Still life again...

here is the still life I started a few weeks back at School. I'm trying to finish it at home using some photos I snapped at school before they broke down all the still lifes. I still have a long way to go on this baby....

Plaster Master

This week I spent another full class in the Plaster Room along with most of my class working on our sculptures for our Intro to Sculpture assignment "essence of an animal". This is of course based on my late pooch Buster,who died almost one year ago.

Slopping plaster over burlap and chicken wire is both fun and messy. I have another pass to go on this which
I'll do over break.

New Yorker Style Cartoon

"THE DOCTOR WILL SEE YOU NOW."

This is a job I just finished yesterday, it was a job for an old client, Lunchbox, who I did the Dr. Direct comics with before. This time they were initially looking to do a series of direct mail cards for a client featuring a superhero. Then the client changed their mind and decided to scrap the cape for a faux New Yorker style cartoon. The jokes are pretty tame, the salesman waited so long to see the doc, he expired. I drew it up in pencil, scanned it in and then printed it out on watercolor paper and then colored it with watercolors to get that official "New Yorker" feel. The client was very happy with it, so that makes me happy and it was a fast, fun little job.

Figure Monday

Monday was off to a fast start this week, I was up early and out the door to PAFA and in early for my sculpture class. This was the second week of the actual clay slapping on the model. I made good progress but I will be rushed to try and finish it up for the last week of the pose before spring break. I have to say I really love pushing that clay around and now I'm pretty sure I will try and make sculpture my minor.


This was the second pass at the figure on this pose. Both of these picks were snapped with my cell phone camera as I forgot my canon at home. I think this one is going much better than the last one and I wish last week wasn't a snow day on the uninstructed pose...I'd be further along. Carolyn was very complimentary about the progress but really wanted me to go back in and explore the shadow side some more, which I'll do on Friday.

CReepertins Strip and Demo

I just finished the newest monthly Creepertins strip and I made a little step-by-step demo and edited it together in iMovie. Some stuff is a little fuzzy, I'm still trying to work out tech issues with my Powershot A80 and the lighting, but I think you should get the basic Idea. I'll try shooting on for my next X-9 pages to give people an idea about doing different types of styles too.

Models of Flesh and Clay

Well today I finally got to slop some clay around. Our model Crystal came in a struck her pose and I bought my block of white clay from the art supply and started slapping the clay on the armature...then the chair started to buckle, so with John the shop foreman's help I got some blocks of wood cut to support the sculptures weight. I had a lot of fun and look forward to getting back to this next week.

This is the next pose in my life painting class with Carolyn Pyfrom. This was the first pose with this model, who's quite cute to boot, something I don't usually say about a model. I battled the ever changing light of the infamous Studio 4, but I think this is off to a much better start. I did use a fair amount of palette knife in this stage after my brush bock-in.

Painting-Week 5

These are the paintings I have been working on in school the last few weeks, for some reason they seem a bit washed out here? Anyway they were both the last session this week on both of these paintings, in fact they broke the still life down. But I took a pick of the set-up, so I'll work on the painting and finish it up from that.I missed some painting classes on both of these so I hope the next sessions I'll be able to attend each one.

Chicken Wire and Paint

This was my first full week back at school after a huge pile of storyboard work. it was also a big week of change personally as my life suddenly took a turn I hoped wouldn't happen, and a very important person in my life has gone. But one must go on, and that's all that will be said for now on that front. the painting above is my second pass at it in Carolyn Pryfoms life painting class. As always I have a devil of a time painting in Studio 4 in the classic building. within an hour the light changes dramatically in the afternoon classes, shadows and tones shift from cool to warm as the sun sets and the light inside the studio become more dominate. I did quite a bit of correcting on this painting this week.



The two pics above are of the chicken wire armature I made of my late dog Buster I am sculpting for my class with Nocella. I did the clay maquette a few weeks back. I did this in one class as I had to make up for the two weeks I missed due to work. next week it's burlap and then plaster time!

this is one of the blind conture drawings we do in my other sculpture class every week before we work on our sculptures.

This is the chair and wire frame for the sculpture I will begin slinging clay at next week, again I did this in one class, busting my ass as I missed two weeks in this class to. It was a busy week, painting and constructing armatures and personally. I am glad tomorrow's Friday...and I usually don't feel that way.

Back in the Paint

I finally hit the paints again at school last week after a big break due to the storyboarding. I was niot having a good go at it the last time, I was just beat down and mentally distracted and didn't feel I could concentrate, so I ended up wiping out the painting 3 times and eventually just gave up. I think I blew all the cobwebs outof my head and this pose, done on the same board I wiped the original female model off of 2 weeks ago . I think this start is much better. It's in oil using a earth palette of Ochre, Mars Black and a red.
This is the block-in on the still life I did the study of two weeks back. I was originally going to do a diptic, but there isn't much time left for this assignment so I decided maybe I'll save that for another time. I roughed this out in one session and I can't wait to hit it again this week.

Rock and Roll baby!

This is a cover for the rock group Accents to Action out of Pittsburgh. You can check their cool music out on their myspace page. The leader, Chaz Moneypenny contacted me and asked if I was interested in doing a cover for them and I said,"Sure!" They came across my art on teh web and liked my monster comic stuff.

They were easy to work with and I love music and understand the struggle of the up-and-commer myself. Down with Corporate Rock! Haha! They wanted the group to be depicted fighting a giant disco-ball monster. This was a one day job from start to finish due to the packed schedule I've had, but now I get a breather of a more normal work schedule. Go check these guys out!

Back to School

This will be the first day back to PAFA in nearly 2 weeks. I had to skip school to finish up that last huge,giant, monster storyboard for the Season-2 finale of The Secret Saturdays and it just require every waking hour it seemed. So besides teaching my classes I have had my tukus nailed to the chair drawing like mad. The reality is no work means no $chool. I guess many people in my position have to face this fact as well as having a life that's a bit more complicated.

I look foward to slinging the paintbrush, not the pencil for a few hours tomorrow as well as the annual open Studio Night at the Academy, where you get a chance to see what all the 3rd, 4th and MFA student's are doing.

War of the Worlds

Man, it's been a tough week. I've missed one whole week of school finishing up this last monster storyboard for the season finale of Secret Saturdays. I am still teaching, because I can't scip teaching, but otherwise I am in the studio grinding away. This only happened once last semester, the clash of worlds, and I hate for it to happen, but that's the reality of being a student and a working professional at the same time. I did manage to get to the gym a bit, which helped and I did go and see the opening of the Cecilia Beaux exhibition down at PAFA on Friday. It's a really nice show and some of the paintings are just amazing. Since it's at school I'll be able to go back and see it many times before it leaves.

The other good news is that DRAW! 15 should be at the printers now and I hope in shops sometime toward the 3rd week of Feb. Draw! 16 featuring Howard Chaykin and Jay Stephens is also in production, so we plan on caatching up this year.

Back to the salt mines!