Saturday, January 31, 2009
I’m pleased to write that prints are coming back. I’ll be offering prints of a few of my digital images. Some who may have been dropping by this site over the years may remember that I used to have some prints available. I guess it just took me a while to get the idea added to this new redesign of the entire site. Between getting the site done and working on new images, both digital and in oil, I’ve found it a challenge in time allotment.
Here’s the quick and dirty version: They will be on heavyweight matte paper, 11″x14″ (other sizes by request, both smaller, or up to 13″x19″), UV coating. Price for 11″x14″: $30 (that includes shipping. i.e., no additional charge for anything). Two or more prints, $25 each. Payable through Paypal. Any other sizes, just ask about price. If there’s a print you want that isn’t offered, ask anyway- it may be just because I haven’t gotten around to doing the requisite print testing and color matching yet (trying to get the print to match as close as possible to what you see on the screen can be a challenge). I will be adding more soon.
You’ll know which images are available as prints by the shiny new outline around the selected thumbnail images. As always, your dropping by this site is very much appreciated. Whether or not you end up contributing to this artist’s work, I hope you enjoy perusing the pictures and words.
On another note, it’s been ten days since Obama took office. It’s still awesome.
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Like millions of others around the world, I was glued to the television for a couple hours this morning. And while I may have spared myself from crying like a little girl, it didn’t stop the tears coming from this forty-eight year-old man. I feel a lot of things. Like now our country can start pulling away from the precipice. I feel an enormous pride when I look at the man who we not only elected, but now is, the President of the United States of America. We actually did this. Unbelievable. Like President (!!) Obama said, it’s going to be a long road back, but wow… what a start.
Watching Obama take the oath of office was one thing. But I don’t know that I’ve seen a much more amazing sight than the one and a half million people on the mall waving flags, hugging, crying and just generally displaying feelings of hope, pride, joy and even relief. Relief that this last eight years is over. And an even larger relief from African-Americans that the last almost three hundred years are over. I can’t even imagine how they feel about seeing Obama take office. I feel pretty proud as an American, but I would have to at least double that feeling, square it, times it by five, and yet I don’t know if that would even come close to how heartfelt their tears are right now.
Congratulations to all of us. Good luck, Barack. Our President.
This piece I recently finished was inspired by one of the great illustrators of the last century, Robert Maguire. Ok, so it was more than just inspired… I more or less ripped the idea directly from one of his paperback cover paintings. But only because it was fun to do (in other words, it’s not for selling). Maguire painted quite a few covers for everything from serious fiction to all types of pulp. If you look through his gallery at his site (selecting only a hundred or so out of the many more he did), you’ll see a few with the women wearing not much more than a towel. Well, not wearing, exactly. Just holding and covering up. Barely. Of course, those illustrations where you get the feeling that something is about to drop can be the most alluring, if not ending up as great examples of pure titillation.
For the technical minded: For this image, I used Poser to get the figure close to where I wanted, then used Photoshop and Painter to change almost everything. But that’s where most of the fun is. Rendering the figure is only the start. Getting the ‘feel’ of an illustration for me really comes from the scribbling that comes after a 3d render. Thanks for dropping by and taking a look.
On another, much more important note: only eight more days ’til change.
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
Sometimes (actually, most of the time), I start working on something new and it turns out completely different. This was one of those. I was just looking to work on something new and felt particularly inspired by pulp covers from the 1950′s and ’60′s. I had the general picture in my head, but when I got to experimenting with her hair, and painting different ideas, I thought of the recent passing of Betty Page. Once I painted the hair you now see, I sat back and thought, “well, that’s Betty, alright.” I’m definitely looking forward to more pulpishness.
For the technical minded, I used Poser to render the 3d model and then cooked it in a big stew of Photoshop and Painter.
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
This little painting is based on a photo (not mine) that reminded me a lot of Devil’s Kitchen, a relatively small area of windswept rock in Southern Utah. It’s in the Needles district of Canyonlands National Park. You can get there by walking three miles from a parking area. An equally fun(!) way of getting there is by four-wheel-drive. It takes about an hour to drive those three miles, if you count the few times you will stop to take in the scenery. Oh, and those few times you’ll try to figure out if your differential will clear that huge rock in the middle of the road. I just remember one thing: rocks win. Every time. One other note: if that water you’re about to drive through looks deep enough to cover your exhaust pipe…. it probably is, and will. Hey, it’s no problem- just don’t stall. Yes, I’ve been on the wrong end of a tow strap.
This is a small painting, 5″x7″, oil on canvas panel. I painted it in three fairly short sessions. First was monotone using burnt sienna and burnt umber. The second was more of the same, adding some ultramarine blue to get the darkest darks. The last session was adding the thickest of the paints, the light oranges and almost-whites. I’ve got a few more photos of my own from that area of Utah, and I’m looking forward to doing a few more of these small paintings based on those.
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
Recently, I was inspired to get up offa my thang to put an image together for a contest in honor of Frank Frazetta. If you’ve seen my work (or that of countless others), you could see how Mr. Frazetta has influenced innumerable artists over the last forty years or so. I’m no exception. The invitation was irresistible. It took me a few days and about twenty ideas thrown away before I came up with a composition that wouldn’t make me yak. In this image, the male was inspired by Conan (check the belt out); the female, by Teegra from the movie “Fire and Ice”. There are a few other small details in the image that some may recall from other Frazetta works. Speaking of “Fire and Ice” - if you get the new remastered DVD, there’s an added disk called “Painting with Fire”, a full-length documentary of Frazetta’s career. Definitely worth the price of admission.
For the technically minded, this is a combination of Poser and Photoshop, as is a lot of my digital work. Figures were rendered in Poser, the rest was painted in Photoshop. Thanks for taking a look. Now it’s back to work on a few new things, as well as finishing up a few oil paintings. Political season is mostly over, so I’m going through some Olbermann withdrawal right now. It was either that, or spend way too much time in front of the tube. As they say, everything in moderation, right? Except when confronted by a cold pint of Alaskan Amber. Or Guinness. Or…
What an incredible scene. I think toughest part of Tuesday night might have been trying not to cry like a little girl in front of my grown up kids. There’s a lot that has been and will be written about our election of Barack Obama, but in my mind the thing I may remember most is seeing the couple hundred thousand people in Chicago dancing with joy. Now I won’t have to worry about going in to a two-month-long depression like I did after Kerry lost in 2004. Here’s to counting down the days until the current band of criminals leave office!
Tuesday, November 4, 2008
Vote already. Please. I’ve got the day off to see how things go and the suspense is killing me. It’s never over ’til it’s over, no matter how upbeat the forecast looks.
Another note from Europe. So my wife and I picked up our rental in Tours, France. I sprung for an upgrade because, well, it’s our Big Trip and a Big Anniversary to boot. We drove off in a BMW 118d. Five-door hatchback, 2.0 liter turbo-diesel, six-speed, road-hugging-fun-car-to-drive. We went all over hell’s half-acre chasing chateaux during three days in the country. Used about a quarter of a tank of gas. I’d never seen this car before. In America, that is. So when we got back from the trip, I checked into it. It turns out that the 118d isn’t sold in the USA. Something about a difference in the amount of sulphur in the diesel gas between here and Europe. It also won the 2008 World Green Car award. Hmmm. So a car this cool isn’t sold here in the USA just because of the diesel gas difference? Can’t we marry the two? Either get our gas changed to fit what the EU is using or engineer the cars to work here? Why would I even wonder about it? Why even care? And why do I know that Detroit is just soiling itself silly worrying that a car like the BMW 118d makes it over here? How about this: fifty-nine miles-per-gallon. Uh-huh. 59 MPG.
I drive a 2003 Honda Civic to work that never fails to give up nothing less than 41 MPG. Fairly impressive, especially when the touted Prius gets around 51. And the Smart Car? eh. A not-so-smart 33/41 in the city/freeway. Being able to park it sideways doesn’t make up for that pitiful statistic. But then there’s BMW, making a driving machine that’s a blast to drive and gets fifty-freakin’-nine miles per gallon. And I can’t get one.
It took gas to get over four bucks a gallon before the entire country really started talking about smaller, more efficient cars and alternative fuels. Now, if it would actually cause some things to get done, I’m all for the price going to six bucks a gallon. When we were in Scotland, we saw gas that went for $10/gallon. In France, it was around $9/gallon. You know what you don’t see over there? Hummers. Suburbans. Escalades. Recreational trucks. Almost every large vehicle was used for work and business. It’s all about small, fuel-efficient cars- because they have to. At least those in the EU can find those cars. Here in the USA, I’m driving around listening to BBC, hearing some CEO from Detroit telling me that they were only selling the large cars we wanted… that Americans don’t want small cars that get a zillion miles-per-gallon. Bullshit. Where the hell are my MPG?
And on a related note, Obama tagged Biden for a running mate. Finally. Biden’s speech in Springfield rocked. The convention starts today. Here’s a funny short article about how the McCain campaign has used the “chicken prank”.
In June, my wife and I were lucky enough to afford a two week trip to Europe. We spent four days in Scotland visiting my sister close to Aberdeen (and me without my golf clubs!). Then there were three days spent tooling around Amboise, France, with the remaining six days in Paris. Trying to describe how the trip went in just a couple paragraphs is futile. I might as well ask Neil Armstrong to describe his trip to the moon in twenty-five words or less. But I can take snaphots over the next month or so to mention a few things…
…like the second time I went to the Musée du Louvre. We had gone on Monday of our week there, and now I had a few hours to spend late Friday, while Mrs. Earthcurves went shopping. I wanted to check out the rooms containing paintings from Germany, Italy, Spain, and the Netherlands. Well, first you have to walk down an incredible (as everything about the Louvre is incredible, I’ll just drop the superlatives from now on- just assume the entire museum is out of this world) two-hundred yard corridor of 18th and 19th century French painting. Entering the rooms where you find Dutch 17th century art, the crowds really thin out. I entered one room (“room” meaning an area at least forty by fifty feet- fairly large), and found I was the only one there. I turned around and, in the corner, hanging quite inconspicuous on the wall, saw the following two paintings (click for larger versions):
I’m sure most people have seen these before. On the left, is “The Lacemaker”; on the right, “The Astronomer”, both painted by Johannes Vermeer circa 1668-1670. Now these are certainly not the most famous paintings in the museum… (Continued)
