Thesis Show Photographs

The other week was my and Alan Hawley's show in Atlanta, GA. It was an awesome time. I've posted a couple of pictures from the event. I had a very cheap camera on me so my pics didn't come out spectacular, but they are good enough to give you an idea of what took place.

There are a couple of shots of Studioplex where SCAD's gallery was located, a couple of pics of my wife and I working on the show, a family photo, a pic with Jess (another SCAD grad), and finally a pic of me and Alan.

When we set up the show, we discovered that there was a new wall in the gallery. We found that we couldn't hang anything on it. We weren't sure what to do, so I offered to draw on it. Alan gave his blessing, and four hours later we had the title of our show embellished by flowery designs and killer robots.

If you'd like to see more professional shots of the gallery, check out the link below. One of Alan's friends was nice enough to set up a Flicker photo album of the show.

Flicker Album

Free Comic Book Day!

Free Comic Book Day is something of a tradition with my friend Mark, myself, and my wife. It's a mini holiday for us. We get up early, run to our local comic book shop Heroes and Dragons, and dash into line in the hopes of snatching up a gem or two before the rest of the masses have taken everything but the Sonic The Hedgehog comics. We then stop by a local Waffle House (in this last month's case it was a Shoneys) and proceed to eat breakfast in a very antisocial manner while reading our comics.

Typically, the free comics come in three varieties. The first is the teaser comic; it doesn't really have a story, it just gives you a plot summary with pretty pictures. The second is the double issue which takes four or five pages out of two different comics and places them together; more bang for the publisher's buck so to speak. The final variety is the full length comic that actually tells an entire one shot story.

I was surprised to see that the Marvel comics that I picked up were mostly one shots. I've become sick of Marvel the last few years because of their refusal to let their characters die...but I'll confess I was very impressed with what they handed out in the free comics. I picked up a Thor/Captain America one shot that was well drawn, humorous, and much to my shock, enjoyable to read. There was a Spiderman comic that had a prologue to a "Spider Island" story line that actually peaked my interest in Spiderman. I doubt that it'll end up being any good in the long run, because Marvel has a way of totally screwing over Spiderman as a character, but I'll give them kudos for putting out an intriguing idea in a free comic.

So you should put Free Comic Book Day on the calendar for next year. It's a fun tradition, an inexpensive date, and if nothing else, it's always fun to "people watch" when comic book nerds gather en mass.

Works in Progress - Pattern Monster Paintings

Here are a couple of paintings that I'm currently working on...

Protect Your Wood Illustrations

I was looking online the other day at the design of condom wrappers. I was bored, so I created a series of  wrappers of my own with the tagline, "Protect Your Wood". They're still a work in progress, but here are my initial illustrations for the wrappers.

Sketchbook - Comic Book Characters

I was playing around with sketching some of my favorite comic book characters this weekend. Nothing hard core, just some random sketches that I did while riding in the car for a few minutes. Batman, Hellboy, Sabertooth, and Scarecrow to be exact.

Artistic Inspiration - Hellboy: Mike Mignola

Hellboy. Starman. Batman. The Ghost. All in the same comic. Three of them drawn by Mike Mignola. EPICNESS! Mignola's praises have been sung by countless fanboys, so I'll spare you my words. I'd just like to say that I love how he structures his pages. He uses squares and rectangles, and includes little squares in the middle of the pages that exist for the sole purpose of building atmosphere. His splash pages are nice and it's a geek's wet dream to see Mignola draw Batman alongside Hellboy.

Artistic Inspiration - Shag

Shag is a painter that perplexes me. I have a love-hate appreciation for his artwork. He has just enough detail to attract attention to his paintings, but not so much that you can't take in his paintings in a glance. He uses texture, but in a limited way. His artwork is clear but cryptic as well. I've seen him and his work at DragonCon before and I found his artwork provokes me to jealousy. He's  taken cartoon imagery, paint, 1950's lounge culture, and mixed it all into a very marketable art style. His work seems to be accepted as both illustration and fine art. That is where I want to be with my artwork. If there's a single artist that I feel encapsulates where I would like to take my career, it would be Shag.

Artistic Inspiration - Pre-Soviet Russian Painters

I've found a lot of great art books at the main branch of the Richland County Library in downtown Columbia. I checked out a book on pre-soviet Russian painters that has some wonderful examples of composition and illustrative imagery. There's an intensity to each of the paintings that I've posted...an intensity that I've not seen in a piece of artwork in a very long time. The artwork is haunting. It speaks to the mythic, mysterious, and offsetting.

Artistic Inspiration - The Gang of Seven

There's a group of painters that worked during the 1900's called the Gang of Seven. They are AMAZING! I can't say enough about how wonderful their paintings are in composition, color, and paint texture. Their artwork is exactly the kind of fine artwork that I would like to produce myself. Intense colors and intriguing brushstrokes. I covet this kind of artistic ability. If you're interested in fine art, you simply must investigate these artists. They are all epic.