Drawin' Creeps Again

Alright, here's a couple of drawings that have a level of quality disproportionate to the long amount of time between now and the last time I updated this blog! Haha! This first one here is actually an older drawing I made, like a year ago.

Growing up, I spent a lot of time in motorcycle parts stores with my dad. This illustration is of one such place, called "Banzai Cycle Supply." It was owned by the guy on the left, who went by the nickname "Banzai" from his career as a drag racer. The other guy I only knew by his nickname, simply "Biker Bob" and was a common sight at the shop. They were a couple of decidedly-hardass old guys, but were real soft-hearted, and I miss them greatly.

Whereas the above illustration depicts a sentiment on my part, the following one certainly does not. This one is more recent, done a couple of weeks ago. This one isn't anyone in particular, but it is my visual depiction of the Internet, personified. Maybe it's a little based off of someone I know, ha ha ha!

BFA Senior Thesis Exhibition

I have 4 paintings in the Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Thesis Exhibition at BGSU! They are hanging in the Willard Wankelman Gallery. The opening reception was last Saturday and it was packed! I'm pretty happy with the outcome. Here's some photos:

Me in front of my display

The largest of my paintings, Reynolds

Uptown, perhaps my favorite

Westgate

My current artist statement, pertaining to this series of paintings:

"A visual artist can serve a number of roles, some of which are unintentional: one who envisions the intangible, an instigator, an observer, or a recorder, to name a few. I’m not sure if I am any or all of the above, because painting for me is a means of expressing my impression of a place. Interpretations of my work, or any artist’s, can be as varied as the differences between one individual and another.

Urban sprawl, industrial decay, suburbanization, light pollution, and the menagerie of manmade and natural elements in an environment are the vocabulary for my paintings. I choose to render familiar places such as strip malls and city streets in a manner that is abstracted, yet unmistakable. These common places are often overlooked and underappreciated, but they compromise a large part of modern American society’s identity. My choice of subject matter are these familiar things that perhaps constitute, at least in some subtle way, a part of my collective self. My paintings are all self-portraits within varying degree, as they all contain my vision, impression, or expression of the people, places, feelings, and events that have occurred in my life."

The exhibition will be open until April 3, and there's a lot of talented artists displaying this year, so check it out if you're into that sort of thing!

As for what I'm currently working on, I have several paintings and an illustration I've been tooling around with, expect to see some of that up here within a few days. Have a new series of photographs I plan on using as references for upcoming paintings. Here's one!

Sunday December 19

Hey there boys and girls, I have one painting that is a work in progress, and here it is. Maybe I should just call it done and move on? Not sure. Some parts of it I really dig, but some not so much. Don't know.

Also of note-- I graduated college yesterday! Instead of a picture of me wearing a silly-looking cap and gown, here is a picture of me like 12 hours and 7 beers later.

End of Semester Painting Blowout!

Hello, Inter-Net friends. I have been all kinds of busy lately, what with the end of the semester/my undergraduate schooling coming to an end! Like many of my contemporaries at the School of Art at BGSU, I will be participating in the BFA Senior Thesis Exhibition which opens March of this coming year. More information can be had here: http://art.bgsu.edu/galleries/current.cfm

I am still unsure of whether to show my figurative or my landscape work for the exhibition, but I get a feeling the answer will become more obvious to me as the time draws near. Anyway, here are five new acrylic landscapes I have been working on for Dennis's class. They are each almost entirely finished, but I tend to get the impulse to tweak each further by just a little bit so don't consider this absolute.

South of The Spot

24" x 49"

Speedway

22" x 42"

West Monroe

22" x 42"

Frontier

22" x 42"

Edge of Uptown

22" x 42"

I am pretty satisfied with all of these. I will most likely continue to go back in and add some fine small details in ink and that will be that. I will continue to make more paintings like this, only I think I'd like to work even larger! Dennis thinks its the natural progression for my paintings and I can't help but agree. The only obstacles are logistical ones-- simply, I need a larger car to move them! Been thinking about getting a cheap, seriously shitty van or truck with the sole purpose in mind of moving paintings and things.

Also been considering submitting my work for consideration in the Hudson Gallery in Downtown Sylvania http://www.hudsongallery.net/gallery/index.html

Its a very nice gallery space, located in the Northwest Toledo suburb of Sylvania, where I was born. Some of my reference material used in my paintings (both bodies of work) are photographs taken right by the Hudson gallery, even! Still considering it though, as I'm not entirely sure my paintings quite fit with the aesthetic the Hudson appeals to.

Time for some video fun

Hey you crazy cats, I don't have any relevant art-related things to post right now, so I thought I would link a couple old videos that you really shouldn't ever see.

This first one was filmed sometime around April of 2009, for a video editing project in a class I was taking. The, uh, "scope" of the film is very much the kind of hackneyed crap that would be produced when I have complete creative control over that sort of thing. I decided it was going to be a "cover" of that old Sears air conditioning commercial everyone saw during the 90s. You know the one, "Hotter?" "Like yesterday." "Yesterday? Yesterday you said you'd call Sears." "I"ll call today." "You call now." "I'll call now" and so on. My take on it is darker, but also, more stupid. I think I must have watched Taxi Driver or some Robert DeNiro flick the night before we filmed this. Anyway, just watch.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nn62v5R9OuA

The second video you have the singular pleasure of viewing is entitled Super Hi Fi Kung Fu Action 2. This is the second installment of what was really a project that lasted throughout all of high school. Filmed in 2004, over several short filming sessions scheduled over a period of a few months. As such, and as we were/are indeed amateurs, the inconsistencies in this video are comically bad.

As for a little background on the "story" of this video, there isn't much to tell. During high school, a few friends and I were way big into old shitty kung fu movies, so we thought we'd try our hand at making our own shitty kung fu movies. In keeping with that aesthetic, we intentionally filmed most the video without audio, then dubbed over each character's dialogue with a different person. This ensured an astute level of shittiness, but we unwittingly raised said level to the realm of the profound by way of our inexcusably bad flow and cuts throughout this eleven minute feature. The flow is so bad that we, at one point, had to hault filming for more than a month because I injured myself while choreographing a particularly stupid move late in the video. That change in time is indicated in the film by the short clip of leaves falling inexplicably between 2 shots meant to be part of one scene. Anyway, I think that's all I have to say about this one for now, so just watch it, if you feel so inclined.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_aDRfB16vk

Current Figure Stuff

Hey internet pals. I keep alluding to a supposed body of work that deals with the figure instead of landscape, and here are some examples of said work!

These are 2 kind of smallish acrylics on just regular illustration board. Also used some india ink for the black outlines you see here and there. I consider both of these to be just studies. Still experimenting with finding a balance of all the aesthetic devices that capture my fancy-- Impasto, glazing, and detailed linework.

All my reference photos are taken in a bar, or similar low-light or oddly-lit location. I spoke about this in my previous post, if you want to know more about that.

Expect to see more work like this in the future, because I'm definitely enjoying it!

Jojo

15" x 20"

Tombo

20" x 28"

Also, for no reason at all, listen to this song that's been in my head for awhile now-- La Llorona by Beirut http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=id5miD_uZDk

Reference Photos

Most of the paintings I put on this blog have been my landscapes, but I do want it to be known that I am working on two bodies of work at the same time. The other is figurative. I was inspired to do figure painting after many trips to the bars with my friends on Friday nights. I find the way bar lighting is cast upon people to be very attractive. Most the light in the bar is from neon signs on the wall and windows; there is rarely an actual traditional light fixture on in this place. Anyways, I really dig that, and have been working on some acrylic paintings based off pictures I take in bars or bar-like settings. Here's a few reference pictures to ones I'm working on. Check back later when I have some actual paintings uploaded.

My buddy "Tip Top" Tommy Steele

Yep, these 2 are of me.

I don't know if this is really relevant, but a lot of the time when I'm working on these types of paintings, I have a couple specific songs playing either in my head or on the stereo. They're both by David Bowie, from his album Young Americans. I suppose really the whole album is suitable for listening to when I work, but the following two songs in particular really do it for me:

Fascination

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RnnMXxP_FNU

Right

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ifIi6ewkFvs

I think when I listen to these songs, it puts me in a different mood and for some reason it makes my brush strokes a lot more confident.