mailboxes had teeth. Obviously if you put your mail in you had to move fast so as not to get your arm eaten up to the elbow. Those boxes are some pretty hungry guys.

With that in mind and also thinking about how packages just don't seem to make it to your door, I decided to invite the Troll Bot to the party. Apparently the poor Troll Bot did not get his package due to the carnivorous nature of this guy....

There you go Kelly. Miss you and love you.

On another note, the other day I mentioned that I was going to add some birds with construction helmets to a drawing that I posted. I have indeed done that and started the under painting as well. And so, I share......

Have a Merry Christmas everybody.

Beware the Troll Bot!

Life can sometimes start to travel along so fast and you forget about why you're here, or what you're doing. It's times like these that I find myself truly grateful for Beth. She helps me remember and she helps me stay honest.

Today we were hanging out, both of us hurting a little bit after a Christmas Party that was a little too wild for either of us, and I looked at her and asked her how she was able to put up with me when I was just a whiny little kid coming fresh out of college. She told me that my sense of humor is apparently what saved me.

So tonight as I was sitting down to do a drawing quick before bed, because frankly between Xmas shopping and recovery I had zilch time for art today, I started to draw out a humorous robot. I have been so caught up with serious robots for this show, and then I stopped and thought, "what is so serious about robots with massive teeth?"...

Beware the Troll Bot....

And lesson learned, enjoy your tasks, and be true to who you are. Have a Merry Christmas.

Keep on Put-putting.....

I would like to say that I have multiple pieces in completion all ready for your viewing and that pretty much every show that I have on my plate is nearly done and all completely professionally framed and ready to go. However, that is impossible since none of that is true, but I do have some in progress work for you to view again.

I started laying the foundation for "The Feeder" and it is coming out pretty well so far. I have the robot pretty much set and all of the birds with a quick wash. Remarkably the background and foreground are in a stage that I might call near finish. It's looking good so far though. Check it out...

I'm liking it. Give me thoughts, if you dare!

I also have pulled this flying robot stereo piece nearly to finish, which is pretty cool. I have been adding to it when I need to finish up paint off of my palette. One of these days I'll post a photo of my palette. Ridiculous is probably a pretty descriptive word for it. But without further adieu.....



Hope all is well with everybody through the holidays. Be careful, avoid massive snow storms and most importantly, have a blast! To the relatives and friends who might be reading, I wish I could be with all of you.

Peace.

A Day off and a hike.

I have a day off for the first time in eight days. It is so nice. You have no idea. This morning Beth and I hiked up Rattlesnake, which was quite interesting since it was all ice and whatnot. The climb up was much easier than the sliding down. Poor Beth got her knees all mud too. I was amazed I didn't fall, especially since I started to about twenty times. I, however, retained my homo erectus power for the day. Phew.

While I was at work this past week I did manage one sketch that I thought was pretty cool, though to be honest, that and the Catcher in the Rye, which I read were the only things I really achieved this past week. Well that and I cooked a lot of food.

Here's the sketch though. I'm thinking of adding a bird with a construction helmet in the final drawing and painting..... Let me know what you think.

Coffee Works Still!

It is good to know that I am still human. For a while I was wondering if coffee would ever have its effect on me again, but now that it is two am I am sure that it actually does in fact work still. That's great. Perhaps I will have to stop drinking coffee after 11 now.

If nothing else it does give me the opportunity to post this updated under painting. It is starting to come into its own, and seems much better than it was, though at the same time still has a long way to go.

Let me know what you think.

By the way, the top of the piece is not there. I need to scan it in two pieces and since, it isn't even done, I just did the bottom 85 %. I'm digging the arms with different colors though, either way.

peace

and don't drink coffee after 11.

"The Feeder"

Yesterday I took a day off. I went Christmas shopping, I sent out paintings and Christmas cards, and I watched the Islanders get their butts whooped, but I didn't cook at the Pizza and I didn't paint or draw. It was a good day off. Hockey night is the best.

This morning I got a slow start, didn't sleep well or something, but I got up, had my coffee with Beth and moved over to the studio area as she was out the door. I had drawn a hand out the other day, that I liked, and with a sketch that I had done of a robot holding a birdhouse before, I started to work out a funky robot holding a bird feeder. The idea was to have birds flying about the feeder, but ideas like that are really starting to bore me a little bit, so I drew him holding a sack of seed, and well, you'll get the idea.....



I am quite pleased with this robot and bird combo. I am starting to hit my stride a little more on the Blue Bottle show. Thats good. Maybe I will actually have the show done early enough to actually frame everything well this time. ( Have to, actually) Still the less stress the better.

I'll be posting again very soon. I have a couple under paintings that are almost to a level that you can tell what is going on, and when they have reached that point you will see them. Til then....so long.

Sending out Christmas Cards Lewis Acrylics Style

Today I was handed the stack of Christmas cards that I had to write on, which in my head was a task that I wanted nothing to do with. This was not so much because I didn't like or want to talk to all of the people who these cards were addressed to, because frankly I did like and want to see and talk to all of these people, but Christmas card writing is time consuming and you always want to say more than you end up saying.

Unlike other years, however, I sat down with the cards the day that Beth handed them to me and started to write out my half. Trust me, when she gets home and she doesn't have to wait until the week before Christmas, she will be stoked that I am, in fact, normal. Actually, no, more that she won't have to wait for her boyfriends Christmas cheer to come out.

(The battle continues)

Anyway, I got to Michael Boston's card and I thought to myself Michael Boston needs a new painting and I have just the thing. When I was preparing for the Concord Arts Market, I was a little lackadaisical with some of the pieces that I threw together, and I never really finished this bird in the derby piece. Today I did. And I like it so much better than I did before.

Check it out......


And don't be surprised, if you are on the normal christmas card list, if you also get a little painting. Stranger things have happened......

Eye and the Universe?

Today I started to work on a piece for another Hive Gallery group show. From the original perusal of the show details, I had determined that the works were supposed to resemble some kind of drug induced feeling, but at the same time a book, "Be here now" was emphasized. Upon a little more research I found that the "Be Here Now" book was actually a guide to figuring out ones own way of enlightenment and benefiting the world. To some, I figure this could involve some drug-induced phenomenon, but perhaps not for everyone.

With the new thoughts of enlightenment in my head, I returned to a sketch that I had originally done for a book with Ivy. The sketch depicted a woman with a solar system within her chest cavity. It was kind of a reflection on the String Theory, everything infinitely big is also infinitely small principle.

I changed the character to male, because the author of the book was male, and I wanted a more haggard persona anyway, Here tis:

What do you think? This is really only the second painting of a person that I've even put up on the blog this year. Speaking of which, I wonder if that is some Freudian way of saying I have trouble with society? Something I'll definitely be looking into. I'll keep you posted.

On a completely different note, my lovely lady friend is a severe thriftstoreaholic and today she brought home a terrific find. It is now in our bathroom, and it makes me very happy. I leave you with the three innocent criminals.....

Still trying to figure out why they are all wearing pjs when it looks like they are supposed to take a bath. Must be a PC thing........

Later

The Legend of Smoking Stack and Chimney Swift

Ha, today was a good day. I finally finished what was supposed to be the first piece in my Blue Bottle show. It came together much easier than it began. I really can't explain the block that I experienced earlier this year but I am happy to say that it is finally gone and far from me.

This piece was difficult to work with because the board that I found had some mysterious substance in it that made the paint seep into the wood. I ended up priming some of the board off with vinyl paints to seal off the seepage, and then my color started to take. The vinyl paint really works great in compliment to the acrylics. They mix together very well too.

This is more of a redo than anything else, I guess. I had put together a painting like this for my show at Gallery 070 on Vashon Island, but the composition was odd (it was a tall skinny board)
and there was a weird ceramic bit on the wood that didn't take paint well at all.

The piece sold, but I wasn't very pleased with it. This one I am a little more pleased with though. I really tried to work some compliments in here and pop some parts of the work, hopefully avoiding some of the flat that comes when I make too much color happen.

On another note, I drove to Rochester, NH yesterday, where I booked what will be my third major show for 2009 at Artstream Studios. So that will make one dual show at Blue Bottle in April, a show at Artstream most likely in May or June and a final show at the Hive sometime a little later in the year. We haven't worked out the details on that one yet.

No matter how you look at it though, next year is shaping up to be big, and busy. Keep checking back. I am actually in a position now where it is a moral imperative that I keep finishing paintings and sketches.

Peace.

Thought I would show y'all the underpainting I worked up tonight.

I got out of the pizza shop early tonight, which is awesome for two reasons.
1.) It was dead and no one really needed to be there.
2.) The entire time I had been there I was thinking about the video that I'm putting together of me working on a small painting.

Of course that led to me coming home, setting up the camera and putting in some blocks of color for an under painting. I am loving this horticulture and robotics angle. This tropism piece is pretty much my favorite idea of all of them.

Keep checking back too. One of these days I am going to have my video up and you can check out my stop motion work. I think it will be nice to do a few shots in actual speed so that people can get a feel for how quickly I usually work. Wet into wet baby.

Props to Sharon Gold, and good bye to November 08......

Rising from the Ashes....

And so today, I did something that I haven't done in a long while, and to an extent that I have never done. I sent a real written proposal to a gallery, with a specific show planned out. I have certainly submitted to galleries before, but almost never with a certain show in mind, and absolutely never with the show planned out prior to submitting.

I usually roll too open ended for that. But today, I was specific (thanks for the help Ivy), and I am quite pleased with that.

Check out the sketches for my idea:

The proposal was for a gallery on main street in Portland, Me. This is roughly what their front window would look like if they let my crazy brain take it over. The close up will let you see a little more clearly what we're getting at here.

The finished piece will be a news story, broken up over several tv frames that show a massive wave about to obliterate a dome. It could be the Superdome in NOLA or maybe not. You decide. Either way, this is one of the most in your face ideas I have had in a while, and I am incredibly pleased.

Now I'm going to go have another cup of coffee.
Peace.

I have days off with my woman....

Three of them to be exact. It was so nice today drinking a coffee (3 actually) and hanging out with Beth, then casually walking over to my board and rocking out an underpainting today.

The events that led to this under painting are all pretty awesome. First off Markos from my job cut me two panels the other night while I was closing up, so I had two perfectly sized boards for the Blue Bottle show. Then Ivy came over to visit and we worked out our next book a little bit. While we were working we rammed through a bunch of my old sketchbooks and I saw a robot sketch that was pretty rad but way underdeveloped.

So this morning I copied what was in the sketch to board and started to work on composition, because that is where the development was really lacking. I added some screws to give the piece some space and really push the composition into something that I have been avoiding for a while. Most of my pieces come off as so flat and in a single plain.

The drawing came together nicely and I started to lay out the under painting as a value study. So far I am quite pleased....

This piece also allows me to get back a little into the Asian Art thing that I was playing with for a little while. Good things. Good things.

Also last week I titled a blog post with horticulture....and then didn't put up the horticulture sketch because of a blogger mishap....so here you go.

I'm 90% certain that this will end up being the other piece that I do on the boards that Markos shaped for me. I dig the light from the chest as a comparison to solar light. I thinking I am starting to really feel for my new generation of robots here.

Last week one of my sketches was also included in the Free Fridayz blog from Fecal Face, an artist and gallery web site based out of San Francisco. It can be seen in the list here. Check it out and let me know if you can find mine..... This test will be graded.

I leave you with a photo of my kitty though, who was hanging out in my drawer with my paints today. He's pretty much the coolest.

Wish him well. He cut his paw later today. Later cats (no pun intended)!

Horticulture Friday....

I've been pretty busy lately. I have to admit. And where I thought things would start to slow down and I could just take it easy, I turned out incorrect. I had promised a co-worker that I would put a piece together for him a month ago. I believe I told him I could finish it in a week, which to be honest is probably a proper amount of time, except that I have been trying to get sketches and pieces together for the Blue Bottle show so that some of the work can go up on the website in advance of the actual show.

So far I think I just have the piece done for the postcard of that show, but at least I have four or five others started so more will be coming soon. I decided to post an in prog image of the piece that I have been doing for my co-worker, because it is a rare landscape, and not looking too bad so far either.

I don't know if you can tell from this image but that seriously takes up one corner of my porch. I think the largest piece I've worked on since college was three or four feet high. This is eight feet long, and I do not have brushes big enough to work on it. But like I say, so far so good. Gotta finish it tonight though, since the guy is coming over early tomorrow morning to take it away.

Gotta change that Island.......

I also decided to post a couple more in progress pieces. On the eleventh I posted a sketch and a drawing on a board, and then I stared at the piece for a while and painted over, and drew in and painted over some more, and now I have this.....

I'm pretty excited about the three little rockets in the piece instead of legs. I really am amped on a flying stereo. Thank you Beth for that little suggestion.

I have a couple more images that I will upload soon, but blogger seems to be having issues, so they will have to wait. Check back to see the sketches that I have ready from the Blue Bottle show.

Peace

The Metamorphosis, Robot Style

Yesterday, I had an entire day free to myself, to work on art and start busting out some pieces and really get going on my show, which by the way, I am waiting on confirmation but I believe that I will be featured on the small wall at the Hive Gallery one month next year as well.

But anyhow, that was a complete aside. I was sitting around yesterday trying to be creative, which is the number one way in all of the world to not be creative, and thought to myself, maybe it is snowing in the notch. Ha. It's snowing in the notch in June. So I picked up my someday brother in law and we drove to Littleton and hashed out ideas. Let me tell you. If you need ideas about robots take the guy who has been reading sci-fi for all of the years that you've lived. Steve is a wealth of robot ideas.

So I came back, belly filled, Thank you Porfido's, and my head full of ideas, thanks Stephen.....

So here's the first round of sketches on my robot horticulturist.....

It was a cool idea, but I knew drawing it out that the composition wasn't quite there, so when I started to do it up on the board I would have to make some adjustments. So I decided to try looking up a little bit and started with this on the board.

And here it is. I think the composition ended up much more interesting than the original. What do you think of the shears hand and the watering hand?

Later.

Hip Hop and starting new paintings....

I am not always in the mood for hip hop. I listen to such a variety of music while I am drawing and painting, but I find that when I am in the mood for hip hop, I am usually also in the mood to start multiple things......Or as my buddy Paul would put it "to go off"

So today was one of those days, chillin' in the studio listening to some good tunes and just cranking through the issues...

I woke up today with a start, realizing that I need to get half of my show for the Blue Bottle done by December, which is remarkably closer in time proximity than it was the last time that I thought to myself "I really need to get going on this show". So I started off the day anxiously transferring this sketch to a board....becoming anything but jazzed on the drawing and trying to then make it work.

So in the end I ditched the jam box and the head in the middle of the body, etc. Perhaps it would be easier just to look at it....

And this made me much happier. Obviously we are still talking pretty much under painting here, but this is what you get when you do the drawing phases on your final. I am so amped to be using a cassette in this piece. And yes, for those of you wondering, I was thinking about Soundwave when I drew it out.

After I had some color down on this one though, I just started to go, and I ended up laying out the drawing and starting the under painting on another piece as well. And this is where you can tell that I was listening to hip hop as well.

This is just the upper left corner, but hey, I only got a little bit done on it. I think I'm going to keep the very bold palette when I go into the finish on this one though. The near compliments are making me drool a little.....

Keep on keeping on. I'll have some more stuff up soon.

New Plans for new and better projects....

Today Beth and I had a long talk, and it kind of was just a kick in the butt. We talked about grad school and the purpose of artwork and what makes things art. With some of this wandering about in my head, I started out angry and down on my work. But I was able to ditch this and move on....looking for new projects and looking for something with more purpose to work on.

I started to think of one of my favorite sketches of all time. The "Good Life" featured a long stemmed plant with a brain shaped leaf emerging from a broken television. It occurred to me that this would be a very intriguing image to see in 3-d, which made me think of putting together a proposal for a bigger show, with actual television sets, gutted and holding plants.

I started to sketch out the ideas this afternoon.

I found a web site with a bunch of old television sets on it. This set I believe was an RCA from the fifties. I like the image of the bonsai tree especially break free of the tv. It's a sort of an ultimate calm breaking free of a coordinated chaos.

This set looked really cool. It had a handle on top to carry it about.

I'm pretty excited about this new show. I'll be posting some random sketches for it in the next few weeks as well as some of the sketches for the Blue Bottle show which is drawing ever more near......

Toodles!

Another Monday....the best day of the week for relaxation and painting...

So today was Monday and I got up checked my email, hung out with Beth and started up the day real slow. Went for a coffee at Monte Alto, took the long way home and started painting at maybe 11 or 11:30. It was a good morning, and I was and am still doing awesome.

I started working on a piece that I have had waiting in the wings since about a week after I had solidified my show with Blue Bottle next spring. The drawing was always pretty much there but the paint that I had put down just wasn't getting me yet, but today that all started to change. I threw some cad yellow medium on my pallette and started to work with some orange today. Real orange to go with the pink from the other day...and then when all was said and done I started to bring my line back into the piece and well....I'm happy with it.

Check it out.


I also finished a sketchbook that I've been working with for a while today. the last drawing is an exciting one, because I finally figured out what one of my robots looks like from the bottom.

There it is. Cheers! I don't know why people say cheers as good bye, I'm hoping that whoever is reading this is actually having a cocktail or a glass of wine or something so that the comment cheers makes sense. Otherwise I guess I'll assume that it is a toast to life.

cheers

Pronunciation: \ˈchirz\

Function: interjection

Date: 1919

—used as a toast

that's it. Toast to life. Cheers!

Coming back strong with the Line!

First I'm going to start off today with a little interior decorating lesson. Or not. This is a wall out of my studio that i thought you might like to see though. That would be a mass of finger puppets ready to swarm a robot painting by Beth Page....


Moving on....

I started to draw a piece out about two months ago when I couldn't sleep because I was holed up doing web design and I hadn't seen the sun in a week except for that light that was diffused by the windows of a pizza shop and through the windows of my brother-in-law's back porch. At the time I started to throw some paint down and couldn't do any more and went to sleep. The next day I woke up and thought that it completely sucked but was a good idea. The drawing just wasn't there.

So then the studio make-over. I know I keep harping on this but if Beth hadn't have moved my studio around and into the kitchen I think I would still be sitting around wondering why I didn't feel creative.

Anyway, I picked up the bird and tree drawing again the other day after having looked at some Egon Schiele, and I started to draw the tree out like it was more important than the bird in the cage, and it started to work. Then today I started to bang it out and now it is, at least for now, done. (It may need a little more, but I'm going to sit with it and see)

Here it is. Let me know what you think....

Just as a note though, this is from a digital camera. I wasn't feeling the scanner tonight, so the color isn't as dead on as it would be, but you get the idea....

I also started the big bird house and telephone piece that has been sitting on my easel for weeks the other day. This is going to be awesome when it is done, and I think I am going to enter it into a juried show and win like a billion bucks and a solo show in California. We'll see. There are only about one million other artists in the states doing work in a similar vein to mine...Not that I don't think I'm as good because I am, but any given day......



Well until next time....
I swear my cat didn't roll in ultramarine blue tonight!!

And I Create the Mountains....

The other day I posted an in progress piece which I am titling "And I Create the Mountains". It marks the first time in a little while that I have pulled together a new tone in my palette, and I think it lends itself well to the painting.

Also I tried to push the angles in this piece and avoid the overall static feel that I have been stumbling into of late with my pieces. All in all, I think this is a good step in the right direction, and I find myself incredibly excited to get back into the studio again tomorrow.

Don't look now folks but I think the fire is rekindled....


With any luck we'll have a halloween post coming up too. Thanks for stopping by, and be sure to let me know what you think of the new piece.

- Mike

Pink is like red but not quite.

This week has been super rough, emotionally draining, and entirely too eventful. Hopefully the weeks to come don't have nearly as much "excitement" in store for me. But one thing is definitely true, the more stressful the time I am having in my day to day life the more creative I feel and more positive about my artwork....

Which leads me to pink. I've been expanding my palette of late, from the basic palette to adding a couple more colors into the mix. So I started this evening by drawing a machine over top of a bird piece I had started that was not going well at all. It felt good to destroy something that was going poorly again. It seems like it had been so long since I had actually done that. It really needed to be done. Then I started laying out colors and low and behold I had a mostly warm palette, which I have not worked with in about two years.....

So since this is a benchmark I've come to here, I decided to show the in prog again. Please let me know what you think.


It actually reminds me a lot of the original cloud constructor pieces, which I was very fond of, so it doesn't bother me at all if I'm starting to feel that wave come back a little bit. Also, I'm branching out with the constructors a bit anyway. Here we have one of the first erecting mountains....so let me know what you think of the new digs here. I'm pretty amped on it so i think I will be going for some time.

And this one is for Steve. Royal guard you say, Royal guard you get......Probably needs a pole arm though.....
All right enough geekiness, time for bed....Until next time.

Happy Thursday!

Hey it's almost time for the weekend. Good times, good times. I've been geering up for a pretty good one myself. If I'm not sick and working it will already be better than last weekend. Also with any luck it will be slow and I can draw instead of cook while I am at said place of work as well.

So I've been a little bit of a creative slump they last few months, trying to come up with something insanely awesome for this show in Seattle coming up next spring. Frankly I think I've been over analyzing and putting undue pressure on myself. It is after all just another show.

Last night though, I finally was able to break through the haze a little bit and I came up with this finished sketch. I'm really into the tall robots, and the bird/creature in front is a little homage to Hieronymus Bosch.

It's weird to start off with pop culture ( I started with the robots ) and seek a solution for composition and subject matter, which ends up being a reference to the classical.

The thought process reminds me a little of the newest work that I've seen from Henry Lewis, where he is referencing old Roman sculptures as well as classic baroque style paintings. My professors in school would harp on the fact that those works will always be recognized as good, but you don't really think about the weight of a statement like that while you are in school.

But I digress.....
So there is it is the first sketch that I feel is moving a little more in a direction that I would like to handle this Blue Bottle show with.

Check back for more soon.

New Robots, New Studio, and sickly Jamming out to Moby

For some reason I have been listening to "Play" all day. It's a nice calm album to spend a sick day to. I'm sick today, which means that I am sitting out the web except for working on my blog and that I am spending the rest of my time napping, drinking water, and drawing. Maybe later I'll even watch another movie.

It's been a good few days. I've had a lot of opportunity to get my artwork together, and really think about what I want my contribution to the art world to be. Like Tony Stark in the recent Iron Man film, I don't want my legacy to pointless. I want it to be productive and positive.

So I've been working on more robot sketches, trying to figure out the next generation of robots in the Lewis Acrylic Oeuvre.
Here is a page of robots that I did at work of all places. I like the spider legs. It makes me think of a Tim Burton character, and that is a good thing.

This robot was granted the name F.R.E.D. by my buddy Patrick.
Factory Retro Educational Droid.

I think it's kind a of a cool new direction to be exploring. I haven't made very many square looking characters, at least in robot form, most of them have been a little more amorphous with toothy mouths, etc.

This character I thought of while starting at the pizza oven at the Village Pizza and Grill. The pieces on the side were a play on the latches to the front piece of the oven, and the large eye is a play on the opening where all of the pizzas go in. The circle in the chest plate is most likely some subconscious linking to Iron Man which I have watched way too much this past month.

Also today I decided to post the next phase of the painting of the robot that I started last week. I don't know if this is something that you folks like, but I thought it might be cool for you to see how some of my paintings progress. I usually start off my paintings in a bunch of midtones, like you could see in the post last week, and then start to build in darks and then I build up my lights last.

The arm to the right is in the stage where I have just started to build in the darks whereas the arm on the left is closer to finish.
The head is pretty much finished, minus highlights on the eye-sockets to make them pop a little more.

I am still playing with the background and usually do this until
I determine exactly which color is most prevalent in the main figure, because I want the background colors to pop the main character out a little bit, to make him, or her for you feminists out there, and make it feel a little bit more round err square.

Please let me know what you think of these in progress scans. If you'd like to see more then I will post more.

I will try to have the completed robot up later this week. It all depends on how quickly I get well.




Lastly , I thought some of you might like to see my new studio space. I had been working in a spot on the three season porch but for those of you who have ever been to New England , you know that that will become rather uncomfortable very soon. So my very awesome girlfriend, wife to be, Beth re-organized half of our kitchen this last week so we both have a studio.

Here are a couple photos so you can check out my half.

This is a pick of my awesome drafting table. Thank you Al Rozzi. You rock! And also you will notice on the wall a new painting by my favorite painter, Beth Page. I have robot envy......

And this is my spot, where after a quick nap I will be spending the rest of the day. Take care folks......

All Right, All Right Hold it!

Enough depressing crap up here. I'm starting to sound like a manic depressive or something. Truth is, I haven't been sleeping or painting enough to make myself feel healthy....so what is the answer for that? Sleep and paint more. "Variety is the spice of life..." Due to recent emails I've received I feel like I should mess up that old saying just for the heck of it, but I'll be good.....

So anyway, if you've been coming around here lately, you've probably noticed one of several things. 1.)I haven't sounded stoked on life......FIXING IT!!! 2.) I have been drawing and painting mostly birds.....FIXING IT!!! and 3.) I'm a little insane......FAT CHANCE MAN!!!! pattern stops there, no continuous loop, your computer will continue to function.

I just watched this awesome movie last night "King of California". Frankly it made me love life again, and now I am thinking about what I am here for instead, what people are making me do, and decisions that I want to make for myself and my artwork instead of what other people want me to do etc....

So in conclusion.....
Robots.

This is a painting in progress. I am close to done with the head, which rules cuz I started this bad boy this morning. These guys are my enforcers. They will ward off all of the evil spirits that want me to paint birds for the rest of my life.......(only to let me paint birds in moderation!)

Was it the first day that God created the mountains? I don't know. But it will be on the 2010 year that we will fabricate our own. In my head at least. Who knows. It could happen.

In culmination....I am totally amped on this one. It has been a long time since I've done pipes in the sky, and frankly, that is sad, because that was my world that I created....like Terry Pratchett's Disc World and Tolkiens Middle Earth, this is my own rendition.....Though I can only hope to visually say as much as Asimov or Dick might have said in words......

Until next time......

I feel so old.......

For folks that usually come here just to check new paintings out, I apolgise. At this time I feel like I've got no one left to talk to and like I've dug my own hole. So I am hashing this out on my blog, who is frankly a voiceless and awesome friend to me at this point.

There may have been a time that I thought that starting your own business might be easy. I really can't remember now what my perspective has been over the years. All I know is that, If that was what I thought, I could never have been more wrong.

The pizza shop fired a cook this week, which means I will have to pick up a shift. I now work three doubles a week. I have three days "off", these being days that I work on the web. This morning which is essentially two hours before I go to the pizza shop, I have already been the recipient of two emails from a business guy in Mass that wants updates made to his site.....

I have devoted my creative time to a business, that I now no longer care if it survives.....and I feel so old, like this guy, that came into the shop the other day. It started as a drawing of him, but turned into how I felt like I should look, tired and ready to quit. Sometimes it takes something harsh to realize how much you really liked what you were doing.

Tomorrow is the Concord Arts Market

Tomorrow is the Concord arts Market. This will mark the first time that I go to an art market with an actual tent. It will also be the first time that I am offering prints. For those of you familiar with my website they are the two pieces available through Stella Gialla.....

Rocking House Finch
Blue Bird Rock #3

The prints will be a measly ten bucks ( you know you want to buy both for that price ....! ) I will also be showing about fifteen to twenty originals including several of my sketches and selling copies of my zine that I did with Ivy Page, writer and grad school whiz...... Halo

by the way we are planning another book soon.....It will be bigger faster stronger and better.

But for now, here is a piece that I finished for the show tonight. If you've checked out sketches up on the blog lately you might recognize the character, and the pose for that matter......


Hope to see a bunch of you tomorrow.......and if this included a surprise visit to nh by one awesome K Belly, I would be most pleased......(miss you)

Had to share my new robot

So here we go again....I will be showing my work at the Concord Arts Market in two days and what am I doing? Yes, you guessed it! Scrambling to get some new work done for the show. I don't ever feel prepared, no matter how much work I have to take with me, and this particular show, I haven't had time to prepare for as much as others due to web work.

But here it is, my thoughts on exactly what wearing a tie means to me......or perhaps just a whimsical piece. Either way it is another robot and I am excited about him. There are also a couple more pieces to come in the next two days, so be sure to check back.......

Until next time......Bahwidda bah dih dang dih dang diggy diggy

A New Painting on its way to California

So I just finished my first piece in a long time that actually sports a human being in it. It feels pretty awesome, let me tell you. Who am I kidding? I just finished my first piece in a while anyway, say nothing of with a human being or not......I've been rocking out in my sketchbook, quite a bit and I am starting to feel a little better about presenting my art here....(new hampshire)

There is not a whole bunch of artists working in my genre here in the boonies......I'm sure a lot of you are saying "duh" to that. But either way here is my new piece...

So this piece has been kind of waiting to happen. Not only have I been having trouble painting in this state but I have really been at an impasse with style and subject matter as well. I am somewhere in between a career longing to do birds doing everything and feeling a little more urban.....and supporting urban style and tattoo culture and the like...so this is where I am going with that....

Also I just recently went to New York to see the stupid Mets.....who need to stop sucking in september......but meanwhile while waiting for the game in Flushing Meadows, I attacked my book a little bit and came up with these two guys trying to place a call. Perhaps they are trying to catch the bus they missed for migration or something.....that would be a cool way to take this.....or maybe they lost their purse, haven't decided yet, but I am excited to be incorporating new bird ideas and multiple bird ideas.....

And this last sketch is for John Buck. May he keep thinking of Pork......

There is actually stuff going on now....so look back from time to time, I'll be updating the beer van slowly but surely.......

Rock out with your Oktoberfest out!