Tuesday, April 28, 2009

Dueling Skate Decks

My two skate decks entitled "This Town Ain't Big Enough" are complete and will be on view along with many others starting this Saturday until the end of May in Lakewood. Anyone who knows me knows that I have a love for history in general - the Old West being one of my favorite periods - so this particular image was fun for me to develop.

I thought I'd share my process on this one. The idea began with two tiny, tiny thumbnails that resolved the basic composition and major shapes and lines. After developing the drawing further using reference material from the period, I transferred the gist of it onto the decks via grid drawing. Moving into the acrylic stage, I worked in varying layers of transparency and opacity, gradually building up the values and intensities. Originally I had planned to paint an opaque background on each deck but when I realized the wood surface was a very complementary touch I let it be, even at the cost of exposing pencil construction lines that had already been sealed in. For the majority of both paintings I used only ultramarine and burnt sienna along with gesso. A touch of cadmium red and yellow ochre highlight a few small areas.


Update: 5.02.09

The show opened tonight with a great turnout! Thanks to Keith Corocan for putting everything together and doing up the space nicely. For those of you in the greater Cleveland area, the show will run until about the end of the month.

Thursday, April 23, 2009

Perez Hilton the Hypocrite

Once again a beauty pageant ends and no one has any idea who the winner was. Instead the controversy surrounding Miss California Carrie Prejean and Perez Hilton (real name Mario Lavandeira) and his gay marriage question have taken center stage on the internet. Most people have seen the clip from the pageant but make sure you watch his post video blog rant to truly see what a hypocrite sounds like.

They both stand by their beliefs. Great. Good. That is expected. The DIFFERENCE though is he went on to call her a "dumb bitch," pointing out that he actually intended to use the c-word originally because her answer didn't match what he had hoped. For a drama queen who will pretty much complain about anything if it garners attention for himself, he says she should've said something more politically correct, though I think it's safe to say all that would've changed would be that we'd be hearing an immature internet diatribe about how she cowardly dodged the answer. You cannot expect others to be tolerant of your beliefs and then crash hate down on them when they don't agree with yours.

If any other guy or girl judge had demeaned Miss CA as a "dumb bitch" afterwards they would be destroyed by the public. What gives a person like Mario free license to behave such a way? A guy who wanted so badly to call a contestant the c-word is qualified to judge, of all things, a beauty pageant of women?? At any rate Donald Trump certainly knew what he was doing because people are still talking about his pageant days after it has passed.

Perez is a leech on society that has made a "living" blogging insults on the A-list celebrities he wants so badly to become. In his proud proclamation in his video rant about "I was the Youtube moment!" it is evident he is more concerned about raising awareness about himself than any cause. You don't need to be for or against gay marriage to recognize a hypocritical bigot when you see one.

(The sketch is pencil on paper with digital color.)

Monday, April 20, 2009

Another Skate Deck Show

Working on a pair of decks for another skate show, this time for a gallery in Lakewood, OH. As usual, the deck format is a challenging format to compose on and being a lil' bit of a skater myself, I like to try to work in regard to the truck placement too.

As far as the subject matter this time around, for now I'll just say "The Old West"...