Random Productivity

Today seemed like a day that I wouldn't achieve a thing. Turns out I ended up finishing the drawings for pretty much my entire feature coming up at the Hive Gallery.

I am supposed to build on the birds with headphones and bird house theme, which admittedly I have been reluctant to attack, but after a morning of relaxation, I was able to start banging out a couple drawings, and I just got on a roll. Without further ado:

Decided to show a little more close up view.

Thought I would show the passing of the torch from one older bird to a teenager. Kind of like a kid discovering punk rock from his older brother.

Decided to throw in a boom box instead of headphones in this one. Give it that nice eighties feel for all you crazy birds out there.

Another change of point of view. Hopefully it makes things a bit more interesting.

This one may well be my favorite. It didn't look the best in my sketchbook, but on the panel it is starting to gain a very nice personality. Hope you folks enjoy the little preview. I'll keep posting the new paintings as they pop out.

good night.
-Mike

Promo Card!

Thought I would post the promo image for the Blue Bottle show. It is very exciting for me to see my work on the Blue Bottle site and on the card. It makes me feel pretty successful. On top of that, I have already sold a piece via the online show. So if you're interested in some, you should stop over to their site and pick it up now.

You can access the online gallery here. Stop in and grab something. Thanks for your support throughout the making of the show. I will have images from the upcoming Hive feature soon as well. Take care.

peace
-Mike

Laid around and played around this town too long...

I was instructed to make a piece with my Avatar in a heroic act, which I've already told you about. I finally managed to finish that piece up and sent it to California today.

Things have been crazy here. The shows are starting to just blend together now. It's nice to be so busy, though economically it is difficult to tell how busy I am. I have a couple new pieces in the works for my Etsy page, which I'll be posting in the next couple days and also I'm working on one of my first prints ever.

I have also just started working on my show for May at the Hive. I'll have a couple scans of that up in the next couple days as well. For the time being, here is the piece I finished for this coming months group show:

I like it. Hope you do too. Keep checking for more stuff.

I'll leave you with a Hank III line.
"Workin' real hard ain't hard to do, when you got you a lotta money coming to you. But I ain't got a dime so I'll just sit here. Even though I'm broke I got a six pack of beer."

Have a wonderful friday. It's beautiful.

Jammin' in the Woods

Living in New Hampshire, you learn to find your own ways to jam, quietly if you don't want any trouble with your neighbors. I've been trying to work some pieces up involving logs and trees, and trying to make them a little more cartoony but also thinking of the logs and trees as a little empire. Kind of like the Ewoks in Return of the Jedi.

This is all started with a drawing that I was working on, while ridiculously slow at the pizza shop. I drew my typical bird, but was growing frustrated, maybe it was the atmosphere of a pizza shop, but started to try to really piece together the environment and also think about some typography at the same time. The result was this:

I was very pleased with my attempt at typography. It felt to me like a mix between a Jeremy Fish feel and a little old skool New York train throw up. When I started piecing in the leaves, I realized that I could make a little more environment though and that the depth of the environment could be created by limbs and leaves.

So then I started thinking about the log jam:

The typography in this one seemed a little more clean, and I then just started to think about the stereo as the accessory to any birds treehouse dwelling and came up with this:

All in all, I think I can keep within the framework of what I was told was my next show and still do something a little bit new, which is really the goal almost every time.

Catch you later
-Mike

Mighty Lark is my Hero

Here I am sitting in my living room, listening to NIN and pondering this life, and how weird it seems to have made it as far as I have. Yet still there is so far to go. I've stumbled in the past year, was given a second chance (Thank you Blue Bottle) and picked myself back up, dusted myself off, and started to work smarter....not harder.

Yesterday I shipped my Blue Bottle show via the man in Brown. I was just made aware of the show preview which is available on Blue Bottle's website, here. I am very pleased with the show that I amassed for BB. I think it is my best work yet, and I hope everyone who sees it, likes it as well.

This weekend I also needed to get my Avatar piece started for The Hive Gallery. It had been kind of waiting in the wings since the Blue Bottle show was more pertinent, but I finally had some time to work up sketches last night, and came up with this:

We were supposed to use our Avatars from last years' show, so the Mighty Lark was the only detail I had to start with. My Avatar was also supposed to reside in the dark forest region of "Hiveland" and be performing a heroic act. Hence this flying bear.

I started to think about the dark forest, and then extended my thinking to why it was dark. I began to think of it as kind of a Camille Rose Garcia forest, covered in oil. So I started to draw out my rendition of the La Brea Tarpits crossed with the Red Woods National forest and came up with this underpainting this morning.


This really is a nice piece for me to work on right now, as it really isn't held down by any constraints as to pieces I've done in the past that gallery owners would like me to replicate or anything like that. I'm stoked to finish it and will keep all of you folks updated.

Thanks for stopping in, and for the continued support. Y'all come back now, ya hear?
Sincerely
-mike

Well This is it!

My show is done. I'm sending it out tomorrow morning. Now I can move on to other work that I need to get going. It feels amazing to have wrapped up this show. If you ask me, it is the best that I have put together yet. Hopefully that remains to be the trend for the rest of my life.

Here it is. The Culmination.

This one, may have been my favorite to work on. It was definitely not going right for a couple weeks though, so I am incredibly excited that I got it working without pushing my time limit too much.

Everything is going exactly as planned. The Death Star is nearly completed. Soon the Rebel army will have no hope.......
or maybe I could pretend not to be a complete nerd and say "It feels like a job well done".

roll out
-Mike

I'm Rollin'

Today was super busy. I spent the morning attempting to back all of the pieces for my show. I finished all but three but then had to go to the eye doctor so's I can see for the rest of my life and whatnot. Apparently my prescription is not at all the same as when I was twenty. Sad Christmas, since I still have those same glasses. All to be fixed soon though.

Later I came home and started to make some decisive moves on the three remaining pieces that I had started for the show, and would you believe I finished them. I'm posting two of them for you tonight, and tomorrow I will post the last, but I'm not feeling up to scanning in parts tonight.

Here are the 11th and 12th pieces for the show:

I am amped on this piece, because the atmospheric business that I usually do in the background is much more non-objective than I usually pull off. I miss making non-objective paintings. There is nothing better to really enjoy your color with.

The second:

I really didn't think this piece was going to make it into the show, but it was nagging at me and I found what was wrong. Now I think it is pretty successful as another fairly simple piece to add that balance.

Three more backers tomorrow and then I can send this out. Then on to another Avatar piece and a bunch of pieces for the Hive in May. This is officially as busy as I've ever been. Wish me luck. I really need it.

peace
-Mike

Spring is on the Way?!!

This morning I woke up next to a beautiful woman, the birds were singing and the sun was high in a blue blue sky. Now to qualify this former sentence, I wake up next to the same woman every day, so don't get any ideas, but it was very peaceful nonetheless.

I am ready for spring, so when I started to work on a piece for Blanket Magazine, I had robins on the mind. Robins are supposed to be the sign of spring, which is only complicated a little by the obese robin that has been hanging around outside of our house for the past four months. And yes obese is the right word. He is the built like a linebacker, or like one of Emmit Smith's offensive lineman.

Anyway, for the communication issue of Blanket Magazine, I incorporated a tin can phone and robins. Hope you like:

That's all for now. Be sure to check back later this coming week. I'll have the complete show preview up for Blue Bottle, my Avatar piece for the Hive and the beginnings of the pieces for my feature at the Hive going down in May.

Peace
-Mike

Crazy Productive Day

I did not wake up today expecting to finish two pieces, but that is indeed what I did. I'm amped. That officially leaves me three pieces, all of which I've started, to work on for my show to send out next week. I am so far ahead of where I usually am by now.

To top it all off, I love the piece that I'm posting, and it has purple in it. Real purple, not burnt siena and ultramarine blue. This is the first time that I can recall using this much purple since college (6 years ago shhhh).

What do you think?

I promise soon it will be something different than robots and birds. I have one piece with just birds in it, a show lined up for my birds with birdhouses theme, and a couple ideas for pieces involving my kitties.

If you're interested I did a WhoHub interview which you can view here.

Until then.
Peace
-Mike

Almost there.....

And then Darth Vader will cut me down with a tie fighter.

In all actuality, the show is getting closer every day, and the work is getting closer every day as well. It really is a pleasure when it works out that way. I slept in a little bit this morning, which may have helped my productivity, because when I started painting at 11 the vision was clear and the brush was definitely doing what I wanted it to do.

So here is a painting long overdue:

I had been working on and editing "Let the Funk Flow" for so long that I eventually had to set it down for a couple months. Today I picked it up and let it go. I think it turned out really well, and makes a nice tight addition to the Digesting Duck show.

I also wrapped up the finishing touches on a piece last night. You saw the original a couple days ago:

"Let me Give you a Hand" is a simple piece, but I think it's a nice break in the line up of work. You shouldn't have to dig deep on every piece in the show, and I think this piece is great for a quieter work.

Take care, maybe you'll even see another post from me later today.
peace
-Mike

Only "Air" can help me through monday....

I'm trying hard to make it through my weekend at my regular job. It is sometimes so hard, when you have about a million thoughts about what you'd like to do creatively. This morning I couldn't sleep at all because I was thinking about making "fan packs". You see, I started a business page on Facebook, where people can fan my business. I've been thinking that I want to treat it like a fan club, like in the old days when you could become a "Misfit fiend".

So I want to put together a package with a sticker, a magnet and a button along with a card that welcomes you to the Lewis Acrylics fan club. Definitely goofy, but really what is the sense of a business if you can't keep any of your sense of humour. If this sounds like something you'd be interested in, be sure to leave a comment or drop me a line.

I've also been thinking about the print show that I need to create a piece for. I think I may use this sketch and leave out the cat, trying to blur the lines of where one robot starts and the other stops:

Let me know what y'all think. Have a great monday, and seriously if you have time, go fan Lewis Acrylics on Facebook. You can do it here.

Later
-Mike

"The Feeder" is done.

Yesterday I stayed in the studio all day. I left for a couple minutes to check the mail at about three, and went to Bullwinkle's at around ten, and the rest of the day I was in the studio painting until my little fingers were popping.

This was incredibly productive. Yesterday I finished "The Feeder" which I had anticipated would be one of the last two pieces that I finished for the Blue Bottle show. I also pulled three more pieces into the almost finished category and completely redesigned a piece from an earlier show that I just wasn't pleased with to fit in nicely with this show. A good days work really.

Here are the spoils:

I am in love with this piece. I feel about it the same way that Stephen Carpenter of the Deftones felt when he was asked about "Around the Fur" after it came out. I've been listening to our album on repeat. Sometimes I make something and I have a hard time believing that I made it afterwords.

Anyway to the second piece for the day. The complete redesign:

I shaped the bird out a little more in this piece, took out his perch, added a robot, and am working on the waves to try to get them a bit more interesting and perilous. I've been flipping the Juxtapoz featuring the work of Corey Arnold and can't get over the massive waves in his photos off of Alaska. At its best I would like this piece to have a little bit of that gusto.

I'll be back later. There is a ton going on. If you're on Facebook, be sure to go fan "Lewis Acrylics" Thanks.

Peace
-Mike

Pushing my limits under serious duress

My show is fast approaching, and true to my usual form I find myself creating new pieces instead of finishing all of the work that I have been doing. That is not to say that I have ditched all of my pieces. I am just beginning to edit myself, carefully selecting what should stay in and what no one should ever see.

Today was a productive day. I started to paint over a piece that had failed a long time ago, and really brought some angles into the composition, making it much more successful than the first try. The color in it is really starting to lean towards non linear, and really nonsensical, but I like weaving this abstract and figurative puzzle:

This piece was also cool in that I was able to research power lines, cross arms and phases today. There is a lot of really interesting material online about power lines and how they work.

The second piece that I have to post today has really come a long way from the original. I removed the bird and decided to play more with the unraveling tape instead. It feels much more elegant and a little less contrived. Well, I guess its as elegant as a robot with a tape deck for a belly can be anyway:

I have more things to post, but it's getting late, so I will post the rest sometime tomorrow. I will also be putting all of the finishes into an album on my flickr account so you'll be able to see the virtual show.

Later
Mike

Painting to Mike Ness

I've been getting really into Mike Ness's solo album "Cheating at Solitaire". Tonight I was feeling it pretty good, and my stroke came surprisingly well after a lethargic day at work that I thought had created the perfect numb that I would never come out of.

I did, and the result is a piece that has been reworked to make it a little more dynamic:

So far it is pretty successful, I think. But I had to stop for the evening out of fear of overworking the left half of the birds' face. Now that I'm looking at the digital image, I realize it may be there already anyway.

Until then folks.