Birds of a....

This is a birds of paradise flower I painted for Tim for Christmas. It is a crazy looking plant, we have them all over the house. They are more common in the southern climates, so we don't get many flowers. This is my most current painting to date, currently I am working on a piece commissioned by Miz Meg...

Are those your natural roots?

Two paintings, acrylic, that I did last winter. There is just something about the iconic image of a tree that I really like, and the shapes and structure of tree roots is really beautiful. I find it fascinating that there is such a great network of roots underneath our feet, and that sometimes what you see above ground is not even half of the entire tree.

Working on the Wheel pt. 2

This is the website layout design for my made up client The Potter's Nook. It isn't a real web site, I have yet to learn that skill, but I think it would work as a real one. One of my favorite color combinations is brown and blue, and I think it compliments the logo well. It took a while to get it looking the way I wanted it, but it paid off. My professor liked it a lot and asked if she could use it as an example for future classes. That was very nice of her, and I had to sign a release form saying it was ok to use it.
Any who, it has been a busy weekend. I have been helping Tim make campaign signs, and there are still more to do...

Working on the Wheel

Hello, in my electronic design class we had to create a client and make a logo, newspaper ads, and a website layout for. I made up a pottery studio that taught classes, and offered an open studio for members. The name I came up with was The Potter's Nook. The first logo I had was an owl, but several classmates didn't really like it, and I agreed that it didn't really fit well with the pottery theme. The second logo replaced the owl with a vase that I altered in photoshop. These are my two ads, the first is a black and white made for a newspaper, and the second is color for a magazine. I definitely think the colored one works much better. I will post the website design soon.

Some more oldies

Found some old wood prints I did junior year of college. To make these we took wood plates, maybe half an inch thick, and using carving tools, carved into the wood. After the design was cut, you used a little roller to add paint over the block, then using a press machine, roll the block through with the paper on top of it. The class was a lot of fun, and I only cut myself once! It would be great to work on something like this again, but alas I do not have a presser, maybe one day I will get one.

Legend of the Seeker

Legend of the Seeker is a television show based off the Sword of Truth books by Terry Goodkind. I have not read the books, but after watching the show I think I will. Legend of the Seeker is produced by Sam Raimi, the same guy who did the Hercules and Xena shows back in the 90's. If you were a fan of them I highly recommend checking this show out. It is syndicated so air times will differ depending on where you live, but the great thing is that the website has all of the episodes online to watch for free. That is what I do since it doesn't air up here in northern Vermont. So I figured I would give a shout out for the show, and if anyone checks it out let me know how you like it.

Dancing in the Desert

Hello, I've been watching the inauguration celebrations and it was very exciting. Though I didn't like Michele Obama's dress, lol. This is something I did in my Digital Illustration class, we had to select a short story and create three spot illustrations to go along with it. I choose a story called Desert Wind by the fabulous Neil Gaiman, from his book, Smoke and Mirrors. If you didn't know I am a big fan of Neil Gaiman, he has a lot of great books out there and I highly reccomend reading any of them. I did the illustrations in Illustrator, and think I captured some of the imagery in the story well. Let me know what you think!

Growing Ice-Cream

This is my final project done for my Digital Image Manipulation class. We were given a fictional client, Jolly Humor, which was an ice-cream company. We had to design an new logo, and a new ad that would represent a new marketing and image makeover for the company. The idea of ice-cream growing out of the ground came to mind, and I went through several ideas from having cones growing out of stems to flowers blooming scoops of ice-cream. I was happy with the logo, I took an image of a cone, and attached a rose growing out of it. I think it worked with the all natural organic theme. I designed the pint container in Illustrator, and then used Photoshop to merge the images all together. I think it came out well, and would be a perfect summer time ad.

Saw one of these today....

Went with Tim to work on a house and saw this little guy running around outside.

If I Could Turn Back Tioooooome

Hello! This is a portrait of Cher, that I did last weekend. I used to draw a lot when I was younger, mostly from comic books. Doing portraits can be a bit of a challenge, but I enjoy working through it and finding the person in the process. I haven't done too many drawings since college, and I want to start back up again.

Universal Medicine

I did these two in December, the first is the Aztec God of Medicine, Patecatl. It was for Tim's brother who is a pharmacist, he had been to South America a lot so I figured it would work. And I would love to be in South America right now, currently it is -6 below zero, brrrrr! The second is the Mayan symbol for the Universe. I really liked the design and the contrast against the background looked cool. The texture of the background reminded me of water. Also these are the first paintings I tried a gloss varnish on. It is basically a clear sealer that you can paint over with, and it makes the canvas shiny. It looks good on these, and really makes them stand out when on a wall.

Are you a Pusher or a Shifter?

I saw the trailer for the movie Push the other day and it looks interesting. Starring Chris Evans and Dakota Fanning, it is about a group of people who have certain psychic powers, and must fight against a government agency to save themselves. The special effects look really cool, and me being a scifi nerd I think I will have to check it out.

Nature in View

Here are two recent paintings I did for Christmas gifts. I really liked the combination of green and brown in the first one, I think I will explore that more. The blue leaves are just something that popped into my head. Tim said it reminded him of blue broccoli, lol, which I can see. I also was kind of inspired by those Japanese tapestries you see. The second I did from a picture of a cardinal feeding from a bird feeder, my grandmother requested it.

An Apple A Day...

Hello! I was going through my files of things I have been doing in class, and I came across an excercise I did in my Digital Illustration course. The professor had us draw an apple in Adobe Illustrator each week, and each one had to be different from the last, and be made with different tools/methods that we were learning about. It was a great way to become familiar with Illustrator, especially since I had previously never worked in it before. The great thing about it is that there are so many tools, and you can learn something new every time you use it.

Past to Present 2

Past to Present

Having graduated from college, and now working and taking more classes, I have not had as much time as I would like to focus on art. However, you can always make time for something you really care about. My senior year of college I had to put on my own art show, something I had never done before. And working on the paintings and going through the entire process was really fun, it is definitely something that I expect to be doing more with.

Previously I had been more of a sketch kinda guy, but I really wanted to try painting. We could choose to do whatever we wanted, I decided to paint the images that I saw in my head when listening to the Stevie Nicks album, Trouble in Shangri La. It is one of my favorite albums, and I was listening to it a lot at the time. These are from that art show.

first post

Hello there. I have decided to make a blog because living in northern Vermont in the winter requires one to find ways to keep time flying. And I also thought it might be fun, after reading my good friend JoJo's blog, I have become inspired. Primairly I will be posting things about vaious art projects I am working on, and how my graphic design classes are progressing. Also anything else I find interesting and hopefully you will as well!