Art on hiatus

I will not be having any new artwork to post for a while. I'm not too happy about it, but I'm not able to draw and paint every day. I'm going to be designing and coding a website www.daisyisondmdinc.com as my next project. It's a job I'm doing as a favor without a specified time-line, so if somebody wanted to hire me for a project, they should feel free to contact me. I'm also going to be in San Diego most of next week, and I have to do my taxes for the year, which hopefully won't be too painful. So, unless I have some sudden news, this blog will be inactive for a couple weeks or so.

Montana skate show

For this piece I wanted to re-visit an older illustration I did for Unified School District. I always liked the concept, and I thought I could do a better job. I wanted to give the piece more depth and less rigidity.

Difficult to scan a skate deck, as you might imagine, but I actually like the way the sides fade off.

3/4/10 - WIP

This piece is coming along. It will probably be finished tomorrow. That forest took a lot out of me! I had some issues when I started painting the statue because the surface of a skateboard is so slick, but I had some Clear Gesso lying around, and I finally found a use for it! I've had it for about 8 years, and I didn't like it because it's VERY toothy, it feels like sand paper when it dries. I had problems using it before, but it actually worked well this time. It's surprisingly absorbent, which was great, and I didn't have a problem making a hard line as long as I thinned the paint a little. Time to go to the gym!

3/2/10 - WIP

I got a sketch I liked today, so I started on the final.



Working with glazing, transparent layers, lot of washes. This is in the beginning stages. The paint is behaving strangely because of the shape, and the lack of absorbency, but it's also doing some cool stuff.



Sometimes the transfers look more cool than the finals. I wish I could figure out how to get that expressiveness into the finish. I know that if I tried to draw like this it wouldn't be the same.

Sketch today

Did a sketch today and applied a few coats of gesso to the deck. I tinted the gesso with light blue for a unifying color. I'm not sure about this sketch, so I'm going to keep messing with it and maybe do a few different versions. Mostly re-arranging. I've been working pretty slowly lately. It's nice to work at a more leisurely pace than I usually have to, at the same time, I feel guilty for not working as hard as possible.

Mixed bag

Working on some ideas for the skate deck. I'm thinking that it will be something like this one I circled, with a forest like the one I painted for the shoes recently.

Took a bunch of photo reference. I have hundreds of embarrassing photos of myself like this, and some of my friends who were unlucky enough be be around when I needed some ref shots. You would think that by now I would have all the poses I could ever need, but no.







I've been thinking a lot lately about improving my digital artwork, and doing more of it, so I worked on some textures today. I don't especially like working on the computer, but recently I've been seeing cool stuff done, and I could save an enormous amount of time. Art directors like digital artwork, I believe, because it's so much easier to change. Also, I'm starting to think it's hard to make your work look current without some digital elements. Naturally, I'm thinking of a traditional/digital hybrid which is really where it's at right now. My thoughts are still forming on this topic. Now that I think about it, I almost always have to work on my paintings digitally to correct changes the AD wants, so how traditional they are is debatable.

Sean "Cheeks" Galloway on Chiustream

Watched this interview with Cheeks. More and more I think I should try to get into animation. Seems like every artist interview I hear, they all say that at one point or another they got a job in animation.
http://chiustream.blogspot.com/2009/12/sean-cheeks-galloway-interview-by-bobby.html
I think listening to interviews with artists is astoundingly helpful. I tell people to listen to Sidebar all the time. After listening to all of them over the summer, it helped me figure out some hangups in my work and process. Additionally, you can listen to them while you're working, which is always a plus.