Scum Choir

Adding Color

Started adding the color to this one. The second picture is what the final grayscale looked like.

I worked on this until about 3 am last night and I really could have kept going. But nights like that just destroy my body at this point.

Happy March 23 everybody

Here's some audio I've been consuming while painting:

I've been re-watching old episodes of Curb Your Enthusiasm. I can't watch the new episodes while I work. because I need to pay attention.

Larry Davi...

Time Management for Mortals

Pretty much done with this one. It will just be tiny little tiny details at this point if I want to change him. Just one more to finish.

Happy March 22nd Everybody

Today is my cousin Carrie Anne's birthday.

Building on my tirade about money and time yesterday:

This morning I happened to be talking with a friend of mine, another painter, about starting band. We both want to do it but we both know it will never happen because neither one of us has time.

"If we e...

I should have been an insurance salesman

Started working on the final Choir painting last night. Just one more pass on each one should do the trick.

Happy March 21st Everybody

It's my cousin Carissa's Birthday.

I feel like painting is the only thing I'm in control of in my life right now. Its funny.

I feel like as my paintings get better and better, my bank account gets more and more empty. Just about everything I do outside of making art is about figuring out how to make money making art so that I can keep...

Daily progress

Still workin that grayscale and trying to find that balance between light and warm shadows

Happy March 20th Everybody

I’m just stretching outside taking a break from the painting.

I got a call from my friend Adam. A collector is interested in buying one of the collabs that we did together a few years ago. That would be nice if it goes through. But I don’t get my hopes up for that type of thing anymore.

I can see a group of crows circling a field. I hope they get ...

Brown underpainting to Gray scale

The second picture is what it looked like after I finished painting the brown under painting. For that brown underpainting I basically just paint it as much as I can using burnt Sienna.

Now I'm going to start the grayscale portion. This adds dimension and form. It's kind of like rendering with pencil.

Happy March 19th everybody

I have a few paintings I have to finish before the end of the month. This one is for the album cover. I have to do one for a gallery group show. An...

Album Cover Underpainting//Friends who are good at stuff you aren't

Starting the underpainting of the album cover today. I had all these fake flowers laying around from a photoshoot I did and I decided to decorate my whole work space with them. I gotta say it kind of defuses the light and gives it a more magical atmosphere. I don't know they'll probably get in the way and annoy me. But right now while they're new, I like them.

Happy March 18th Everybody

My friend Jake called me yesterday. I mentioned that. 

Jake is one of those people...

Choir 3 in progress

This one still has at least another session left to go. 

Happy March 17th Everybody

Happy St. Patrick's day.

The Leprechaun's shut down the wi-fi today so I spent an annoying amount of time working on that. 

When the wi-fi goes down I try to think "At least the toilet flushes."

Yesterday I didn't go outside once. I felt something between guilt and dread when I realized that. 

I made sure to go outside today.

My friend Jake called me t...

Easel Shot Choir Painting 2//Eat Lips

Here's a pic of how my easel looks right now.  A lot of little projects going. I'm going to go back to the album cover for the rest of the day. Here's a close up of the second choir painting. This will be the Tenor tier image

For the butterflies I used the Smithosnian website. That's a great resource for references because it's mostly all public domain and you can be pretty confident that...

Choir Painting

Here's the first choir painting. I might add some more butterflies.

Basically I finished the whole painting and it seemed just plain grotesque. Which I like. But it needed some beauty and lightness. That's what the choir is all about. The meeting of that sickness of life and those sweet little pretty things. 

This is the bass sweetie. The first Bass member who joins the choir this year and sustains membership for a full year will get this painting.

Now to do the other 3...

Observing Weirdness//Loss Prevention Hero

Doing some observational sketches of some weirdness. Prismacolor on toned paper. 

For the paintings I'm doing for the choir tier artwork.

Happy March 14th Everybody

Writing about shoplifters at Michael's the other day reminded me of another story from when I worked there.

They used to give out a monthly award called "Loss Prevention Hero." 

You get the award by preventing people from stealing from the store.

They give you this cool little enamel...

Color studies and issues

After I built the maquette I took a ton of pictures of it and did a sketch of it from life.

I quickly realized that I should have built the maquette from the same proportions as the compositional sketches. I will probably do that every single time after this. 

You can see that the sketch from life is much less dynamic than the sketches I was doing from imagination.

This highli...

Choir Progress and a Couple of things

Progress on the Choir tier paintings I've been chipping away on. The underpinnings are done.

To give myself a little experiment with this project, I'm testing out how much of the toned ground to leave in the shadows. 

This is a little in the weeds if you aren't painting with the grisaille method. But one of the secret tricks to this method is to leave the brown underpainting showing through when you add the color glazes in the shadow area. 

I tend to go too opaque ...

Making a Maquette for Reference

After I had the initial idea, did some sketches from imagination and took some reference photos, I started slopping together some clay into a maquette. 

I used some armature wire for the branches.

One of my Choir paintings in the background.

2024-03-12 01:36:49 +0000 UTC View Post

March Prompt Announcement!

This was tied with something else and I used my executive tie breaking power to choose this one. 

Go as literal or as expressive as you want. 

Album Cover Commission

My friend Cameron makes music under the name Disfiguring the Goddess. He called me a few weeks ago and asked me artwork for his new album. It was a "here's the idea I was going for when I made the music now do whatever you want based on that" type of conversation.

He sent me some pictures of a friend of his to use as visual reference. I used it as a jumping off point. I did some straight up drawings of her right from the photos. 

There was one picture with horrible lighting a...

Grotesque portraits// Working at Michael's

I did four portraits last night. I think it was a success. I'm going to try it out at the show opening tomorrow night. Here's another one from last night. I forgot to take pictures of the other 2.

Here's some of the other ones I did for practice.

2024-03-08 21:16:48 +0000 UTC View Post

Practicing Grotesque Portraits for a New Venture

In this video I'm trying out a new watercolor painting idea and hanging out and chatting. I give some watercolor tips, portrait tips, drawing tips. I also talk about a haunted clown painting from college, William H. Macy in Fargo, Experiments, grotesques of the renaissance, the mysterious woman that I'm painting, fixating on details, and more.

I'm calling this format a "hang out video."  I think I might do these videos more often. It's pretty easy to make.

Happy March 7th Ev...

2024-03-08 01:00:04 +0000 UTC View Post

Let's vote on the March Prompt

I'll decide the winner as early as Friday, but probably Sunday or Monday. The prompt will be due probably April 6th-8th. somewhere in there. May the best candidate win!

"Revisit" Prompt Submissions!

The prompt was to revisit an old piece. great work all around.

DA

DA is the featured artist. Debra wrote: " My friends helped me decide to revisit this piece, which first took shape in 2023 while I was playing with acrylic paint and palette knives. The face in the image was unintentional. For this month's Choir prompt, I decided to develop the face into a sharp-toothed ghoul with an expressive eye. Meet "Dreameater," 11 x 14 inches, acrylic on canvas board."

I voted in the...

Another Choir Boy Underpainting

Another underpainting for the tier icons in the choir. I had the idea to progressively distort the faces more and more for each tier.  So this will be the Tenor icon, then the Alto tier will be more weird and messed up and the Soprano tier will be basically a blobby mess.

Here's some of the drawings I did on toned paper before I started on the painting.

Happy March 4th E...

2024-03-05 01:00:04 +0000 UTC View Post

You Need a Map-Antler Boy Walkthrough

Drawing/ Painting Process, Thoughts about color mixing and revisiting old pieces, there's even a little ASMR in here. This video has it all I think. 

This video is about revisiting some old drawings, I do a walkthrough of how I developed the drawing from the older work and transferred the final drawing to a panel. 

I do a little technical talk about direct painting, some thoughts about color mixing, the "value/temperature mindset," the importance of mixing colors and not...

Choir process

I set up and lit my maquette.

I did the drawing pictured above.

I traced it and transferred it to the canvas.

Since the canvas is a more flexible surface than a wood panel, it picked up more of the graphite than I wanted it to. But it gave it a very loose abstract quality which I kind of ...

Revisit Pieces/ Ass Trap Art

Here's my submissions for the Prompt.

Revisit 

5x7 inches. As you can see I had another cool frame that worked for this painting.

Here's the original scribbly drawing from 2014 that prompted this.

Antler Boy

5x7 inches

2024-03-01 21:07:46 +0000 UTC View Post

Comfort in Uncertainty

Ordinary Problems

So far Art and Fear has all been about the fears and uncertainties related to making art. Once the art is made, however, artists run into what the authors call “Ordinary Problems”

I once enrolled in a college level art class which was called “real life,” the summary of class sounded really useful to me. It was about scheduling, dividing up your time between your practice and your business, finding work life balance. That sort of thing.

It sounded ...

Antler Boy Painting Process Timelapse

Couldn't finish the walkthrough version of this painting but I put together a little timelapse.

I tried to put the music from the video in the secret choir playlist but I couldn't upload it for some reason. and I don't have time to figure it out. 

Here's the finished painting

I had a nice frame that I used for it to.

2024-02-29 19:27:25 +0000 UTC View Post

Fears about yourself, Fears about Others

The next two chapters are about Fears about yourself and Fears about how others receive your work. Internal fears and external fears.

They say, 

"fears about yourself prevent you from doing your best work, while fears about your reception by others prevent you from doing your own work."

Fears about Yourself

A few fears about yourself that th...

The Cave- Whole Process Overview

Instead of doing an Intro to Drawing Bad Art lesson, this month I made a walkthrough video about my painting "the Cave."

The whole process behind this painting was kind of an experiment for me. Using different techniques to come up with ideas and visualize them in order to make a better painting. 

This is a Walkthrough of the whole process. From the idea to the finished piece.

I hope you get something you can use for your own art. And if you aren't an artist I hope you ...

Uncertainty and the Art Making Process- Art and Fear pt. II

To make art today you have to be making work that nourishes you. Because the odds are that your work will not be valued by anyone else. 

Because of this fact, making art (in the modern western world at least) comes with a certain amount of fear and insecurity baked into the endeavor.

Some things to keep in mind during thought spirals

To take a concrete example of one of the most common ways this fear manifests itself, the authors focus in on talent. 

The th...

Art and Fear

This month I re-read a book about making art called Art and Fear by David Bayles and Ted Orland.

It’s a book on "the perils and rewards of artmaking," as the subtitle of the book puts it. 

The book is Broken down into two parts. Part one is concerned with the fears and uncertainties of making art. Part two is concerned with the fears and uncertainties of navigating the world as an artist.

Art and Fear is a book by artists for artists about making art. 

And ...

Art and Fear - Art Life and Lives

In this installment of Art Life and Lives,  I’ll be talking about Art and Fear by David Bayles and Ted Orland. 

It’s a book on "the perils and rewards of artmaking," as the subtitle of the book puts it. It's an exploration of the challenges and insecurities that artists face. 

It’s a very short book, Broken down into two parts. 

Part one is concerned with the fears and uncertainties of making art. 

Part two is concerned with the fears and...