Altered Book

Here is a page out of my altered book, a commissioned project that I am working on.  Inspired by the poem "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird", this refurbished old library book has charcoal work, collage, painting, printmaking techniques all throughout.  This page features the thirteenth stanza, "It was evening all afternoon.  It was snowing and it was going to snow.  The blackbirds sat in the cedar-limbs." Black feathers added using gel medium, watercolor painted background, pen n ink illustration.

Makings of a Dryad

One of my backburner projects is a sculpture of a dryad(s) assembled from oak tree branches and pieces parts that have fallen in my yard.  I have been collecting them for about a year.  I think I may get working on it as my submission to this year's "no dead artists" show at a local gallery.  I submit every year but have never been selected.

Yesterday I was investigating a large branch that fell during hurricane Isaac last year, and discovered an amazing pattern under the bark in places...possibly new knots beginning to form? I think this will be worked into the "hair" of the carving.  Beautiful unnatural natural pattern.  Amazed by nature as always.

Brain Kramps

I've hit a bit of a snag with some of my Krampus footage, and am at this point trying to decide whether to keep photoshopping or reshoot. The problem is, I have a shot which requires rig removal.  Done it a few times before, easy peasy, no issues.  This time though, apparently my wonky lighting setup created several tiny ghostly shadows of the rig in two or three areas.  Didn't even notice them until playback after doing the initial rig removal. I did another pass in Photoshop and noticed another rig shadow after the second go. I think the issue is the practical lighting, the Christmas tree and garland lights that point every which way.  As the rig passes these spots, shadows go everywhere. Trying to creatively Photoshop but will probably end up reshooting....I hate reshooting...I will post some video soon, the opening few seconds at the very least...

On the Easel...

Hellooooooooo!  Been wanting to post about more projects here, not just my animation.  Currently I am working a handful of projects including a family portrait for my brother (his Xmas gift, shame on me).  I am also doing a still life for him of some of my nephews' favorite things.  And I've been commissioned to do art inspired by a poem called "thirteen ways of looking at a blackbird", for which I am creating an altered book. 
I had a lot of success with Etsy last year, and I love crafting (its necessary for stop mo, isn't it?), but Im feeling my creativity leaning more towards fine art right now, and plan to hit up some galleries for representation this year.  So I'm dusting off the oil paints and getting back to my roots :).   My plan: brainstorm a list of "cool" cities (austin, Seattle, Portland, etc), create a list of galleries which show work from new artists leaning towards symbolism or fantasy type art, and start emailing.  More on that later....cheers!

Androids and Communicators and Social Media, Oh My!

Testing 1, 2...I recently (finally) got myself an intelligent phone and just downloaded the Blogger app.  My own little cyberspace communicator.  Hopefully this will make posting here a little easier, and so, more frequent.  I have begun to distance myself more and more from Facebook, and plan to refocus my sharing efforts here, on the blog that started it all.  (i have issues with Facebook's privacy, and also, don't care about my "friends" eating habits, or who is doing what with who, or the like.  The whole thing has become very surreal to me, this social media craze.  In my "real" life I am an extremely private, very quiet guy.  I don't want privacy to become a "remember when"....end rant :)...so here we go.  Welcome to 2013 :)

Krampus is getting anxious with me....I fear I may get coal next Christmas if I don't get off my keester and get busy....

Setting Up Krampus

I thought I could get a little short done for Christmas but found myself rushing through it all a bit too much, so i decided to take it slower.  Krampus is still coming, about 15 seconds are filmed so stay tuned.  In the meantime, let me talk about my new favorite quickie set material.  Scrapbook paper!  I used it for the "wallpaper" on this set and love the look of it.  It comes in 12"x12" sheets, thousands of colors and patterns, fairly cheap (49 cents a sheet for this one).  Also, the little girl puppets in this short were designed to be practice for animating Nola - upholstry foam buildup bodies with clay faces.  They are so small that it has been difficult to animate the faces (Nola is larger), but still good practice.  I like to think of them as Nola's cousins...

 

 

Something's Coming...