Galaxy DMD 8

Name: Galaxy DMD 8 - aka, Guitar Pedal Board
Location: Infinite
Age: Eternal
Light Year Distance: Obsolete

DMD 8 - An eternal evolving energy, the result of a gravitational collision between three unknown galaxies. Stars were destroyed and born. In other words, I went to Home Depot and bought supplies to build myself a guitar pedal board :) With goals to play out live more, this will help with the transporting/preparing process. I may be using this for the first time on Saturday, March 15th at 11pm. Dead Mans Dew was asked yesterday if we could play a 45 minute slot at the Rumba Cafe. Short notice but the stars aligned and we're available. I will share details online as I receive more information. We only have two weeks to promote and prepare. Luckily we'll have 1 practice session before the show. This will be our 3rd live show together as a band and we'll be performing all originals.

The painting on the board is rough but I knew my pedals would cover a lot of it and hey, the painting is for me. The pedals have yet to be assembled with velcro. I had to modify a few things to make it work with my design but it works. Here is a short video of a few progress photos without music.

Another piece in progress pt. 2

I'm slowly getting back in the groove, working out this piece. Here are some close up in progress photos. Nothing is complete. I'm only about 30 % done so I still have a long way to go with the faces and everything else.

First couple layers of oil.

A couple more layers with more to go. Again, only 30 % done. Stay tuned for the 100 % photo in the future.

"Breath of Hope" 10" x 12" Oil

This is a piece I created for a Christmas card. Since everyone probably received their card by now, I wanted to share it on the blog. It printed out pretty nice and I had a lot of fun with this piece, especially with the border. Hope you all have a great holiday season! Thanks Dan!

Spectrum 20 publication

I received my Spectrum 20 a couple days ago. The book looks great and I couldn't be happier. This is the second year that I've been published in the book and I consider myself very lucky. It's an honor to be next to the artists I highly respect and look up to. Thanks to Cathy & Arnie Fenner, the jury and congrats to everyone that got in! The awesome cover "Lover's Quarrel" is by Donato Giancola. If you'd like to see a better photo of my piece "Peacock Prophecy" visit my website here.

Tiger head study

The rough drawing ready for paint.

Kept it simple and used acrylic black, white, blue, red and yellow. from this chaotic mess came what you see below.

I wanted to experiment and try some loose brush strokes and take a break from my usual tight stuff. I thought my signature wouldn't work here so I signed it with a simple S. It's 6" x 6". Each year I do a piece that gets made into a quilt with pieces from other artists for the Illuxcon Scolarship donation. The quilt gets auctioned off on ebay along with several other donated items and the money helps the scholarship winners. 

I achieved my goal. When the brush strokes just happen without over thinking, when it feels free, that's when special things start to appear. There are some things I'd like to change looking back but I'm moving forward. I may do a series of small, even more stylized tiger head studies in the future? It was fun to loosen up a bit.

Another piece in progress!

Close ups of  two sections of my new personal piece. I'm working on the oil painting stage now. It's 24" x 24" on masonite. So far this piece is working out pretty good with a few spontaneous things happening. Feels good. Thanks to Angie for being my reference model! I have yet to post some photos of my Illuxcon 6 event so stay tuned for that one!

Parallel final and the rough road to it

I finally finished this painting. "Parallel" 12" x 16" - Oil. I started this piece earlier this year with the intentions of exploring textures and I ended up exploring a lot more than I wanted. Definitely a learning experience. I decided to approach this with some of it planned and some of it unplanned and it took me months to figure it out unfortunately. I spent hours and hours looking at this painting. Luckily I had some friend's eyes to critique it towards the end of the painting. It helped me push it along to the end. Below are in progress shots of a few of the stages. It was a rough road but I made it. 

The thumbnail rough I decided on.

The final drawing on board after adding some spontaneous meteorites or whatever they are :)

I decided to add some birds to make the piece more interesting.

I was going to keep the ground white but it needed some color.

The birds weren't interesting enough so I transformed them, shot them off to the heavens and added more color to the ground and the trail behind the figure. I also began pushing the asteroids back.

I pushed and pulled some other areas and finished it off. Here it is! I wish I could show everyone in person after the coats of gloss varnish I applied.

All framed up and ready to go for Illuxcon this year in Allentown, PA!