Live And In Person! These Two Paintings! Friday! Saturday! Denver!

Hey everyone!  Would you like to see these two illustrations live, and in person?  Well, they were both just accepted into an art show for this weekend's First Friday Art Walk on Santa Fe in Denver, and I'd love to invite you to come!  The show is called "High Five" -- it's the Colorado Alliance of Illustrators (CAI) annual show (click here to see the colorful event-flier).  It'll be in the CAI Gallery on the second floor of the D.E.A.D. Academy, in the Colorado Arts Center at 841 Santa Fe Dr. in Denver.  The opening is from 6 to 9 p.m. this Friday, May 3rd.  And.... sadly... I can't make it this Friday because I'm teaching an art class that night! (Gasp!).  However, it'd still be cool for you to be there for these two reasons: 1) I can't be there and need you to tell me how much fun it was, and 2) during the opening, viewers can vote on their five favorite pieces, hence the name "High Five" -- when the night is over, the five artists who get the most votes will win a sweet prize.

So if you're able to make it Friday night, show some love and vote for your favorite illustrator in Denver.  But of course, if you're like me and your Friday night schedule is already unalterably booked, the gallery will also be open the Saturday after the opening from 1 to 4 p.m., during which time I'm gonna bring a few friends to check out the gallery and maybe grab some coffee afterwards.

I hope to see you there, whether in spirit on Friday or in person on Saturday!  Till then, stay cool and don't stop rockin'.

Have a happy Easter, and if necessary, hire a bouncer...

Here's a recent color sketch for a book project I've been working on.  It's an illustration of a story in which an impromptu Easter party erupts into a larger-than-planned Easter egg hunt.  So large was the hunt that they needed to hire a bouncer just to protect the little kids' plot of egg-laden real estate from the big kids' wily attempts at basket-raiding and candy-snatching.  It's one of many stories to be released and illustrated in an e-book called "Mary Mary Quite" that I've been working on with screenwriter and all-around great storyteller, Mary Huckstep.  I figured that today of all days would be high time to share an Easter-inspired image.  May your holiday be splendid!  May your soul be stirred with the new life that this day represents!  And may the little treasures in life lie hidden in plain sight for you today!  Bye for now. 

More Stencil Art and a Van Gogh Copy

Tonight, I taught a couple art classes on the paintings above -- these ones are the canvases I painted while teaching.  I had the best students ever and had a blast painting these.  With the top one, I designed a class based not around a particular image but around a particular style.  We wanted to make a class for high school age kids that involves street art sensibilities and collage-making.  The bottom one, technically, is a copy of a copy.  I don't remember ever seeing the original but this is based on a Van Gogh copy created by my art director -- by the way, I've been a huge Van Gogh nerd lately every since seeing the "Becoming Van Gogh" show at Denver Art Museum!  His paintings make me so happy.  And if you're ever anywhere near Denver or Colorado Springs and would like to take one of these painting classes or a similar one, just check out youniquexpressions.com and register online.  Till next time, stay awesome.  And stay tuned for some updates on my e-book illustration project, "Mary Mary Quite."  Though it's coming along slowly, I'm really excited about the new illustrations.  Talk to you later.  Hasta la pasta. 

Drawing With Eyes Closed

As long as I've been an illustrator, I've always had this feeling that my current style is not the full articulation of what I have to offer visually.  Although these drawings don't necessarily represent a new style or an alternate portfolio, they definitely reveal my desire to move towards a more raw, less calculated and less restrained aesthetic.  Hopefully, one of these days my visual experiments such as these can dovetail into one or more alternate illustration portfolios, such that I can have two or three different styles to choose from, one that's more narrative and light-hearted (like this type of work) and another that's a bit more urgent, somewhat abstract, and conceptual, like what you see above.

So how did these drawings come about?  Well, for starters, I was bored one day and decided to venture on a little artistic exercise, grabbing the nearest pen and paper, then attempting to draw a human face - as best as I could - with my eyes shut.  For some reason, I was really pleased with the results.  All of the hesitations and self-doubt that sometimes cloud my creative process were altogether missing, while the raw energy, intuitive mark-making, and emotiveness that I love seemed ever-present in a somehow condensed or even purified form.  So I did another one.  And another.  Eventually I realized that these images had to be shared. So I decided to scan them in and edit them into a presentable form, with wood grain as a background.  Though it was perhaps a purely intuitive choice, I think the wood grain fits because, like the marks I make with my eyes closed, wood grain is a visual that sort of "emerges" in nature, organically and at a glance randomly but at closer inspection with a raw beauty that transcends mortal intentionality.  In other words, the "mark-making" I see in wood grain sets an aesthetic standard which I seek to embrace in my drawings with eyes closed.  It's an aesthetic that develops on a plain higher than that which can be apprehended with physical vision.  Or, as a wise man once said, "we live by faith, not by sight."

More Fun with Stencils...

I recently made some more stencil designs, so I thought I'd share a few here.  For some reason, my favorite is the cat with the louver shades.  Maybe it's because I love to draw connections between things that really don't go together.  Cool shades, a happy cat, a fancy picture frame: intrinsically, none of these elements have anything to do with each other.  But when you throw them all together, they still make sense.  Somehow they combine into a coherent whole, signifying something entirely new and unique to that which each independent element would signify on its own.  And I find that fascinating.

Or maybe I like that design the best because it's just happy.  Yeah, that's probably it.  Here's to the happy cat.  Have a good day and don't forget the louver shades.  

Fantastical yet Historical

This is a stencil and a finished piece from a stencil art class for high-schoolers that I recently designed and will be teaching.  I just started a new job where I'll be a painting instructor at an art and wine bar called YOUnique Expressions.  If you're ever in the Castle Rock, Colorado area, you should come check us out.  We've got daily fine art classes for people of any skill level and a relaxing, social atmosphere that's especially conducive to first time painters feeling comfortable with a paintbrush and canvas.  If you wanna register for the stencil art class, click here, or just go to our event calendar where you can register for all kinds of painting classes.  

As for the concept behind the above stencil art, I knew I wanted to do something about snowboarding, but I also didn't want it to look entirely predictable.  So at first I thought that it'd be fun to do something inspired by retro snowboarding, those under-celebrated days in the 80's when bright colored snow gear and constantly evolving snowboard designs ran rampant.  Then I realized it'd be more interesting to somehow mesh that true history of snowboarding with a sort of fantastical revision, picturing a snowboarder in the same garb as certain skiers from the late 19th century, an innovative yet gentlemanly folk adorned with handlebar mustaches and a stately gaze (for example, these gentlemen).  Thus, in order to span that great gap in history, I made a piece that samples together tidbits from an assortment of eras.  For the background I made a collage using photos of 1980's snowboarders and text from 1960's posters for an art movment called "fluxus".  Then, for the overlaying stencil art, I have a late 19th century gentleman observing the expansive landscape of snowboarding history through the lenses of late 20th century snowboard goggles, strapped around a modern styled beanie.  Fantastical yet historical, no?

Wild Times in Photoshop...

If you're familiar with the design software called Photoshop then you're probably also aware that this software contains so so many filters and effects that no person could reasonably use all of them without quitting their day job and losing lots of sleep.  You'd probably also be aware that this software has some rather funky filters and effects that you always wish you could use but never quite find a use for because they're just too... well, funky.  Well tonight I was editing a new painting in Photoshop when an idea struck me: why not take up those funky filters on their offer?  They want to make my image look wildly strange and fun, right?  Why not apply some of those filters so profusely that the image I'm editing doesn't even look like itself anymore?  Just for fun, that's exactly what I did tonight, and boy do these finished results look absolutely nothing like the image I started with.  But I find them very interesting and they might even prove useful.  Maybe I can use one of them as fodder for an album cover idea or something.  At any rate, my incurable curiosity in the Photoshop realm produced some rather wild results tonight, so I thought I'd share them.  Enjoy!  And next week, I'll see if I can post the image that I started with before stumbling upon these crazy ideas.  It's so far removed from what you see here, you'll flip.  Anyways, good night and stay good.