Hexagon Block Portraits (7)

This sad little guy was made with the leftovers of the final group of pieces. It's interesting for me to look at how what's essentially the same portrait, only created from progressively fewer resources, begins to degrade more and more with each new version. Sorta like "House of Cosbys".

Hexagon Block Portraits (6)

After I'd pretty much exhausted the possibilities of my first group of blocks, I decided to make a new set with a focus on depth and volume and less flashy color and brushwork. I limited the colors to get more cohesion in the portraits, and applied the paint in a "relief" method: colors applied in order of darkness - darkest first, lightest last. This avoids implications of directional light sources, which are always dramatic and evocative, but are hard to keep consistent so can be distracting.
I also wanted to see if I could work without relying on the representational blocks, which were such an important part of the first few portraits but were never really part of the original idea behind the project and again, drew so much attention as to be a bit of a distraction.

Hexagon Block Portraits (5)

The final portrait of the first group of blocks. The eyes work well once again, and hold the piece together pretty well. Otherwise I thought the mouth was nice, with even an implication of skinny little bottom-front teeth.

At this point I was occasionally "cheating" by painting swaths of skin tone or background black onto some blocks. For example I painted a big chunk of yellow onto the block used for the forehead when I couldn't find any other block that fit.

Hexagon Block Portraits (4)

Because I was making a face the same size and perspective each time, it tended to turn out that a block that was good or bad for one portrait was good or bad for all of them, and I would excitedly use up all the good pieces on the first portrait and the quality would diminish with each one that I made.

I was scraping for good blocks by the time I made this one and the one after, although I think the eyes on this one are pretty nice - sort of weary and melancholy yet gentle and wise.

Adventure Time

I'll be moving out to Burbank, CA in a couple weeks to start a new gig at Cartoon Network. I'm doing prop and character designs for a new show called Adventure Time.

These drawings are from the design test that sealed the deal:

Hexagon Block Portraits (3)

The first of a set of three using black backgrounds (hoping for more dramatic depth) and a hexagonal compostion.

Hexagon Block Portraits (2)

This one was made with the leftover pieces from the first one, so it doesn't really have as much punch. However the nose, left eye, and lips are good examples of the repurposing of both figurative and non-figurative elements to help create an unexpected and expressive face. The eye and nose were purely non-figurative before I placed them in this new context. The lips were a piece of the neck and chin of a conventional face, turned counter-clockwise. Like a lot of the stuff I do that veers a little closer to painterly abstraction than figuration, these ideas are basically amalgams of my father's, Bacon's, and my own ideas.

Also, as in the last one, I've cheated a little by filling in some of that flat blue after-the-fact to help create separation between the figure and the background.

Harvest

I think I've put this story online and then taken it down twice already, thinking that its publication was imminent... But it hasn't happened yet, and it's getting pretty old and doesn't have much in common with the work I'm gradually accumulating for a new collection, so here it is again, "Harvest":

Hexagon Block Portraits (I)

A few years back, I was feeling frustrated about how many of my (abstract) paintings were coming out poorly. The process I was using - layering poured house paint in layers of gradually increasing thickness - made it almost impossible to correct mistakes or salvage a painting that had veered in a direction I became unhappy with. I was upset about the waste of time and materials and I began looking for a more flexible method.

I remembered a toy I played with a child. It was a mosaic of wooden cubes that were painted differently on each side, just like this one. I remembered how much I enjoyed exploring different compositions without having to commit to any of them and how the materials could be reused as many times as I liked.

I decided to create a set of blocks for myself, but with more pictorial versatility than the simple colored blocks I'd played with as a child. I chose a hexagonal prism block because its six sides allow more possible combinations (without painting on more than one side of the block) than a square (possibly the most). I grouped a number of the blocks (each about four inches across, I think) into honey-comb arrangements and painted loose, free-form compositions across them, concentrating on getting a variety of colors and shades as well as some areas of illusory depth. The groups were then dispersed and used as pieces to an open-ended puzzle.

In a few cases I painted not an abstract composition on the grouping, but a realistic self portrait, hoping these recognizable elements might act as binding agents for what I expected would otherwise be very loosely representational pictures.

This was right around the time that my friend Maggie gave me the most amazing art book ever, so with my new toys laid out around me on my rug, I set to work on a series of self portraits.

This is the first one.

Pilgrim 3: Distant Screaming

Here's another (the other) of my full color anthologized short stories, presented in full. This one appeared in Meathaus SOS, which, sadly, seems to be sort of difficult to find (i.e. - it's not on Amazon). But dang, it's a great book, and I'm not just saying that.

And but so if you are interested in getting a copy, you can order it directly from Mr. Chris McDonnell, Meathaus's lead-parachuted CEO.

But anyways-
This story was sort of a reaction to the all-ages story "Farewell, Little Karla" (posted below), which I had just finished. No holds barred in this one:

Farewell, Little Karla

Inspired by my good buddy Tomer, who just posted a short anthologized comic of his (and his brother's) in its entirety on his blog, I thought I'd do the same.

The following, "Farewell, Little Karla", was originally published in Flight Vol. 4, edited by Kazu Kibuishi. Presented here in it's entirety:









(next I'll post "Pilgrim 3: Distant Screaming" from Meathaus SOS)

Anudder Self Portrait

Another recent self portrait. More of a sketch than a finished piece, but I thought the face came out nice.

Regular Drawing

Treated Drawings 2

Treated Drawings 1