Acey & Maggie (for JKPP)

Thought I try using colored pencils for this latest portrait...and I realized why they never come out of the box. Here's the progression:


I should have left her face alone at this point, but I ended up overworking it a bit:


The dog came out great though!


Too lazy to put much effort into the background:


See Acey & Maggie bigger over on my flickrstream. And check out all the other wonderful portraits done for Julia Kay's Portrait Party here.

Julia Kay’s Portrait Party

At some point while I was doing the four portraits that appear in the 6x6x2010 show (still up at RoCo until July 11th and online here forever!) I became aware of the flickr group Julia Kay’s Portrait Party. Julia’s simple idea (artists making portraits of other artists) has exploded into an absolute phenomenon of creativity. After seeing the incredible variety of work on display I had to get involved. Since I started my first portrait of the extraordinarily prolific, N.C. Mallory, just two weeks ago I've already drawn seven new portraits. Similar to the Moly_X project I’m involved in I’ve found that joining this community of artists has broadened my horizons and helped rekindle my passion for art-making.

Here's a handful of the amazing portraits to be found in this great group:

Sue Hodnett by Wally Torta

Kara Jansson Kovacev by goat transforming into a cathedral

Herman Schildert by I.J. Bowden

Me by N.C. Mallory

And a couple by me:

Emily O’Marra

Giorgio Bordin

Artist Sue Hodnett said of the party,

“In an age where we sit and twitter, surf and blog, Julia Kay’s portrait party has connected an otherwise disparate group of artists and challenged us to look deeper than the screen of the computer and into the eyes of people we have never met or spoken to.”

Please check out this amazing group of artists all challenging each other to look deeper.

Parka Reviews Quickie

Parka Blogs is a great review sites that specializes in art books. Recently he reviewed David Palumbo's new book, Quickie, a collection of Palumbo's small postcard nude paintings. I was not familiar with Palumbo's work before this but he's certainly a very talented artist and this book looks beautiful. Be sure to check out his Postcard Nudes blog.

6x6x2010

The 6x6x2010 show opens this weekend at the Rochester Contemporary Art Center. This year the show recieved 5,000 artworks by 2,000 artists from 22 countries and 43 US states! The online gallery is up now and online purchasing begins Monday, June 7th at 10 AM.


I contributed 5 pieces, the 4 portraits above (see them larger here) and an abstract comic which I talked about in a previous post. The portrait series I'm calling "Faces of Flickr" since all my reference photos were found on flickr.com, a great photo sharing site that I use to post all my artwork.

I liked this format and I've got a few blank squares left over, so I'll probably continue this series. Let me know if you have a portrait that you’d like to see rendered like these.

Moly_X

It's been a while since I've mentioned the amazing Moly_X otherwise known as the International Moleskine Exchange. Moly_X is an awesome project started by Marty Harris, wherein groups of artists exchange small Japanese folding sketchbooks adding entries into each one and passing it on to the next artist in line.


Recently, I recruited a few new artists to re-boot the Moly_X Portrait Group I'm in and we've been having a great time doing portraits of each other. I'm particularly pleased with the latest one I just completed:


This is the start of my own book for the exchange. It marks the first time I've tried to paint in one of these books and I'm really happy with the way it came out. I can't wait to see how the other artists continue this image. One of the most interesting things about these exchanges is how artists interact with each other on the page.

Comic Convention Sketches

In honor of this weekend's Toronto Comics Art Festival I thought I would post my convention sketches from the various shows I've attended in the past, including last year's TCAF show.

In the sketchbook that I bring to the shows I try to draw an opening spread to set a theme for the sketches. The first one, from the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art Festival (MoCCA) in 2002 was, obviously, Rock and Roll. The second from the Small Press Expo (SPX) 2003 was a bit more open...robots, outer space, or cowboys...or any combination of the three! This resulted in lots of fun, creative drawings. Check them all out here.

A sweaty-toothed Madman!

Remember that line from the film, Dead Poet's Society? Well, I found an amazing photo from flickr-ite ipelisa that just begged to be sketched so I threw this together.


Speaking of flickr, please check out my page over there. I've been adding a bunch of new drawings including my latest entries in the moly_x project.

One Million Giraffes!

I painted this portrait of a giraffe for my niece's birthday card and also because I saw this cool project yesterday. He's up over 337,ooo giraffes so far as of this posting! Why not add one yourself?

Abstract Comics

A fascinating new book was released recently called Abstract Comics. After absorbing the book and the contributors blog I did this small experiment.

Hopefully this is the start of something.

Standard American Encyclopedia (Vol. 2)

I've done another set of ACEOs from my Standard American Encyclopedia source material. This set I'm calling “Men of Historical Significance.”

Collect them all at my flickr page.

This new set has also been assembled into a full collage that will be exhibited as part of the “Small” show at the High Falls Gallery, opening May 24th.

Artists Trading Cards (ATCs)

So, for a change of pace I've decided to try making a few Artist Trading Cards.

I made two series, the Standard American Encyclopedia (circa 1937) series, (“Goat”, at left is a part of this series) and Strange and Stranger. See them all at my flickr page.

UPDATE: I'm working on assembling these into a collage for the “Small” show at the High Falls Gallery in Rochester. Anybody local to Rochester should check out the gallery and the show, it's an open call with only a $15 entry fee.

Bookmooch

Bookmooch.com is my new favorite website. BookMooch is a community for exchanging used books. It lets you give away books you no longer need in exchange for books you really want at no cost (other than postage to mail your books)! Check it out.

The International Moleskine Exchange

So, I've gotten involved in another mail art project, called the International Moleskine Exchange (or Moly_X, for short). This is my entry in Shante's Moleskine for Moly-X-portraitparty2, inspired by yet another collaborative art project, Rama Hughes' The Portrait Party.

Moly_X is a pretty amazing project. Definately check out the Flickr group to see what we've got going on. I've started a new group recently, moly_x_64 (The Sequential One) that's just getting off the ground, so check out our group's progress there as well.

I've been doing a lot of figure drawing in the last couple of months. mainly at Steve Carpenter's Gallery on Monday nights. It's a great group with many accomplished artists and a cool setup.

They have one model do short poses from 6-8 PM and then a second model will do one long pose from 8-10 PM. The second model will repeat his/her pose for 4 consecutive weeks, allowing artists to paint from life as well as doing short sketches. It's been a lot of fun and I've been posting the highlights to my flickr account.

This last one is my first finished painting in ages! Executed in watercolors on Arches Cold-pressed paper measuring 9" x 12.25", it was included in the Memorial Art Gallery's student show in the Creative Workshop which just came down. So, not only my first painting in maybe a decade but also my first exhibited work since 2000. Pretty big step for me...

I'd appreciate any feedback on these or any of my other work.

Vote Hope

Here's my response to Shepard Fairey's HOPE campaign. You can still get HOPE stickers at Sticker Robot.

Happy ?@!$'n Birthday

So, I'm 31 today...don't know quite what to say that. It's not that I feel old, far from it. It's just that I thought I'd have accomplished so much more by now.

Been having a pretty rough go of it since April. I'd rather not get into the details but let's just say, “Mistakes were made.” I guess I can take comfort in Kevin Spacey’s line from American Beauty,

“It's never too late to get it back.”

So, that's what I'm going to try to do. Be brutally honest with myself and commit to living a better life. Go after what I really want and stop feeling so guilty about not being a “success” – whatever the hell that is.

EDM #83 - Erie Canal - Fini?

Ok, 6 months to fill in 2 square inches of trees! What the hell is wrong with me? Yes, I did accomplish other things in that time period...but this is ridiculous.

Anyway, I think this one is done...unless I decide that the water needs some definition. However, the idea of putting any more time and effort into this one page (started a year ago!) makes me nauseous quite frankly.

Part 3
Part 2
Part 1

EDM #83 - Erie Canal - Neverending Sketch

So, I'm finally getting back to this one after some time off. I think it's nearing completion but the trees take forever. Not sure how to handle the water either. I'm sure in another month or so I'll have something resembling a finished product.

Part Two
Part One

The Stack

I've got a monster stack of books that I'm slowly working my way through. What is the What by Dave Eggers and Fun Home by Alison Bechdel were Christmas gifts from my Mom (although I already had Fun Home, so I exchanged it for the new paperback edition of Everyday Matters by Danny Gregory). My Dad gave me a $50 Borders Gift Card, so I put that towards Berlin: City of Stones by Jason Lutes and The ACME Novelty Date Book by Chris Ware. I also ordered MeatHaüs 8: Headgames and MeatHaus 6 on a whim. Those are anthologies of comics by a collective started in New York by graduates of the School of Visual Arts and include work from Becky Cloonan, Farel Dalrymple, Tomer Hanuka, James Jean, and many others. Chris McD even included a quick sketch on my packing slip. Groovy!

Everything here comes with my highest possible reccomendation. Eggers is a genius, so is Ware. Bechdel's Fun Home was the breakout graphic novel of 2006, topping TIME's annual Top Ten Book list. Berlin, by the time it is completed will be one of the most significant works of historical fiction ever produced in comics, and the MeatHaus books are just great fun!

Wandering in Ithaca

I did some wandering around Ithaca, NY Friday evening. Some highlights included speaking with the artist Neil Berger at the Ink Shop Printmaking Center, the State of the Art Gallery, several used-book stores, a fairly decent comics shop (where I picked up Gilbert Hernandez's New Tales of Old Palomar, among others), and having coffee and drawing at Autumn Leaves, a cafe upstairs from a used-bookstore.

Got into a pretty heavy discussion of the events of 9/11 with Neil and William, a couple of regulars. I did a quick sketch of William while we were talking. Neil gave me a copy of Painful Deceptions: An Analysis of the September 11 Attack. It looks interesting but I havn't got around to watching it yet.