Wednesday, October 8, 2008

scarlethawk & JJ collab




I had the amazing pleasure of collaborating with Anna Scarlethawk http://scarlethawk.deviantart.com
I have admired her work for years and so this was a dream come true... no seriously it was. She is an awesome girl!

We worked for a little over 5 hours on this watercolor painting.

Tuesday, October 7, 2008

Active Transport (Green tape)


First layer of layers is finished!

Monday, September 15, 2008

vessel w/ toxic greens




So I started another layer using oils... The rigid acrylics were stifling me.

The first layer was done in watercolors, 2nd layer acrylics, and now oils...

Wednesday, September 10, 2008

vessel

I have been working on this the past day or so on my days off trying to turn it into something I am interested in now rather then finishing what I was thinking when I started this painting. I frequently end up slowly layering over older paintings/ideas...

I am trying to make this one really clean looking as well...

Sunday, September 7, 2008

Green Tape/Transfer of Potential Life







Decided to focus on this painting today. I have about 6 others I am working on at the same time. I am really trying to get a lot of detail into this one and make it look clean...



Then as you can see I decided to go over the right side with white and make another layer... you can't see however, that the white is made of of little tiny squares...

Tuesday, September 2, 2008

October show in progress...

So I have been working on this one on my two days off. I started it in NJ last summer and brought it with me to NY and now its in Chicago. It needs many more layers, but here it is now...



I am going to have about 11 original pieces in the Andersonville Arts Weekend
and many prints... so this is one of 11 that I am slowly finishing!
I am thinking about adding a figurative element to it.. what do you all think?


and this is one of the other paintings I am actively working on!

Sunday, August 3, 2008

Green Tape



So this experimental painting has been put on hold due to commissions, a full time job, and needy people, but its one of the next paintings I will be attacking so watch out for more progress. In a previous post I put two pictures of its progress and have forgotten about my poor bloggy since. This painting is experimental because the materials and mediums I use are not the usual for me. In this painting I first put down green tape in stripes (thinking I would take them off in the end) and then just started playing around with black india ink while going for an organic feel. I like to layer orderly straight lines vs. organic imagery, and it seems to be a theme that drips loosely throughout my work. Anyway, then I went into it with liquitex fluid gel medium and some powdered pigments that I mixed together to give its atmosphere if you will. Finally i put in more details with white and started selectively taking off the tape. (See previous posts to see how that developed!) (please).

Who knows what I will do next! Not me!

Saturday, August 2, 2008

Smiling Wisdom




Another commission that I am working on. I decided to do this one with watercolors on canvas. I am really loving how pooling pigmented water in the right spot can turn out to look like a realistic face. This is a technique that I have not really used for portraits before with watercolor. I usually like to have more control, but the effects of letting go is exciting!

Sunday, February 24, 2008

pixelating the snow





Alright, so I posted this a while ago, but i must have been too busy to write anything about it. I'm a bad artist I know... but I am here now and can give you a little insight on the project.

I was taking this sculpture class at SAIC see, and we were instructed to install an installation outside (in the winter). My fun idea was to break down the way an artist or machine sees things and make it available to the greater population. So I walked along lake Michigan and took really close up pictures with diopters on my camera (like magnifying glasses) of the snow.
Then I downloaded the images on my computer, zoomed in on them and broke them down into pixels and observed that snow isn't really white, as I already knew of course. Snow's color is affected by its surroundings of course, and its temporary traffickers such as dogs and humans, and further more what they leave there.
So with those colors in mind and the idea to pixelate the snow I started thinking....

and what I came up with were approximately 300 sandwich bags, food coloring, and water. oh yeah.. (made in my apt)
there were so many kinks in that plan I did not foresee... leakages, weight, leakages while letting the bags wait, so I had to do most of them right before I was to take them to the lake. Luckily I had a friend with a car and manly muscles help me out.
Once i got there it seemed like everything would go fabu, but 10 min into it I realized my mittens (I didn't have gloves) were not letting me have good enough control, and so I had to take them off, and then my fingers froze handling wet colorful sandwich bags, so then i tried to put my wet hands back into my mittens and back and forth until the fun was over! HOORAY!
and the images above are the result... thats my story and I'm sticking to it!

new work...