Don't Badger Me!!!

Ha.  I started drawing badgers today and I've been giddy ever since I started.  There is something totally honest about letting yourself personify a new creature that makes you giggle to begin with.  I can't help but think of my friend Emilie talking about badgers being violent and nasty, coupled usually with a Big Lebowski "nice marmot" comment.

Anyway, after drawing a few out, I started to sculpt one out of bass wood.  I thought that I would just get the rough cut done tonight, but I actually made it pretty far into sanding as well.  I am very pleased that I am able to keep relatively the same degree of simplification to my characters in 3-dimensional form.  I was concerned that the figures would look too much like a box and like I had simply done nothing to the blank from when I picked it up at the lumber yard.

So here tis.

Let me know what you think.  Is it badger enough?  I love it currently, riding that 1 A.M. high, like I've been working on it for 7 hours.

Also on the docket today were a bunch of sketches to begin thinking about the 25 framed drawings that I will be doing for Susan at Artstream Studios in Rochester, NH.  It's so nice to be able to work with her again.  She is a wonderful shop owner.

At the bottom there you can see the first badger.  It got more and more ridiculous as the day progressed.  I am really excited about the simplified human figures, however.  In the past my people have looked more complicated than my animal creatures and this just seems unnecessarily complicated.

Hope you like the new stuff.

We'll keep you posted.

Peace

-Mike

Better Late Than Never?

This morning I finished a piece that I started last November or December.  I don't even remember anymore.  At the time I was very excited about the action of the piece and not so much about the background.  Some time in graduate school had me questioning making meaningless illustration and I just ended up stalling, setting the piece down, and eventually forgetting about it.

This week though, I cleaned my studio, and in cleaning my studio I rediscovered the piece and started to think about the background as another piece entirely, a piece really which may be more important to me than the main character action, so I finished it.  And I like it, and I am excited with the possibilities, though the eventual outcome I do not think will have anything to do with this particular product except for maybe as a catalyst.  Good stuff.

I started a poem about this background.  I'm not much of a poet, but I think maybe a project working back and forth between literary and image based artwork may be in order.  It could end up being really cool and for that matter I have absolutely nothing to lose now.

So here we go.
Peace
-Mike

Now that the Rapture is Over - Moving Forward

Today was a beautiful day.  The sun finally came out, and I managed to finish 4 out of 7 of the illustrations that I am supposed to complete for an e-book.  Nothing too exciting but hopefully some cash pretty soon.  Once I got a little bit done on that I was able to work on some projects that I have been meaning to get to.  The first project that I wanted to get to was the June calendar for the Bollard, a local newspaper here in Portland, ME.

I think I will always be submitting this to Doodlers Anonymous's calendar contest for the month of June.  If it won it would be the feature doodle of the month.  I think I have a decent chance with this bad boy so here goes nothing.

More work coming soon. 
Peace
-Mike

Rapture Me this Rapture Me That

Will the world end in roughly thirty five minutes?  If it does I will have gone out listening to Ben Harper and typing up a blog post.  There are worse ways to go.  Good luck to you in maneuvering zealots tomorrow. 

That said, I am very excited to begin relaying my ideas for a site specific installation at the Ghostly Heart Atelier, in Lowville, NY.  This is a very special project and work for me to complete not only because it is a chance to do an installation, but it is also in my hometown, where I thought I could never do anything artistic.  So I get to tackle two birds with one stone.  Awesome.  I also have gotten one of my classmates from MeCA interested and he is making an installation as well.  Now that is really awesome.

First off here are the first couple sketches that I came up with for the space.

The community that this piece will be immersed in is a hunting, backwoods, farming culture.  As I recall there was little for entertainment in the area besides barhopping and hunting.  Farming and farm related industries, like milk and cheese and maple syrup are the primary industries in the area.  Also of importance are dealerships of farm equipment and off-road equipment.

 These three images are of the interior of the space.  I was impressed by the claustrophobic nature of the site.  It mimicked the way that I felt while living within that community, and that seems pertinent now as well.

This door is not only awesome but also speaks to my reluctance to voice my opinions in that area of the country.  I was so closed off from the public when I lived there because I thought that no one would understand my points of view.  I now realize that this may not be as dramatic a difference in ways of thought, but this piece is about fifty fifty about me and about my hometown.

Hope you are getting excited.  I know I am.  Beware of zombies tomorrow.
Til next time, if there is one.
Peace
-Mike

Sketches for Children's Awesomeness

I am working on a project that has been on the backburner for a couple years.  It is a relief to finally be taking some time for it.  After a lot of thought, I determined that it didn't make sense to try to carry a full time job during the rest of school.  The first year went entirely too quickly and I don't think that it will benefit me to keep working through the second.  So that said I have been able to devote a little more time to projects that have been left by the wayside.

One such project is a children's book that I have been meaning to work on with an amazing writer whose name will remain unspoken until more work is done on the book.  For now I have some character sketches for you to view.

I am really enamored with these two sketches.  The second one is a self portrait as flying squirrel, which just make me giggle like a school girl.  The first was an opportunity to do something with a squirrel besides just having him sit on a tree limb.  Versatility is the name of the game.

 The bunny is really supposed to be cute.  Super cute.  So cute it makes you kind of feel ill, like if you have way too much chocolate or banana cream pie.  I might need to make him cuter.

This last one is a two headed beast.  Well yes there are three heads, but what I mean is it serves as sketches for character studies of two dimensional creatures and I am currently sculpting this totem out of bass wood with the help of a set of chisels or two that my father donated to me.

There's a lot going on.  I'll be back soon with some more images.  Til then.
Peace
-Mike

Coffee. MMmm Yum.

It's a lazy cloudy day here in Portland, Me.  I love cloudy lazy days.  I worked my first shift at a new job, and was supposed to meet a fellow to go over some illustration work, but resolved myself to do the work by email instead and save the dough that I would have spent going to meet up with him.

I am also through with school for the time being, so it is time to get going on some work that I have had lined up for a while.  I will be exhibiting a little mini show of paintings and drawings at a local coffee shop in Portland, Bard Coffee, which is going to be great.  I haven't shown at a coffee shop in a long time.  I think this will be much more low key, which I am all about.  Also, I am starting to talk with a wicked poet about doing a book again.  I sent him a quick text with this image to show that I was ready.  Thought I would share it with all of y'all.

I'll keep you posted on these new projects.  I think they are all going to be fun, which is something that I haven't been doing much of lately.  Fun illustrative awesomeness.  Fine art is cool and all, but illustration is fun.  Just a word to the wise.  Have an awesome Tuesday.

Peace
-Mike

Assemble

I have been attempting to wrap my head around the work of Deleuzze and Delanda, in attempts to understand better the concept of society as assemblage.  I reasoned that if I understood the social constructs indicative of the assemblage that I would then comprehend the creative process as assemblage.  It is now evident that I use accumulation of pictorial elements as a way to organize my memories and as somewhat of a visual diary.  I draw comparisons between disparate systems of operation, and am perhaps guilty at times, within my reasoning, of oversimplifying things.

At the end of the semester this spring, I completed two installations.

 Re-using the head.

Yup, squirrel on a stump.

Disconnected plumbing in the brain!  That one may just need to be a painting painting.  I love how blurred out the no parking sign gets when a camera flash goes off near it as well.

I'm going to post some of my other totems soon.  I actually have images take already.  The head installation with pipes is essentially a modern assemblage totem.  I have been so into totem poles lately it is not even funny.  Although to be honest some modern totem poles are pretty funny, so maybe that is an incorrect statement.

Peace.
-Mike