A Mute of Hounds

A small piece I did for a show at Gallery Meltdown in L.A. to benefit the dogs of Downtown Dog Rescue. A majority of the dogs they rescue are pitbulls or pit mixes, so needless to say, I jumped at the opportunity to help out. The markings on this dog are modeled after my own pitbull.

Acrylic and colored pencil on watercolor paper

Uglies

Thought I'd put these up on the blog today. While the rest of my fellow man was watching LOST, I was working on a piece for the show "A Mute of Hounds" at Gallery Meltdown in LA. Busted out the acrylics, completely skipping the watercolors. I decided to mess around in my sketchbook while waiting for paint to dry (I really need a blow dryer). I think they look funny.

Real updates coming soon.

More celeb portraits

So I promised I'd be doing more of these, but never got around to it. Here are a couple more for now. Next up, I'm definitely thinking Brad Pitt because he is just too undeniably cool. Maybe Bea Arthur as well.

Grace Jones
My favorite eccentric from the 80's. Super model, actress, singer, artist, muse.

Carl Sagan
Who doesn't love this gentle spirit? I first learned about him years ago in science class, yet he's been popping up a lot lately.

Curiouser and Curiouser

This is the piece I did for the Curiouser and Curiouser show at the Gallery Nucleus back in February. I chose to illustrate Alice eating the two sides of the mushroom, as prescribed by the hookah-smoking caterpillar. I wanted to model Alice off of Alice Liddell, the little girl Lewis Carroll wrote the book for. Done in watercolor and acrylics.

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A close up of the caterpillar's face.I couldn't find my pallets...

Men's Health

I've been meaning to put these up on my blog for a while now but somehow have not gotten around to it. They were done for the January 2010 issue of Men's Health Germany. The article was called "Volle Power Aus Dem Verstärker" which translates into full power from the amplifiers. It was about motivation for exercise, and the power of different types of music for different work outs. The first one was a double page spread, and the other two were single page spreads. Photographs from Dietrich Halemeyer.

These three images will also be in an upcoming issue of Men's Health Korea.

On an unrelated note, if you'd like to ask me questions anonymously, feel free to leave them on my formspring and I will try and answer all of them. Started it a while back, but have recently regained interest in it. Go wild!

Sex and Violence

A few days ago, my brother and I were having a conversation about the idea people have that the reason there is so much violence out there these days is because of violent video games and movies. We both felt strongly that this idea was absurd and that those who go on the air to spread their faulty logic don't really have much interest in human psychology or child development. This got me thinking, and soon I was visualizing scenes in my head of violence, drugs, sex, and all the goodies your parents wouldn't want you to see on television. I didn't go to any extremes though, instead, going for more of a representation of the violence to come, like a standoff in an old western film.

Mostly, this image is an exercise in composition (as well as my personal contribution to world peace). If anything, I'm just glad I had some time to do a bit of personal work. As of now, I'm not sure where I will end up taking this piece; whether I should render it and add texture, finish it off with flat colors, or maybe just leave it as is.

I sketched directly into photoshop with this one.
Here's the finished line work. I just noticed a few lines that are missing, like the Native American's left upper arm...

And here it is with a little bit of color, trying to adopt the flats technique I learned from Sam Bosma. I fidgeted around with the hue/saturation and ended up liking the...well, flatness of it. I will play around with it, and see how far I can go with rendering.

Larger image to show details

100 Heads for Haiti

I was recently asked to take part in a charity exhibition called 100 Heads for Haiti held by Spur Design here in Baltimore. Basically, the exhibition will consist of floating heads on a white background. It will be held on April 10th, and each of the heads (by 100 different designers and illustrators) will be sold for $100 each. All proceeds will go to Doctors Without Borders.

watercolor and acrylic, 7 x 9