I worked more on that monster drawing from a few weeks ago.  I’m not sure to call it done or not.  I will post it once I make the decision and can get it in front of a scanner.  I’ll be in my first group show in LA on April 9th, more info will be posted in a few weeks.  I would like to have this painting (below) done by then, but it isn’t likely with all the school and work stuff getting in the way.

A 4 year old girl had her face gnawed off by a pit bull in Pomona yesterday.

How could we have prevented this stupidity?  I’m sure nobody ever saw it coming!

taken from this craigslist post :

Our Graphics Team is looking for a full time graphic designer and color correction specialist.

• Location: Los Angeles
• Compensation: $10 per hour  (emphasis mine)

So – to recap- I can drop out of high school and get a job at Starbucks making $11 an hour AND get health and retirement benefits.  OR – I can take my training in two different specialized pieces of software and two coding languages (in addition to things like “good eye for color”) and work for little more than minimum wage (in California). 

(and that’s just assuming I only have the minimum requirements for the job – not my real years of experience, training and education)

This is what I’m competing with/bargaining for and this is why my life sucks right now.  Not all the jobs are like this (obviously), and thank god my current clients know you get what you pay for… but the mentality is out there – and it shines through in postings like this.  And, because of the current unemployment rate in CA I’m sure there is someone (maybe me if I lost my job tomorrow) desperate enough to take this rate.

This morning, my bestest buddy, Byron was featured in an interview on an art blog.  The interview was short and sweet, and I’m glad he decided to take a stance on the horrible Kanye West art/design trend we’re drowning in.  Byron is quickly making a name for himself because of his focus on textual (is that a word?) design elements.  I envy this focus as I know I’m still trying to find my “voice” – especially my painted voice.

But the fact that Byron was interviewed by a blog brings up a subject I’ve been curious about for some time.

Last week google introduced Buzz.   I’ve been using gmail almost since inception so I was one of the first on the Buzz roll-out (as were many of my frequent contacts).  When Buzz linked up with my other google services it automatically posted the only entry on my Blogger blog – which simply redirects everyone to this blog.  This automated buzz received one response: “This guy, blog guy. That’s so 2000’s.”

Is it?  I know Byron tweets and buzzes and facebooks several times a day (with many overlaps), but his blog receives much less “love.”  Just yesterday I found myself Buzzing about two artists (one Sam and I saw at the Copro Hi-Fructose show last Saturday).  A month ago I might have made blog entries about this, but those blog entries would have taken ten times as long to produce.  I’m starting to think that even for me, a blogging stalwart, the blog may only become the repository of detailed dramatic passages of life or artistic events.  Anything that can be quickly summed up can be buzzed.  Of course, I never updated my facebook status (ever), because I abhorred the “look at me” factor.  Somehow buzzing doesn’t seem as attention-whorish, perhaps only because (at first) the networks are smaller.  That will change though, and I worry I’ll be forced to leave Buzz behind as I did Twitter when my network starts pumping an average of fifty buzzes a day into my gmail inbox obscuring “real” and perhaps much more important email.

The blog is not dead for all, however, as the Art-blog community is thriving.  This suggests to me that far from the Blog being “dead,” it is actually getting fine tuned into the instrument of supreme personal content that it was intended to be.  When blogging first became hip, “Joe Average” started a livejournal to blog about what food he was feeding his dogs that day.  Now this mundane and useless chatter is much easier regurgitated on Facebook, Twitter and now Buzz; leaving the real content to Real Blogs. 

The Proof in the Pudding is the fact that many of the facebook/twitter/buzz posts are simply some one’s expounding on what they’ve just read/seen on a blog somewhere.  This is great for premium content blogs – as the social network posters are advertising for them for free.  Google Reader plays a part in this too – essentially a buzzfeed of content you choose (not your friends) to investigate further or skip.

The downside of course is that conversation on the blogs themselves is going to vanish.   With content ferreted away (or linked) by social media from the source, the conversation now happens downstream among each fan’s social network – and not on the original blog itself.   A small price to pay for increased exposure.  In fact, likely a welcome change for most blog administrators – who will be all too happy to let Google now police the heated discussions and spam about their content.

So… after all that claptrap, where is my content?

Okay – after weeks of schoolwork taking up most of my time I shut out the outside world and did some drawing last night.  I tried working on the slimy green monster again – but I’m leaning away from it now – or perhaps leaning towards a stylized ink drawing rather than a painting.  The thing’s big eyes just make it look like a puppy dog rather than a menacing beast. 

see… looks like a little puppy walrus or something, right?  And no, I have no idea what I was thinking with that skull.  Version 2 was better – but I didn’t take a picture.

I took a break from imagining Lovecraft and doodled something that I may do for my next full size painting:

(this is just a doodle – before anatomy correction, life study, etc. and taken with a cell-phone camera in low-light)

The more I look at it, this is heavily inspired by Eric Fortune.  The hands and the face are basically a reverse of his “nun coming up out of the water” piece.

I’m at a very strange point my artistic development right now.  I can no longer afford to fit the canvas to my image – I now, because of intense financial constraints, have to work with existing materials.  I’m not sure if I even have a canvas (or piece of wood) that is the right size for this, so it may have to wait.

I mentioned in a post a few weeks ago that I’d been inspired by one of my mother’s photographs.  I won’t show the source photo, because #1 it isn’t mine and #2 I don’t know if the subject would appreciate it.  I will show the painting, however, because I don’t believe anyone outside of my family will know who it is, and I do not mean for it to be unflattering.  I know the expression on his face isn’t the typical boring toothy smile – but that is exactly why I liked the photo.  The expression – the emotion – in the face was so complex and interesting. 

This piece would be another on poplar plank.  For the first time I used my new transfer paper.  I’m still getting the hang of it, so there were some spots where the transfer didn’t go as planned, but overall I think I got a much more accurate starting drawing this way than eyeballing it.

As usual I didn’t know what to do for the background.  There were some trees in the source photo so I started with some green, and added some leafy shapes.  I didn’t want to get into too much detail because I wanted the background to stay a little fuzzy just like in real life.  Even the highlights on the leaf tips seen below might have been too much.  The interesting thing about unfinished poplar is that thin paint bleeds into it not unlike regular paper stock.  The leaves seen below took hours because of the slow build up of paint.

Next was the shirt, which didn’t take as long because it was lighter and thinner with more broad areas of color.  I had fun painting this because after doing the last two large canvases it was a blast to just hold the poplar plank in my hand and get up close with a tiny brush instead of sitting on the floor and leaning in until my feet go numb.  I know these photos show this painting sitting in a (crappy) easel, but it didn’t stay there when I was actually painting.

and then it was time for some skin…

and then more work on the skin – some stubble – some pupils…

And finally the finished piece:

There are some problems with this, and these problems stopped the painting from actually looking a lot like it’s real subject, but if you didn’t know the man you probably wouldn’t know that his left upper lip wasn’t that small or his upper right cranium wasn’t as pointy.  Or his hair as orange.

Oh – and dad might get a kick out of this – based on some sketches I did last night (during a group teleconference for school no less) I think my next painting might be of …. the great cthulu…

A few months ago I wrote about my long struggles with this piece and this canvas.  I worked at the piece again after some encouragement from Sam, and I think I’m happy with it.  There is one nagging fault with the anatomy, but I’m willing to let it stand since the paint is too thin to paint over successfully.  This is the last piece I’d do by eyeballing proportions before switching to a process involving photoshop, tracing paper and transfer paper, but more on that later – maybe…

Here is the original text from that post – updated with the final image at the end: 

A few years ago Cindy asked me to paint her. At the time I was thinking about trying to paint again. I’ve gotten this inclination a few times since college, and every time my little experiments ended up looking like some kind of visual torture mechanism. I would “quit” again for a year and then try again and the cycle would repeat itself. Well, back in 2007 I decided to try again when Cindy prodded (or maybe the whole thing was my idea, I don’t remember) me to paint her. At first I tried to paint her laying down on her wicker couch thing that she used to have. It looked pretty rudimentary – but when I showed her the progress she noticed that the way I had positioned things it looked like you could see up her skirt (which I really really had not intended at all). So, I put a wash over the canvas and gave up. (I didn’t take a photo of this early try) In October 2008 I decided to give it another go with one of the shots from our little photo session in the park. The result of the start is below:

Looking back now this looks like a crazy modern art Francis Bacon kind of thing.. and I could have probably slapped a silly name on it and tried to sell it for 3 million dollars. However, to my “classical” eye it looked like complete crap – so I put a bunch of washes over it and scrubbed and washed again until I had this neat blue/white scratched up surface. I put the canvas away, vowing not to take it out and use it unless I came up with something cool because I really liked the way the surface looked.

After finishing the “ribbon” painting I decided to try a smaller painting of a person (was originally a girl, but looks more like a guy now) with civil war guns walking through a forest. After about two weeks this thing looked like crap too, so I stopped. I decided to go back to the one thing that I thought worked – the “girl writhing around in the sheets” theme. I took out the canvas that I’d hidden away a year ago and got to work:

At this point I let it sit for a few days. I couldn’t decide on whether adding the hand below would destroy the balance of the piece or not. But eventually I decided to go for it:

I thought the hand turned out really great (yeah, I know the ring finger is a little funky). At this point I didn’t know where to go… and was really worried about messing up the good thing I had going. I should have gone with my instincts and just stopped (after fixing that ring finger). But… of course not…

I tried adding in the sheets… and some kind of sheet on the head… and some kind of magical thingie going on around the hand. It wasn’t working. I decided to take the piece into photoshop before going back and trying anything else:

“okay” I thought, this will work I guess…

ewww… hmmm… well, maybe I can polish it into something. I decided that instead of having the water fade into the bedsheets, that I’d have her laying on a rocky surface over the water. So, I got to work digging up more source material for granite and marble. I also decided that Sam was right (she’d seen it in progress last weekend) and and I would eventually paint hair on her instead of a “snood.”

So here I am. This looks like some disjointed awful mess. I think I’m learning an important lesson – you can’t design a whole piece around one thing that you like (the hand).

I’m 28 and I’m still trying to figure out what to do and how to do it with this art stuff. I’m getting more and more involved in the art scene in LA. By involved I really mean “following;” going to art galleries and subscribing to every one’s blogs. Something I’ve noticed is that most of the artists that I really like became skilled illustrators before transitioning to fine art. They use different media, but their skill in representing the human form stands out. One guy that I particularly like is Eric Fortune. Eric’s drawings are fantastic, and he just takes them and makes amazing paintings with them. I was surprised to discover that Eric actually lives in Columbus. He is doing a lot of shows here and in New York of course.

With this new painting I feel like I’m moving backwards. Most of the little paintings on wood turned out pretty well. I liked layering up the paint thinly on the smooth surface. I also like the paintings I did on raw canvas – but they were very very frustrating to actually make because it was so hard to actually move the paint around. Perhaps I should just put this current canvas aside and go get some sheets of wood. Sam mentioned to me recently that when we go to galleries most of the paintings are much smaller than mine… so maybe I’m trying way too hard. She said that my work might not get shown (later) just simply because they’re too large. Obviously size isn’t much of a problem with a solo show, but any solo show would be a long way down the road after a lot of group shows.

Of course, all that is long after (and IF) I can actually develop a consistent style and competency. Not even there yet, so I shouldn’t leap ahead…. Very frustrating moving so slowly though. I know I should have been doing this since I was eighteen years old. I probably should have went to a “real” art school. But, nothing I can do about all that now, I have to push forward and work with what I’ve got.

And so I went back in determined not to let this one slip away.  There are some rough spots, but there are a lot of things in this I was really happy with.   Although (as I seem to say a lot) it is hard to tell in the photo, the water now looks nice, especially in the lower right where it gets murky and dark with light flickering off the top.   Sam said that the way the skin was painted was the best she’d seen yet and this looks more like the soft slightly splotchy kind of skin that seen in old frescoes by the masters.  She didn’t say that last part, I did.  I also reworked the cloth to have more natural light and shadow gradations – although it still comes off looking flat in many places.  I reworked the snood in the same way.  I added a little bit of hair to give this girl some personality and finally added more depth to the cracks in the stone.  This piece really looks better in person.  For instance, in person you can see veins in her hands in a slight blueish green – not so much in the above photograph.

I said at the beginning of this blog post that this painting had two glaring anatomical errors.  One most people will pick up right away, but another I’m told by the few who have seen it isn’t obvious at all and nobody will catch on if I don’t mention.  So… I won’t.  The “non obvious” error is a huge one, can you see it?  It isn’t in the lower half….

It started off with a sketch.

Which became another sketch.

Which gave me something to do with that horrible monstrosity:

I considered painting over this- but I decided to take a different route.  A route that I hadn’t travelled since college.  I decided to glue paper to the canvas and create an unconventional painting surface.  Since originally the guy in my sketches looked like Jesus, and the painting was going to symbolize various things (I won’t go into it, but you can look up the meanings for owls in the bible and all of that nonsense on your own if you like) I decided to make the paper fit the subject matter.  So, I spent a whole night tearing out pages from The History of the Church of Jesus Christ Latter Day Saints and cementing them to the canvas.  It was meant to be… as the book had a perfect number of pages to cover every inch of the canvas with none left over.

Wow, that is one shitty looking Owl, huh?

Okay, we’re now a little better.  The owl’s body looks like it was based on a cat’s though -so this is no good.  I should mention that at this point I was still eyeballing and gridding everything, so proportions were constantly fudged. Hey, I know… how about if I add some flames!  Yeah, that’ll fix that owl!………

Um, no.  No, that won’t work, stupid…  How about you step back and study Owl anatomy a little more and start over (but I liked the owl’s face!)….

So, as you can see above I took a day or two and did some serious owl anatomy studying.  Much improved from before, right?  Count the feathers in the wings, there should even be the right amount of feathers now!

Once the bird started progressing I decided to work on the human.  I decided to make him a Native American since he was starting to look more and more like one.  I liked how the paint looked on the rough paper.  The features on the face look distorted.  In the photo above you can get a sense of how I work on these large canvases, I get right up in there.   What that also means is that I lose perspective and body parts can become distorted.  I don’t notice until I step way back.  However, I decided to keep the face distorted, because the rest of the piece was heading in that direction. 

I had a devil of a time trying to figure out what the background would/should be like in this piece.  It changed as I went along.

Eventually I settled with some crazy mountains in the background and bushes/brambles in the foreground. 

This piece ended up looking really strange.  There are many elements I like – but none of them seem to fit together very well.  Even the hair, which I’ve done successfully in the past, looks bizarre; like some kind of black waterfall cascading over rocks.  I was also unsure what to do about the bird’s smaller wing, which appears much lighter in color.  I decided to leave it that way as the sun could be shining through and change the color.  Some nice elements that you can’t see via photograph are the tiny details in the brambles and how the underlying paper and thinner layer of paint makes the man’s skin seem more thin and luminous.

Everybody has quirks.  My mother is  no exception.  One unique thing about my mother is a penchant for shipping strange items across the country or bringing them in her luggage.  In the past she’s shipped or brought things like old stretcher bars, oreo cookies and broken lava lamps (no mom, you didn’t break it, it’s been broken for ten years).  This past visit was no different.  This time she brought two plants.  Her choice this time was interesting and if I were a woman I’m sure I would fit in the word “cute” to describe the idea.  Since we were going to Tucson she brought two “Christmas cactus.” (cacti?)  Earlier this week they started blooming, bringing some color to my drab kitchen.  I’m pretty sure this is the first time a plant has ever flowered inside my home that wasn’t bought that way.  Hopefully I will be able to keep it alive long enough for her to see it on her next visit.

This is a detail shot from a painting on unfinished poplar I’m working on.  It is a portrait of a family member that I found this great emotion packed photo of in my mom’s vault of photos.   One side of my family has green eyes that are made of lots of little bits of brown and blue mixed together.  The eye here is still a little too emerald green for my taste, but I suppose if the subject of the painting wasn’t there beside the painting nobody would be the wiser.

oh – yeah – I had no idea there was a hair in there until I opened this up in photoshop.  The image above is actually larger than same area on the real piece.

As I was moving the camera around I giggled when I saw a Mark Ryden (google it) painting in the viewfinder:

Now I know his secret!

I have three new paintings that are nearly finished.  My thoughts are elsewhere, however.  Every month my expenses go up (okay, sometimes not every month – but January 2010 brought in many rate increases, like a $30 increase to monthly HOA payments), and every month my income goes down.   I was promoted to management two years ago -but still don’t earn a penny more than before the promotion and barely more than I made when I started five years ago. 

Luckily, I’ve always had alternate sources of income (don’t worry, perfectly legal).  However, those secondary sources have dropped down to nearly zero.  I say nearly, because I still pick up odd jobs from freelance clients every now and then, but I’m lucky if I can make $100 a month now, where on really good months years ago I could make twenty times that (from the same clients).  Jobs that were projected for three years got cancelled in a flash.  Whole businesses that provided reliable income every month for ongoing projects simply closed up shop.

Like a responsible citizen, when I was actually pulling in a decent amount of freelance work in 2007 and 2008 I socked away nearly all of that money.  If I hadn’t done that, I would be abandoning my home right now.  Still, those years weren’t THAT great, and I also poured a lot of it into retirement savings. 

Yes, this is all my fault.  Yes, I took out loans I probably shouldn’t have and listened to a “friend” in the real estate business that reassured me of things that weren’t true and convinced me to buy a house $100,000 over my original limit.  My worst mistake was leaving all the loan decisions (picking a bank) to this “friend’s” wife.  If I had put my money in Fanny, Freddy or any national bank’s pockets I’d be eligible for a slew of government refinancing programs right now.  Instead, my loans were chopped up and sold off all within three months of purchase - and so now are owned by loan holding businesses who don’t give a damn about helping me make sure I can keep paying (I’ve already called them). Of course, I also trusted this “friend” that my interest rates were good for my credit (which turned out not to be true).  I never considered myself a “victim” because it was my own fault for not reading the fine print.  However, isn’t that every victim’s story?   How many of those “bad loans” actually broke their own terms?  Surely those people stuck in adjustable rate mortgages had documents that said “adjustable rate” in them… right?  My realtor didn’t explain the terms to me either.  Am I that different or is it just a matter of perspective and feeling of entitlement?  I was definitely “taken advantage of;” my realtor even made verbal promises about buying appliances that he never followed up on and once the papers were signed he vanished off the face of the Earth – not even our mutual friends have heard from him since.  But, I always looked at the whole ordeal as my problem – my fault.   However, if I lose my house and others who didn’t think it was their fault keep theirs I’m going to be fighting mad.

After all that though, I’d still be fine if we weren’t in the worst recession in thirty years (although some are now wanting to stretch that figure back twice as much in time). 

I’m a numbers guy (although curiously not a math guy), so in those terms I’m making roughly 51% less than a year ago.  I have a few months left to make major changes (and believe me, nobody wants to touch my loans, I’ve inquired about that… repeatedly) or even my “emergency funds” will be down to zero.  I need to come up with another $1,200 or so of income every month just to break even.  To put that in perspective, according to Salary.com even the lowest earning 10% of marketing managers make $2,000 more a month than I do. Of course, in another year I’ll have to start paying back $70,000 in college tuition.  If I actually made what only the bottom 10% of my peers in the same town in the same industry made (according to the website, which may be inaccurate, but not THAT inaccurate) I’d still break even even with $800 a month in tuition loans to pay back.

More than one close friend has told me now to just “walk away” and take the hit on my credit score but keep my money.  For some reason I just can’t stomach that option, not yet anyway.  All it takes are a few things to work in my favor.  Every day I keep searching and hoping.  I can’t say for what – but I’m sure you get the idea.

Some people are out on the street.  Some people are in Haiti.  I guess I should be thankful that I still sleep on a bed at night, that I still have friends and family and I still (for now) have a job.  I also should be thankful for a special someone that’s been supplying me with delicious home-cooked meals lately.  I no longer sleep with heat though, trying to save money by not running the heater.  Thank goodness I live somewhere that only gets down to the 40s or 50s at night.