heart-shaped box

i recently finished a little " x 6" painting as a valentines gift. im getting into these smaller canvases for now, because its nice that i can knock them out pretty quickly!

anyway, i made a dirty "process" GIF, rather than posting all the process photos, so here it is...

So there it is. i think it turned out sweet

thanks!
PAUL

fire under the butt

hello loyal followers. i said hello loyal followers!

after much wasted time, empty promises (to myself) to work harder on personal projects, i met up with my good buddy Casey Hirai for an awesome sketching field trip. we went to Father's Office in west los angeles for some great sketching time, some intimate conversation and some good beer.

so, i wanted to share with you some photos from this fantastic outing...

first, i did a little thumbnail for a MegaMan painting...

then got it down on the wood panel I want to paint...

side by side...

Then an Indiana Jones sketch...might turn this one into a digital rendering. might not.

then, casey and i decided to do a little collaboration sketch, so i boned up on my Transformer sketching...

and finally, our collaboration. Casey drew up this awesome Cliffjumper on the bottom, and I jumped in with my Starscream/Skywarp up top. i love the different styles side-by-side...

freakin great day drawing with a great friend and awesome artist. it was nice to bounce some ideas off eachother, and to produce a satisfying amount of work in just a few hours. we're talking about putting together a collaboration sketchbook sometime this year. and, we plan to make this a weekly event. gotta keep those promises...

thanks
PAUL

keeping up

I'm trying to get back on track with producing good quantities of personal work, as well as posting updates to this blog and my various social media sites.

Anyhoo, i'm putting a piece up at another Hive group show, opening this Saturday February 2nd with the theme "Love is a Battlefield".

Here is the show flyer as well as some process images from sketch to finished product.

I had a wood panel that I found in my garage when I got my house. It had a cool, moldy texture to it, and the back has a smooth, varnished finish to it. I chose to paint on the rougher, moldier side.

I like the sketch. To be honest, I think I lost some of the charm going through the painting process. I'm figuring out that my painting style just isn't delicate enough to capture certain nuances of a pencil sketch. I can live with that, but this is where my pencil (and cintiq) skills have their benefits over my brush skills.

blocking out shadows and value, per my usual.

At this stage, the bullet holes on the "wall" behind the girl are starting to get covered by paint and are disappearing for good.

getting into value and color layering the background

Making the gold squadron pin look more like gold 

adding texture to the hair, and lighting her outfit more.

in the ending phases, i wanted to smooth out and define the lines around the girl and on her face. this was my attempt to cover some of the crudeness that tends to be in my painting style. i wanted to her to be at least semi-attractive, and the lumpy line quality from my initial brush strokes was counter-productive to that

And, the finished product. It's cool i guess. i want to continue to paint women, with the goal of becoming better at producing softer results. its tough because (as ive mentioned ad nauseum above) my painting style is fairly rough, and i like it that way. i like the texture that reckless brush strokes give a painting, but i havent yet learned to translate that into any sort of sensual quality. thats alright for now, because i dont consider myself to be a sensual or sexual artist, but it would be nice to have that weapon in my arsenal for when i need or want to use it.

thats all.
thanks.
PAUL

worker bee

i just finished my last post, and realized i totally forgot about a BIG event for me. ive been putting pieces into group shows at the Hive for well over a year now, and i was asked to be the "featured installation artist" for January! that means i got a few small walls to hang up a collection of work on, in the middle of the gallery. i was able to customize my space and really just approach the whole thing in whatever way i wanted.

to be honest, i didnt go too crazy with it. i basically got together all my favorite pieces and put them all up. the walls at the Hive are black, so i picked up some pale teal/toothpaste colored paint at home depot and brightened the, up a little.

 

Then i mapped out my walls in adobe illustrator and got to work hanging my pieces

It was a strange show opening, because there was some sort of marathon happening in downtown LA. no one seemed to be prepared for it, and all the streets around the gallery were blocked off. needless to say, it was not crowded in the gallery that night. 

friends and family who had gotten downtown early enough came by, and i still met a ton of awesome folks at the opening.

my area is right by both bathrooms, so i had a consistent audience as folks waited in line to pee or poop

This guy is awesome. he bought the exclusive framed ninja turtles prints on the wall behind us.

so, this was/is the biggest gallery show for me to date. with work and holidays i had to scramble a bit to get it all together, but in the end i think it looked pretty good. thanks to Nathan at the Hive for the opportunity. The show is up until 1/28/2013 if anyone wants to go check it out

time keeps on slippin slippin slippin

wow. 2 months since my last post. thats...sad. but thats what happens man.

there have been a few things that have happened in my art world since my last post. I hosted atable at the Patchwork arts and crafts fair in Santa Ana. I won't post up all my pictures here, so instead i'll leave THIS LINK if anyone wants to see my sketch cards and booth from that day. It was a lot of fun. Being outdoors added a small element of challenge to the day, as it went from cold and gloomy to hot and...HOT. but, i got to meet a lot of awesome people and families, and had the pleasure of drawing quite a few portraits as well as the usual video game/cartoon/comic sketch cards.

I also put a few pieces up at HoneyHaus' "Retroholic" pop-up art show in Westchester. Again, a lot of fun and a great turnout.

Here are a couple photos from the show

i said a lot had happened since 2 months ago, but i think i lied. ive continued to stay quite busy with my freelance work, which has admittedly eaten into nt only my time, but my motivation to create in the time that i do have.

c'est la vie! its good to be making money drawing for people!

i did take a little time out to sit in front of the tv and draw tonight. it still feels good to get back to the old pencil and paper. heres what i got out of tonight...

so, nothing too crazy, but personal drawing nonetheless. thats all i got. peace