New Commission

I am working on a new commission. It consists of three paintings created as a series. The pieces are for a hockey player who requested representational paintings of his hockey equipment - glove, skate and stick.

I prepared a photoshoot to create the source imagery, the chosen images are below. I am looking forward to working with a nice orange-blue colour palette to bring out a lot of the subtleties in the greys and blacks of the equipment.

Crows!

I started a new piece today. It expands on the techniques I'm working with, combining light applications of acrylic via palette knives, and drawing on top with various weights of ink pens. I'm happy as these works are receiving a good amount of positive feedback - this piece sold before I had finished it!

A Happy Blend of Paint and Ink!

I've been wanting to combine drawing into my paintings more. I recently started an experimental piece that I built on today. I'm happy with how it is coming along. It has a nice "pop" to it, working with heavy black outlines of various line weight. Too bad the foam core/paint surface did something to my brand new pen and now it wont work!

To keep myself perky with my oil painting, however, I made this piece below. It's a close up of a honey dew melon, yet it looks somewhat suggestive - one observer called it "sphincter-like". I don't deny it.

If I Were A Lobster, I'd Do A Self Portrait

Today at the Studio I continued work on two pieces I had previously begun. Things are getting exciting, I'm feeling like I'm making some good leaps in my artistic development. This is because I took almost three years off from art making to go to Web Design school and work in Toronto as a designer. It wasn't until that time had passed that I realized that my artistic skills were slipping away and I had to revive them - this is when and why I quit my job in Toronto and moved to Vancouver, where I would have time to practice my art again. I'm now happily knees deep in a wonderfully vibrant art community which continues to expand! Thanks guys :) lots of love!

I worked on this new claw painting for a bit tonight. I like that I'm loosening up, and here I put the claw in a setting/context. The mixing table behind is reminiscent of my love of electronics in art. I may spend a little more time tightening up bits of this piece tomorrow before callling it finished - I like having parts of the under painting showing through. This was an important moment.

I've developed my larger lobster shell canvas some more. I'm starting to like how it is shaping up, although I want to tighten it up with more details still. I would like to have a little more of the underpainting showing through, but I will maintain that mindset for my next work. Regardless this guy is coming together both as a work and as a teaching tool/learning process.

Surface Experimentation and Texture Supreme!

This weekend in the studio was quite explorative and productive. I worked on pieces previously begun, and started some new ones. Lots of experimentation going on. I worked on these Friday and Saturday, and took Sunday off to paint my apartment.  As per usual the iphone photos aren't exactly the best for colour representation, but at least it allows me to show you constant progress!!

I'm excited for this piece. It's a larger canvas, several feet high and about 2.5 feet wide. I've built up some nice washes and a fun colour palette over top of the tape and I really enjoy how it is looking. 

 
This is a canvas of about 2x2 feet. Here I've drawn the shape of a lobster over top of the background, which was painted with a lot of washes.

This is the same work, with some more paint coverage. It's more developed than this now, and I will be posting the more up to date version shortly! I am enjoying the looseness of the paint coverage, but feel that I may be focusing too much on making it a "painting" and less of a mixed media, experimental work. Sometimes I fear making my paintings look too "complete"; I take a lot of inspiration from really excellent artists in Vancouver and I am still looking to find the best balance of "purposefully incompleteness" for my work. I also enjoy combining technique and styles, so the less polished as a mere "oil painting", [perhaps] the better.

I really like what's happening with this little guy. He's only 12x12 inches, but the surface texture and background washes are working very well. I'm almost afraid to paint something on top of it!! The connection between this one and the larger canvas at the beginning of today's post are nice as I'm starting to feel some consistency amongst the work :)

This is an experimental work of acrylic paint and sharpie on foamcore. The effects are really exciting, I enjoy them a lot! It's incomplete, and I believe I will add more of the lobster drawing to this piece and likely take some inspiration from it for some newer works!

An Animation I Did a Few Months Back

I realized that I haven't really publicized my more recent animation a lot. I did it months ago, and slipped it onto YouTube after creating it. It was a piece I made for a radio contest here to create a 30-second TV spot for the station. It didn't win, but I had a blast hand drawing all the bits and animating it and putting it to sound and music. The screen shot below will link to the video on YouTube. In the coming future I'd like to get a higher quality version of it up :)

Possible inspiration for future animated work.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DcKTv1xO8j8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DcKTv1xO8j8

Experiments With Digital Collage

I always insist on making something that has at least ONE handmade component, even when the approach is digital. When I designed the website http://www.carboncitylights.com, for example, one of the mandatories was a handdrawn approach to the digital design.

Yesterday I sketched a green pepper with the intention of creating a collage sketch for use on a larger work. Turns out I rather enjoy the digital illustration in itself!

Here are steps involved in creating it:

I photographed this pepper at home the night before, right before bed. I tore it open for a quick snack and HAD to draw it.

I did a pen sketch of the pepper on paper, which I then scanned. I converted the scanned drawing into Black and White, and began collaging digital elements in Photoshop.

The finished sketch has elements of the handdrawn, and is overlaid with visual collage components that I find interesting (newspapers, electronic maps, etc).