And Now For Something Completely Different...

Surrealism

I've liked surrealism for longer than I've "formally liked art", and it is a style that has probably played a major part in getting to me where I am currently as an artist. (whether that's good or not is up for debate)

Anyhow, It was kind of a big deal for me to do my first piece of surrealism. It may bring to mind a particular painting by Rene Magritte, but I swear I came up with the idea before seeing that piece. I feel like my lack of skill with the medium had some slight negative effect on the outcome, but I put a lot of time into it and I'm pretty satisfied with it.

16 x 20"
Acrylic on Canvas

~Adam

Townscape Painting

Here's my latest painting done for my Illustration I class. The notable points are the limited colors, only orange, black, and white, and the use of the Golden Ratio.

16" x 20"
acrylic on canvas

Here's a detail of the cathedral half way through.

~Adam

More Black and White Illustrations

Here's the next two that I said I would do.


~Adam

Illustration I (Week 1)

I started my 3 week mini-mester course, Illustration I, this week. So far it's not too bad. I was a little because I saw the class was scheduled from 10-4, and 6 hours in class sounded like a little hard to handle. As it turns out I only need to be there from 10-12:30 so it's actually shorter than most other studio courses. Though, I end up needing a few hours after each class just to finish up the work for each day.

These are what I've done so far :

A cross-hatch drawing of Clarence Long, the original Marlboro Man. It was my first time I've really done a full drawing in this style, so I don't think it turned out great, but the method doesn't really interest me much to begin with so I don't care.

And second, a black and white side-lit portrait of William Macy, you may have seen him in Fargo or a dozen other movies. This one went much faster than the cross-hatching, but I still think it's a somewhat lame project because Adobe Illustrator can do this very same thing in about 10 seconds. I don't see what the benefit of doing it by hand is. (This is one of the reasons I'm focusing on digital Illustration.)

Anyhow, I have to do one more in each of these styles by the end of the weekend, so expect to see more like these soon.

~Adam

A Peaceful Scene

I did a painting of a temple on a mountain much like the drawings I posted here and here. I felt it was appropriate for this week's Illustration Friday topic, "peace".

Temple on the Mountain
11"x14"
oil on canvas board

~Adam

Ink Monsters

Inspired by Stefan G. Bucher's DAILY MONSTER (which is really cool and I recommend everyone check out) I did a few quick little monster drawings with ink. The initial form is created by putting a drop of ink on the paper and blowing through a straw to create organic shapes. Then it's just a matter of what your imagination sees. Fun and easy.





~Adam

Finished Triptych

Well it's been several weeks, but I've finally finished up the triptych that I posted sketches for a while ago.

I started off as I do with most paintings, drawing right onto the canvas. For this project I used canvas boards, mostly because they're cheaper.


I began painting right over my drawings here. I tried to go back and forth between each piece so they would all develop at about the same rate and keep some of the same colors.


Here they are with all the major elements.

And finally after I added details, this is what I ended up with.


The piece has a theme of confusion and being lost in life, which is a very serious idea and thought it would be interesting to put that against a cartoony, light-hearted style, adding more to the confusing feeling of the work. Obviously the crossroads piece holds it all together and most clearly relates that theme. The city piece is meant to give a busy and overcrowded kind of feeling. The buildings can't even fit into thier own area. And finally the home is supposed to be the most peaceful of the scenes, yet nothing is perfect, hence it has the darkest sky, a more subtle discomfort.

I also had the idea of making a larger series of paintings with this structure (you may notice the edges of each are nearly identical) that could be placed and rearanged in any order, giving it the ability to take on varying stories and themes dependant on the configuration. We'll see...

~Adam

Captain Hal's Followup

We're at the end of the semester so I've been pretty busy with stuff, sorry about the lack of posts. Here's my suite of items I created for Captain Hal's.

First, a flyer that you might find in a newspaper. I took the photo myself with a McDonald's fish sandwich and fries. I wanted one of those red basket things they use at some restaurants but the bowl was all I could get a hold of. Did a tiny bit of photo editing in photoshop then slapped it into the InDesign page I made and voila.


Here's some coasters. No explanation needed.


And finally a kids menu / placemat. The final version had a bunch of bubbles placed randomly on it to make it look more festive, but I forgot to email myself that file, so, whatever.


That's all for now.
~Adam
(oh, and just in case you were wondering about the "Captain's Shake" click here.)

Clay People - Figure 4

Looking back, I seem to have forgotten to snap shots of my third figure, oops. Well, you didn't miss anything. I felt like that was my weakest one so far... and my teacher seemed to agree. Awesome.

Anyhow, here's my recently completed 4th figure. I think it's my best yet, but for some reason the teacher doesn't think it's as good as the "B" I got for figure 2. Well, whatever, sculpture is not really my thing.



As for the triptych painting I'm working on, well, I'm still working on it. The final version of it is due next Tuesday by the latest, so I'll have something up here by then. Good news, my friend saw my progress on it over the weekend and he said he really liked it, and he has before said that he doesn't like art. So it got a response from someone that usually doesn't respond, I thought that was pretty cool.

~Adam

Triptych Sketches

My next painting is going to be a triptych on canvas board. I got the idea as I was driving home from a friend's last night and had to put down some sketches at around 3am. Here's what I have so far. The fish in the sky for the second panel were ideas for my Captain Hal's logo, obviously they won't be in the painting :)






I started working today, hopefully I'll have something I'm happy with in a few weeks.

~Adam

Liberty

I recently went on a daytrip with my family to see the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. It was a good time, and educational. The buildings on Ellis Island looked awsome, but we were moving around to much for me to be able to take the time to sketch them. Anyway, I decided to use one of the photos I had take as a background for my next painting. It was taken from the top of the Statye of Liberty's pedestal. We could only get so many tickets to go up there, and Anne, unfortunately, was not one of the few that could go up. But this is basically what I thought would be a cool tourist-y photo.

You can see my references taped to the mirror in the first shot, the pose is from a photo of the two of us on a cruise we took a couple years ago. Though I'm only using that for the layout, I am painting the faces from life, hence the mirror, and I had Anne pose while I worked on hers. Obviously I've again shown some of the progression as I've worked on it. I like seeing it, so I'm going to continue doing it.



I've been working on this on and off for the past week but I really need to get started on my final project so I'm going to put this aside for now, hopefully I'll get back to it and finish it soon.

~Adam

Captain Hal's

I designed a new logo for an imaginary seafood restaurant. Captain Hal's. I'm ultimately going to make a menu, and an ad for it as well.

What do you think?
~Adam

Addiction Problem

It's been too long. I'm sorry. I've been.... distracted. Thanks Lorey for trying to kick me into gear. I'll do my best to keep the posting up.

My most recent painting is my first self portrait with the medium. It was fun and interesting. I'm growing to like painting more and more. I took several pictures throughout the process so you can see how it came along. Maybe nobody else cares, but I always enjoy seeing other artist's work that way. I'm not going to describe each one, just check them out yourself. (Color differences are due to poor lighting, sorry).






~Adam

On a side note, I just finished reading David Mack's Kabuki Volume 2. It has some great visiuals and recomend checking out his website.)

Peter Paul Rubens - The Straw Hat

Well, It wasn't fun the first time, and it wasn't fun the second time. But at least I think it turned out a little better looking. My adaptation of Ruben's The Straw Hat.

Here's what I did in the first night. I didn't get much detail in the face yet.

And here's how it looked after the next day, pretty much finished.

A week later I painted a black border around it to cover up my guidelines. I need to redo that better I think.

Hopefully I'll be done with the old masters for a while now.
~Adam