Shoparooni Plushfrom Artshow!!!

Check out my custom plush I created for a local show here in Cleveland at Shoparooni, badass store!! It's up for auction so if you want total coolness to decorate your house with scoop this guy up, plus is for a good cause!

Hope you guys like it!!

Upcoming art show preview ~SOLDIERS ON BIKES~

So my friend and Art Director Anthony Davila invited me recently to take part in a local art show here in Cleveland. The show will be held at a bicycle shop and the theme has to loosely include bikes. I was really struggling for a while in deciding what to do for this show, one of the draw backs of not having ONE style to just fall back on, this part of the process is always the toughest. Luckily I've been sketching in my sketchbook a ton lately and from those sketches SOLDIERS ON BIKES emerged, haha random i know! I did a test piece to see if it was going to work and i dig the result a lot and I hope you guys do too. I will actually do this traditionally with painting and collage elements. Im excited and nervous at the same time so wish me luck. Drop a line if you guys dig this.

Thor Painting

So I'm back to the easel again . This time I am painting Thor the god of thunder. I will again do a process post and describe each step for you guys that enjoyed it last time. This is my very rough drawing and underpainting. I try to be as lose as possible to create gestural strokes and define masses with little limitation of details. This serves as almost a map for me to go from and then really define shapes and masses. I will now let this dry completely and go from there. I will let this piece develop very organically and take it one step at a time. I have no clue as to how much of a finished look this will have but I'm hoping once i reach that state i will just know. Hope you dig this first part and I will post the next session soon, I hope.

Experiments with Memories ~ "Taken"

~Taken~

I am currently working on a series of paintings entitled Experiments with Memories.

The work mostly deals with my attempt at recalling my childhood memories with no help from physical references like photographs and such. My childhood was unique by most standards and i feel like a lot of thoughts formed inside my head that were fictional but felt real at the moment. I will elaborate on my thoughts on this theme on later posts. For now please enjoy my sketch for this piece entitled "taken".

I am thinking on posting the process for this piece but I am still debating it.
The work will be done in oils for a future gallery show.
Any thoughts are appreciated.

Much love!

HULK+sketches

So a couple of us here at AG and my good friend and ex-co worker Jorge Lacera decided to do a hulk piece. Sometimes when i commit to these challenges the good illustration bug doesn't ever really strike so I end up with these endlesss sketches of randomness. Anyways I figured I'd post them anyways, I am working on an actual piece but it's iffy right now so I'm not sure if it'll ever get posted. I hope you guys like the random sketches anyways , enjoy!

MADBALLS!!

We here at American Greetings Properties recently had a gallery show showcasing the relaunch of MADBALLS. Some of you guys probably remember these gross yet awesome foam balls that were o popular int the 80's. There is exciting things happening around this property and I was glad to have been asked to be a part of this show. If you guys want to check out more things madballs head over to the Madballs Central Blog. Anyways I hope you guys enjoy my piece and be on the lookout for the toy in the stores, they are really awesome gross fun . In other news I just got done with a huge freelance job that had me tied up and sleepless for months but now I will buckle down and get my butt painting and working towards a gallery show sometime in the near future. Hope you all digs!!!

Holly Hobbie Classic

So here at my place of employment, American Greetings Properties, we often get to do specialty artwork for specific purposes. This is a piece I did of Holly Hobbie Classic, one of our oldest properties. I was originally supposed to do this piece in oils but with the short deadline I had to fall back and paint it digitally. There is a part of me that will never truly love this piece because it was always intended to be traditional but I think the outcome was pretty good and it gave me much needed practice with Painter. Anyways I hope you guys like it, and as always drop a line if you digs.

SHUT UP YOU STUPID KID!!!Taxday

So this is my second little short starting the stupid kid. In this short stupid kid does his taxes and ends up feeling a little "light". Along with this short I am also including the original storyboard from my sketchbook and some development art as well as pencils sketches for the key poses. This is for another contest Channel Frederator is having so wish me luck !!.

ULTRAMAN!

Detail.

-DAY4-
I had two or three more sessions on this painting without updates to have a bigger leap from the last stage to the final painting. The background was the hardest element to figure out.
It was a challenge because I didn't want it to be too painterly and take away from the figures and I also didn't want it to be too graphic. The figures was just a process of building on the light areas and finally adding the final highlights and details. . I definitely wanted Ultraman to be the focus of the piece so he has the most details and strong bold colors. I made the background lighter so the silhouette of the figures could stand out. Now I need to find the right frame for the piece and varnish it when its all over. The varnish will bring out all the dull colors and unify the piece making it glossy and giving it that wonderful wet look. Hope you guys enjoy the final painting and I hope I didn't bore you too much with my rants about painting. I will start work on a new painting but this one will move a lot slower and it will be a fairly big piece. ENJOY AND DROP ME A LINE IF YOU DIG IT!!



-DAY3-
I worked on the piece for about 2 1/2 hours today. First I worked on the grey areas of Ultramans costume, keeping it simple and not trying to get too light or detailed. Then I worked in the red and got it pretty far along just needing the final touches and highlights/reflections. I established a neutral background color which I will later develop into maybe smoke or something that will give interest without taking too much from the figures. I want the final color of the background to be brighter as well, because I feel it will fit the subject matter better. I glazed in a violet color on the shadows of the monster and worked a bit more in the light areas defining them a bit further. I need to let this part dry so I can go in the piece and start defining areas better with more detail and color. I'm thinking one or two more days and the piece will be finished. I'm enjoying this piece and will hopefully carry momentum into more paintings, i need to paint more and maybe it will lead into a gallery show later down the line.

On another note I saw "The History of Pixar" at the Cleveland film festival and it was amazing and inspirational. If you have a chance to check out this film please do, it's a must for any artist with a need to create quality original material.



-DAY2-
This part is where the fun really begins. Now my focus is on applying my basic light areas on the monster and a dark tone of red on some areas of the ultraman figure. Note that the light areas on the monster are very loose and I let the brush do a lot of the work for me. My objective is not to scrub paint but let the paint dictate what it wants to do. This part of the process gives the monster an organic feel and it creates crevices and other fun things that will later guide me when I am refining the light areas. Also note that the light color is still very much a mid tone just to define my lights and darks. Now I let this stage dry overnight.

I don't mean to ramble on but I figure it would be nice to share my painting process, hope you enjoy it!



-DAY1-
Day 1 was a short day of work on this painting because of pesky freelance jobs. I was basically just able to put down my acrylic base coat and once that was dry, my basic figures in oil. The trick about painting in oils is having patience, so I let this stage dry over night so the next day I am able to apply paint without the worry of taking off paint that is already there.


ULTRA MAN!! He's great, spending his time fighting monsters the size of buildings and saving the life of thousands while he's at it! I'm really exited about this piece and I'm glad to say this will be my first oil painting in a long time. This image is actually a photo of the sketch already down on the masonite ready for paint! I've never really painted anything this stylized in oils before but I'm confident I can make this work and I feel up for the challenge. Maybe I will post process pics as I go along but I haven't decided. It feels great to step away from the computer and get you hands dirty. There is so much going on as far as work and freelance so forgive me if the final takes a while but I'm hoping I can buckle down and grind this one out. Everyone stay fresh and if ya DIG IT drop a comment and say hello!

Gestures 2008

So i've been taking about 20 minutes each morning recently to warm up doing gestures. Some of them are from my head, others are from reference but my objective is to try and understand the human form in a dynamic and stylized way. I'm liking the unique structure I am achieving with some of the shapes, not concentrating on traditional accuracy but a more modern and stylistic way to interpret the figure. I want to continue this practice and turn it to a daily ritual. I feel it will be extremely beneficial considering I am planning a graphic novel soon. The better I understand the figure from memory the better I will be at telling a visual story. I also included an ink drawing constructed from one of the gestures, drawing with an ink brush is fun and I don't do it enough. Hope you guys enjoy and any feedback is welcome.

SHUT UP YOU STUPID KID!!! Love Fest

VOTE FOR MY SHORT AND SHOW YOUR BOY SOME LOVE!!!
(To vote just leave a comment on the video)
VOTE!!




Hey everyone, like i've blogged about before i'm slowly learning how to animate. This is a little five second animation for this contest over at Channel Frederator. It stars an original character of mine called simply, stupid kid. If you ever knew a super obnoxious and annoying kid growing up this is him. It's an amature animation but I'm learning and I hope to keep on getting better. Let me know what you think even if you just think is completely stupid. Thanks guys.

SUSHI PACK cont.

Here is some more stuff I did for the Sushi Pack cartoon on CBS Saturday mornings. Full episodes will be going up on the AGKidZone website soon so if you guys happen not to catch it on CBS you can watch them anytime on the website. This year we hope to push awareness on the property so hopefully you will be seeing cool stuff coming out. I can't wait until we make toys from this show, I think they might start off as a specialty product so expect them to be awesome! This is definitely a great show thats not getting the eyeballs it deserves so i encourage you to watch some episodes and let me know what you think. I've been working on my own personal projects lately and I'm very excited about them but they need a lot of work still.
I will be starting a new full size oil painting soon and I will post the drawing for it in the coming week hopefully. Until then everyone have a great weekend !

GO JOE!!!!!

SNAKEYES!! One of all my all time favorites. You can't do stormshadow and not Snakeyes now can you?? Hope ya digs!


So my friend and co-worker Saxton Moore is having a G.I. JOE contest over at channel frederator raw. I decided to do my all time faves Stormshadow and Snakeyes (Snakeyes is still in the works). Love these two, I always though they where the most badass, other than Destro that is. I have really fond memories of this show and the toys were a dream come true for a young boy like me. I had tons of fun with this one and even though the holidays got in the way I finally finished one of them and the other should be done tomorrow. Hope you guys digs and hope everyone had a good holidays. Everybody's resolution should be to post more often, I know that's what mine is=)