New Painting in the works

Life has been a bit crazy as of late and I have take a much needed brake from art making.  However, I recently did some sketching for a new piece and something emerged out of these sketches that I'm rather excited to start on.  The photo reference has been taken and I'll hopefully start on the final line drawing tonight.  Stay tuned for more progress shots

New Print of "The Secret of Oz"

It's been awhile since I've had a new print to offer.  Here's my latest print with Gallery Nucleus.  I've decided that an open ended edition would be cool to make the print more accessible for those interested in my work.





I'm really interested in the "Pay what you will" model that's recently emerged.  Abundant hi res images for whatever you can afford to contribute?  Sounds great in theory and for anyone interested in my paintings.  Not sure how it will play out in real life.  This new model may require an experiment with one of my pieces to see what happens.  Worse case scenario is it's a freebie.  That doesn't sound so bad ;)  For now I hope you enjoy this piece.

If you're not familiar with "pay what you will" here's a TED Talk by Amanda Palmer

"Day of Dissonance"

I've been working on this piece for quite some time.  I shipped it out last week.  Glad I can finally post the final.  I'll post another process of this soon.

"The Secret of Oz" process

It's been awhile since I put up a start to finish process post.  This is for a Wizard of Oz tribute show at Gallery Nucleus called "Not In Kansas Anymore" and it opens today.  So if you're in the area check it out.

Of course I always start off with small thumbnails to get a very generalized vision of the composition, concept, and what I'm trying to communicate.  As you'll see it changes a bit as I add in different elements and ultimately change the perspective entirely.  Originally I thought it would be cool if there was a lot of fog and mist obscuring much of the background.  I later thought it would be cooler to have the building appear to be more aged and overgrown with brush and trees.  Yes, those are supposed to be trees and brush.  Stop hatin.

 Now here is an almost final drawing.  As you can see the perspective is totally different.  So what had happened was...while I was shooting my photo reference I had a hunch that it may be interesting to go low and shoot upwards.  So I had two sets of photo reference and I couldn't resist the newer perspective.  I felt it was more dynamic.  So I reconstructed the piece with the new photo ref and came up with this.

 With the permission of my model and friend.  Here's the photo reference chosen out of dozens of shots.  Rarely do I get such a good shot that works so well over all.  There's usually a lot more frankensteining of various photos required to get the look that I want.

I also decided to go out and get some proper clay to build this little macquette.  Kneaded erasers can only do so much.  And yes, it's supposed to be an eagle.  I insist that the hating come to an immediate stop.

This is the actual final drawing on watercolor paper.  I'm doing some slight shading on the figure and indicating where cast shadows will be falling.

Here's my color comp.  Pretty rough but I think it captured the sense of what I was going for quite well.  Some happy little accidents occurred in this stage that I liked enough to take to final.  For instance, the hat trailing off into a different color.  Totally didn't plan that.  Though you may see that it further influenced the color choice for the stockings later in the painting.  The next several images will be progess in the actual painting.  I start off trying to establish some of the darkest areas and the main figure then filling out the rest.  At the very end there's always a lot of back and forth pushing and pulling to refine my edges, values, and color relationships.

This last image is basically the finished version.  After the opening tonight I'll throw up the final. 

Finally Done

Nuff said.  I'll post the finished piece in it's entirety shortly.  Gonna package this up and ship it out.  I think I'm going to take a little art break and research doing some more prints and making some of all this art I've accumulated a little more accessible.  Stay tuned for more :)

Before the paint

Here's the final drawing on watercolor paper.  The piece is currently in transit to Gallery Nucleus.  I'll post the finished piece shortly. 

Answering Some Questions

I'm often asked how I flatten my watercolor paper once it's become buckled and warped from all the washes.  I've explained this in writing plenty of times for people who've messaged me and figured it was probably time to make a video explaining how I do this.  I'm sure it makes a lot more sense actually seeing it as well.   At least I hope so.  Below I'll post two new videos.  One on flattening my art and another short demo on my painting technique.  The second demo also addresses how I adhere my painting to the gator board.  It's really simple but I get this question quite often.  Hope this clears some things up.

Here's a work in progress shot of my new piece "The Secret of Oz".  It's for an upcoming tribute to "The Wizard of Oz" group show at Gallery Nucleus.