Free Yourself From Tyranny

I now have proof that I’m not wasting the couple of weeks of free time that I have. I’ve finally been able to put the final touches onto a piece of canvas with some acrylic. I actually started working on this back in February I believe and basically just sketched the idea out on the canvas and added a few base colors. I then proceded to let it collect dust in my room. However I felt it was worthy of a finishing touch and did that throughout today.

My latin is extremely subpar, but I do remember a line from the movie “Event Horizon” that stated “Libera Te Tutemet Ex Inferis,” which meant, or is supposed to mean or something “Free yourself from hell.” So my thinking on this was Free yourself from Tyranny. I have no doubt in my mind that they syntax is horribly wrong but I liked the idea of using the movies quote, but altered. If anyone knows the exact wording I’d love for you to tell me.

So, what we have here is the bars of the American flag serving as the bars of a prison imprisoning our symol of freedom, the bald eagle. Instead of an olive branch for piece  and arrows for war, or the ability to defend oneself, the arrows are broken symbolizing a lack of desire to fight or basically having no idea that one should be fighting to begin with, a brainwashed person if you will. The olive branch is replaced with the key that has dollar sign in it, which is supposed to symbolize that the key to freedom is to have money in order to be above it all. You know, the golden rule. He who has the gold makes the rules. The canton is dripping blue, like blood and the stars are made of skulls. I guess its supposed to suggest that we are dead inside.

I really don’t know if any of it really means all of that… I just made it up on the spot.

I plan to get at least one more painting out and about within the next week before I get to having a schedule and the such… lame.

Oh by the way, if any of you want to buy this… gimme $200 and I’ll mail it to you.

Odd tidbit of info… I don’t like birds or anything especially, but this is the third painting I’ve done of one… thats like 43% or something.

Lack of Paint

I was wanting to do a crapload of painting during the next few weeks… I have yet to be able to start really because I’ve worked on about 3 websites this week and have little to no time to do much else… also I’ve been moving a lot lot lot of shit from one location to another. Moving sucks. So, I haven’t been able to do as much as I wanted, but believe you me, I will start NOW!

Heads Up!

I’ve been busy getting organized… I have a 3 week art festival extravaganza about to commencerate on your face. Straight Paint. Coming soon.

2010 Calendar Coming Up

EDIT:::: SCRATCH THIS… IM NOT MAKING THIS ANYMORE!

I wanted to work on another  Calendar for the coming up year… so I went ahead and got started. This time, however, I wanted to go the route of having real tangible art that could be held. I never have done any water color stuff ever so I’ve decided to experiment with this new medium. I bought a Strathmore 400 series spiral of water color paper that has exactly 12 pieces of paper, which happens to be the number of months in a year as it turns out. This means this tablet will have a collection of everything I painted in order to create the calendar. I did the first one, which happens to be January… I like to work in order apparently… and as it turns out I don’t really much like it.

Since I don’t have any control over how the paint mixes, etc I wound up having to use India Ink in order to get my picture to jump out of the jumbled mess of paint… Not to mention I had no plan what-so-ever about a topic, or theme, or even a character to go with on this one. I just slopped paint down, saw a shape and outlined it. While this style I actually like, I don’t particularly like looking like I mimicked another artist… in this case Alex Pardee. I love his work and he specializes in this style… It can be clearly seen that his work had some influence in this piece of work of mine… That is what I hate. I don’t feel it is unique because of this. But from here on out on the rest of the months I’m going to try and work out an idea before I apply the paint… Maybe this will prevent me from creating something too similar to someone else’s work.

Another thing I hate about my drawing of tentacles is that Alex Pardee does it too. And since he is much more well known than me it appears as if I ripped him off. This is clearly not the case. I have been using a squid as my logo for quite some time because of a story I am writing (in which a squid is the antagonist) and I use these tentacles in almost all of my work to suggest that this character’s evil is able to traverse the globe wrapping it in his tentacles and injecting his evil-filled ink into everything, a sign that suggest that everything is corruptible even something beautiful as it is expressed in much art.

So, looking back now, I think it is safe to say that this collection of paintings will consist of many different types of styles and zero theme. By the way… If you want to check out my last years, 2009 Calendar, you can still purchase one here

Peacock Zebra Painting

Yesterday I grabbed a canvas with the intention of creating a peacock with a real water color feel to it. I wanted it to look as if the water landed in the shape of the bird on top of the canvas and someone had come along later and added stylized lines over it. At the beginning it really had that feel quite a bit, but I continued to add thicker paint to it in certain spots and managed to create a piece that was more of a mixture of this new style of water color and my old style. However, I did stick with the original plan and used India Ink to go over it all at the end to create the stylized line look that I was going for.

I really had no plans initially to add the zebra print design to it, but the person that I’m doing the painting for wanted it in order to match their bedroom decor. I think without it the painting would have been much too plain and that they really help to add a focus to the painting.

On a totally unrelated note I have been working consistently on the Gaea sketchbook, but I have gone the rout of adding color to the sketches with water color pencils. I have colored one of them and plan to  color the majority of them… when I get a few more done I’m sure I’ll post the revised versions of these for you all to see.

Gaea & the Mechanics of Nature… Some Monkeys too

I spent some time the other day creating that Gaea piece that was quite large on some poster board. It took a good while. Well I liked doing it, so I’ve decided to create a book of the concept instead of going with the poster board series. So, I went to hobby lobby and picked up some India ink so I wouldn’t have to use the pilot pen anymore and I grabbed a sketch book with 80 pages… that’s right this book will consist of 80 pages of the same concept. This will be the first theme based sketch book that I will ever have completed… actually it will be the first one I’ve ever done that is completed with complete drawings. The majority of my sketchbooks are filled with ideas and notes and random doodles that are unintelligible to the majority that would see them.

Here is a view of the book so you can see what it will look like. I’m sure not all of the pics will be that great, so I will probably not post every single picture done in it, but I will post periodic updates of it to let everyone see what exactly is going on with it. I may come up with some great ideas while doing this and it will be fun, who knows?

On another note (the “Some Monkeys too” part) I am illustrating a children’s book. It’s called the three wise monkeys… you know the Hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil ones… Well I’ve finally been able to get in a rhythm with it as it took me a long long time to come up with the way I wanted the characters to look and feel and the over all appearance. I’m not going to say anything about the story as the author may think you are thief-like as I think you all are, but I will show you what I have for the first page… minus the text from the story so you can’t steal that… thieves!

*EDIT* I’ve decided to edit this page with page 2 of the book because I quite liked it. I’m starting to think that 80 pages of this stuff will a very cool collection of sketches. Here it is below:

So I finish the children’s book within a couple of months… the Gaea book should be done before the end of the year if I do a few drawings a week and lots of other things I have in the works will begin to make headway as well. Stay tuned.

Gaea the Engineer

I haven’t done any actual drawing on paper of any size in quite some time. So, I went to walmart bought some super cheap poster board to mess around with because I didn’t really expect it to turn into anything. However, I quite like the turnout. I deterred away from the use of my traditional Bic-pen-only rule and went  back to the super old school Pilot pen.

I wanted to do a drawing based on the mechanics of nature which would display flowers and other plant and animal life being engineered instead of grown naturally. Well that didn’t work out and it turned into much more of Mother Earth in the middle of all her domain. However, I really like the idea of the Mechanics of Nature or Engineering Earth and I think I will do much more of a political theme on the next one to suggest how mankind thinks it controls the nature by engineering plant life to do our will…. perhaps something will go awry in it…. or maybe I won’t do it at all. We’ll see how that works out.

Anyway, I really liked working on a big piece again with some media that I haven’t touched since 1999. Because it’s a big piece I was able to scan it and it was up to the shitty quality of a camera. After a few lighting adjustments in Photoshop to try and bring it back to life (it’s barely alive in comparrison) I felt it was at least decent enough to display to all of you online.

It’s 14″ x 22″ poster board done with a Pilot pen in about 6 hours. Hope you all enjoy it.

Paint By Pygmy

My uncle asked me years ago to help him make a new website for his artwork. He truly is a great artist that focuses primarily on painting Harley Davidson’s. He goes by the name Pygmy and lives and works in the Houston area. Well, I finally got around to helping update his site a more modern feel.

I don’t want to make this post really promoting my work as a designer or anything because, frankly it’s merely a redesign and I didn’t have to create anything. The real purpose of this post then, I guess, is more to show him off. I really love his work and wish that I could make such great artwork in the traditional format… and I love me some Harley’s too, some big bad ass bikes. I live in Panama City Beach, FL and never really thought much about these bike until I moved here about 6 years ago, but twice a year they have thunder beach here and thousands of bikes are everywhere. That was the time I realized how awesome these bikes truly were.

Anyway if you’re on a Harley and in the Houston area you should definitely look him up to get a custom paint job. They are top notch. At the time of this writing the site is designed, but not up on his server, so by clicking the following link you will see the old design. However, the information there is still good and you will be able to reach him there.

His site is Paint By Pygmy

Here are a few of his pieces that I really love:

Iranian Revolution?

I’m tired of Americans claiming that an Iranian Revolution is in our midst. There is no revolution. The news is making some serious coin on your hope that Ahmadinejad would be overthrown because he stole the election this week. While the election was indeed stolen, a revolution couldn’t be further from the truth because the fact of the matter is that no matter how many bullets fly and how many lives are lost, Iran will still remain a theocracy. If the state remains the same after a revolution then there is no revolution… all this would be is a regime change. If that is what Americans are looking for then just claim it for what it is like we have so many times in our past with so many other nations.

Within each citizen there may be a personal revolution due to the fact that they are able to recognize that they have been slighted and are able to stand up and voice their opinion, but they are voicing their opinion against a crime in hopes of removing their leader and replacing him with another that will assuredly leave many stones unturned. That is not revolution… nothing changes by this except for the face at the head of the state. Americans had a revolution, the French had a revolution and even Iran had a revolution, in 1979 though, not 2009.

So, please, everyone shut the hell up about a revolution in Iran. There is bound to be one there eventually, but this is not it. A nation can’t survive forever in the dark ages because people innately desire to see with their eyes. And once light has been cast upon their eyes a true revolution can begin. Hopefully, this stolen election is the first ripple in the water and will cause the first shimmer of light heading their way.

Austin Weird List

I’m currently working on a logo for website that will deal with the weirdity in Austin, TX. For those of you not from the area, or just genuinely unfamiliar, Austin has had, for quite some time now, a slogan referencing how weird it is: “Keep Austin Weird”

I’ve never lived in Austin, but I know several people that do and they praise the city and this slogan. Austin is quickly becoming a city that stands alone in Texas as a city that is becoming modern, upbeat, hip and edgy — very unlike the traditional super-conservative Texas that we all have grown to know and despise. So, Austin has quickly become, to many young Texans, a beacon of light in a sea of bleak darkness. Together they stand in unison preaching to please “Keep Austin Weird,” and this new website is but another way in order to perpetuate this idea.

Anyway, I’m not 100% certain as to what exactly will be on this site, as it is not mine, but I feel it will wholly support the aforementioned ideas above. Austin is truly a unique city and one I really wouldn’t mind living in. I can’t really walk away from living on the beach in Florida to moving to central Texas at the moment, but if a situation arrives in which I would have to move to Texas I would truly pray it were in Austin and not anywhere else. I lived in Houston for many years and can say that I actually don’t hate that city, but it cant compare to Austin and its endless entertainment options.

The logo was done fairly quickly in Photoshop. I was going to do it in Illustrator, but my skills in that program are subpar at best. I really need to practice with it much more and plan to as I keep getting many more requests for these types of logos and the such.