Gatekeeper

The scan didn't come out very well for some reason, so I had to take a photo of it.


Acrylic on wood 5x7. It's for an art auction at Gallery Nucleus in LA to benefit the American Red Cross. There's some REALLY great artists lined up for this event, and I'm proud to be part of it. If you're in the LA area, check it out! I probably won't be able to attend, sadly. All the artwork is 5x7, and $100, but some of them are going to be auctioned.

More info:http://gallerynucleus.com/gallery/exhibition/212

Difficult to paint so small, but it looks really pretty nice in person. This one was inspired by my recent trip to Asia. If you look hard there's a little Tori gate in the background. I really like this idea and composition, so I might paint another, larger version for my show in February. Due to the size of this one, tattoos were not an option, but I think it looks good without them anyway.

Other news: There was an opening on Saturday at Doublepunch with some great artists. I was there for about an hour and met some cool folks. It will be up for about a month, my painting "Kissy Face" is hanging in it.



Barron Storey has republished The Marat/Sade Journals and I got a copy. It's amazing, get it! I found out about it here: http://graphicnovelart.blogspot.com/2009/09/marat-sade-journals-are-back.html

Furthermore, I met up with a bunch of people from Artsprojekt over the weekend at the Thread Expo, and they were super cool! If you're an artist you should submit and get yourself an account. It's easy to use to make all kinds of products, and there's going to be some neat stuff you'll be able to do in the near future, so get on it! http://artsprojekt.com/

Photoshop Photomerge: The most useful tool I own.

I've been meaning to write about Photoshop's Photomerge function for a while. Basically, it's amazing, and it saves me a ton of time, money, and headaches. I feel like I tell people about it all the time, and it's not as widely used as it should be. For traditional 2D artists, it is essential knowledge in my opinion.

What you need:
Photoshop, I think they first added it in CS, but I'm not sure.
A decent professional grade scanner.

The first thing I do is scan my painting in pieces. This painting is 18x24x1 on a wood panel. I scan a painting this large in 6-8 passes, and I try to keep it straight. You only need about an inch of overlap to make it work with the Photomerge function, but I've found that the more information Photoshop has to work with, the better. I scan at 300 dpi. Important things to note: I'm using an Epson Perfection 1250 from 2001, and it still wrecks shop! There's also a lip around all the edges which does make a shadow, but Photoshop is smart enough to see that and correct it. My scanner is standard sized, I think the bed is 9x12. You don't need to buy outrageously expensive over-sized scanners.


Here's a shot of all the individual scans. They're tif's, but I usually save my scans as psd's. All your files need to be saved to use this function.



Now Go to File>Automate>Photomerge



This screen will come up. I always open all the tiles first, then choose "Add Open Files." I leave it on Auto, but maybe "reposition only" is better for this? I don't know for sure, but I've always been happy with the auto mode. Hit "OK."



About 30 seconds later I've got this! I check it to make sure everything looks ok, then flatten it. If you rotate the image without flattening it, the seems Photomerge made appear. If your paintings have a lot of similar areas Photomerge can get confused, so just do a couple other scans to help it figure out what goes where and you should be set. I don't recommend using Photomerge to scan large textures. I once tried to scan a large watercolor wash for use in my digital artwork, and it doesn't work for that. Also, sometimes if you change programs while Photoshop is doing the Photomerge magic it will mess it up. Overall though, I rarely have a problem.



Cropped and finished! I didn't even have to mess with any levels or anything on this painting. It scans VERY accurately. Good luck!

Got a few Copies of POE

I got a few copies of POE in the mail. It looks really good! Nothing like finally seeing the end product. The interior art looks great as well. Happy to be a part of it.

CCA Illustration Faculty and Alumni Exhibition

I'm really excited about the line-up on this one! I think this will be a great show. It's open to the public, so come if you can.

Kissy Face

I have this list of characters I want to do paintings about. Many of them are popular fiction or occupation related. Milk man, astronaut, caveman, etc. My next painting was going to be of a gymnast, but a fellow asked me to do something zombie related for a book he's putting together, and that was on the list to, so I thought "Why not?" Here's a web version he's put together: http://www.jadedpublishing.com/projects/zombiemosaic.php. I guess the book will be different, I dunno. Acrylic on panel 18x24.

Lost Fight Review

Show review from artbusiness.com:
"Comment by AB: I'm here early, but the kind folks at Edo Salon are nice enough to let me in. Thank you for that. This time around, Jeremy Forson, essays on life in San Francisco-- elegant, genteel and Victorian for the most part, but sometimes it can be a long hard night. His tattooed tarts appear to basically update the Patrick Nagel idiom. Nice quality work overall."

Pretty accurate I'd say. I'm happy with this review. I hadn't thought of my work as being in the same vein as Patrick Nagel, but now now that he mentioned it, I think that's true, especially in the more stripped down compositions.

Photos from the show

Here's some photos from my show. I can honestly say it was one of the best days of my life to date. The show was a success, lots of people came, and I had a great time. Showing at Edo is fantastic, and I highly recommend it. Nicole runs the show and she was great to work with, and a sweety! The show is up till 11-4. so check it out if you can!



End of the Night.







The DJ agreed to do it the night before, and even brought his records on BART from the east bay! He came through. They had bought the DJ equipment that day for the Salon, and were having some problems getting it to work. Luckily Eli and Alex were there and they got it working. Things went smoothly :)









Mural painted by myself, Nicole the curator, and Jerome. We painted from 9pm till 3 or 4am 2 nights in a row, and Nicole had to wake up crazy early after both nights. She's a trooper!




Buckets of Sangria!