Lavender

Oil over acrylic over acrylic wash. I love the way oils look, especially in contrast with acrylics below them. No patience for the drying time though. I wish I could snap my fingers to magically dry the whole painting I'm working on, so I can start a new layer right away -- waiting a week to get started again is out.

Appreciating the benefits of comfort food

More portfolio building: this one illustrates an article about apes being better able than humans to appreciate the pleasant biochemical effects of eating junk food. Humans experience the same effects but basically cancel them out by feeling guilty and distressed about eating the stuff.

Thoroughly Ingrained

Three self portraits. Actually these are a few years old, when I was first starting to experiment with the distortion and multiplicity that have since become pretty thoroughly ingrained in my picture-making language.

mental exercise

Here's a handful of spot illustrations I've been drawing from the New York Times for mental exercise.

self portrait

I admire a lot of artists, but I'm in total awe of Francis Bacon. To me, his best portraits sum up the some of the most inarticulable aspects of human experience in a way that superficial realism just cannot. It's got a lot to do with changing. We're all changing constantly in a thousand different ways but realistic paintings pin us down in a particular moment, at a particular age, with a particular expression. Bacon's faces are fluid, they express contradictions about people and relations between people so well that they stop seeming like contradictions. That's vague, but I think it might have to be. Anyway, I'm always looking for a way to achieve that broader, deeper realism that Bacon hit on, which is maybe an arrogant and presumptuous way to go about one's work, but it's interesting to me, keeps me engaged.

icons

This was a try-out for a freelance gig designing icons for an article about national barbecue preferences. I didn't get the job, but it was still a nice little exercise in reduction.

Like This or Like This?

Another selection from my brief career as an amateur comic artist.

Note: I don't think this device works as well as I thought it would, so I'll mention that the all-caps means the dude is talking and the mostly-lower-case means its the girl.

the guardian's helmet

This is a little spot illustration I made for the new full color Meathaus SOS anthology. Pete and I both have work in it. Further links:

-Preview images
-Preview pages and Preorder
-My own personal preview pages (three out of six)

Illegible Comic

That last post was my final comic. This is my first. It's hard to read so here's the text:



- Christian and Asana had gone to bed.

- Me and Jono stayed up drinking beer by the fire

- It was freezing

- Standing by a fire on a cold night makes you see what a simple struggle life really is.

- I looked up

- And for the first time in my life I saw the moon for what it really is -- an enormous sphere of rock that occupies space the same way I do, only hundreds of thousands of miles away. Til then I'd seen it as some sort of projection of light on the night sky.

rearing

Bashful Oyster

A while back I tried my hand at some short comic strips. Actually, it was the same time that Tom made this piece.

For kicks and to help motivate one another, we each made one comic page per week for about a month and a half and exchanged our pages at the end of each week. This was the last one I made.

How It Starts

A base drawing I liked enough not to paint on.

Slowly through space, quickly through time

Here's a bonus post for today. I just finished this and my eyes feel like they're melting.

Gaffs

Trying to display some conceptual cleverness in this promo piece. I call it "Gaffs".

Organic Windows

More windows. Sort of organic this time. I painted the whole body in blue, applied masking fluid in spots, painted the whole body in red, removed then reapplied masking fluid and painted the whole body in brown. Why? I can't remember. I do remember that it took a really long time to do. This is a (scanner bed sized) detail image. I think the whole thing is about 18" x 24".

indy j

Another promo image.

Devolution

Many of my non-figurative paintings are made by layering more-or-less complete compositions on top of one another with some form of masking between the layers, creating windows onto otherwise painted-over areas. When making this piece I scanned each of the three states of the image. This sort of documentation is not always a good idea, as in this case it acts mostly as a reminder of how nice the piece was before I overworked the life out of it.

doubler

A character from an old sci-fi novel. The general situation is that this team of astronauts crash lands on an alien planet. They explore all this mysterious weird architecture and debate about whether it would make any sense to try to analyze what they're experiencing with a human system of logic.

Sleeper Sketch

A sleeping woman whose face is twinned by her pillow.

drugger

a new portfolio piece.

FK Preview

Two detail images from a recent painting that will be displayed in a small group show very soon.

It's a community type show featuring mostly people who live on my floor. The title and loose theme of the show is "Freedom Kiss". You're invited. It has it's own facebook page which I'm assuming anyone can look at:

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=17592883474

Ignored and Isolated

How about some poignancy: The plight of the elderly, ignored and isolated in nursing homes.

sketchbook 01: ghosts

This is from way back in the day, maybe 7 or 8 years ago,while I was in Amsterdam for a couple of months. Still one of my favorites.

"Oh Snap!"

Another illo. Interesting: Her concerned faithful hounds ended up looking sorta like lunging wolves, which ambiguity I didn't mind as I think it added to the ominous tone of the piece.

The upturned picnic basket represents man's insecurity in an unpredictable natural world or something.

Characters 1 & 2

A couple of sample designs from a job I applied for but didn't get.