digital vs: traditional

I could get a lot more alien menagerie paintings finished if I made them in photoshop.

I'm not that tempted though, because this is a project where it's very important to me to have a piece of original art at the end of the process. 

Even though most of my illustrations painted before 2000 were executed in acrylics, I've adopted digital media for most of my commercial work since then. Until I did these digital pieces in 2006, "alien menagerie" had been a stack of pencil sketches made over several years which I hoped to paint someday. I made these to build up my confidence in the project after not having painted much. Each of these were done pretty rapidly: concept, sketch and paint in less than a week, and therefore some are more finished than others. I held back the shadow box treatment, focusing on the aliens themselves, and posted them in an art forum on the internet. It was a valuable transitional step to go through. 

x.23 in progress

A phone photo of of one of the pieces I'm working on, 宇宙人x.23 Another of my 'extracts' which are acrylics on Rives BFK paper. I'll be posting the final next Monday to alien menagerie.

In progress...II

Here's a peek at another painting in progress. I see dots!

In progress...

I'm working on a couple new oil paintings for alien menagerie. Here's a small peek at one of them in progress. One that I come and go to as time allows.

x.20 in progress

phone photo of of one of the pieces I'm working on, 宇宙人x.20

Spring • 春

This is a quick sculpey maquette I made for my alien menagerie "spring" painting that I'm doing preparatory work on. I'm enjoying the change of seasons as we're finally feeling spring here in NYC. The backyard cherry tree is in full bloom and the koi are out of their winter stupor. I've pretty much settled on a color palette for the painting and getting ready to prep a panel for it as well.

I decided a while back that each alien in the alien menagerie/seasons would have 3 eyes. This is the only one though that it's not readily apparent on as they are distributed radially around it's head. Yes, this is the sort of thing I obsess about.

Alien Menagerie: Winter • 冬 Maquette

Snowball on a stick is pretty limited as reference goes. To prepare for the painting I'm working on I built a model, or maquette.

I'd pretty much figured out how I wanted the alien to appear in my "winter" painting. With pencil sketches and a digital color study finished, I decided to go a step further than usual. I wanted to explore the building of a maquette. It's not a step in previsualization that I have ever used before. I arrived at this decision inspired by Jim Gurney's book IMAGINATIVE REALISM. His examples of the benefits of maquettes are priceless. My alien has some pretty absurd, if simple 'anatomy'. From my model, I wanted to learn more about how the fur could look, how the light falls on it, and the flow of the coat. It seemed even more logical to build a model, as stop motion animation characters were among my inspirational influences for this painting. There's some Rankin/ Bass abominable snowman in this fellow.

It's been a fun preliminary process. I'm keeping the maquette nearby while working on the painting, and this model doesn't melt under the lights.

*on upload youtube suggested I tag the video as "pets" & "kitten" hmmmm

reference photography

It's often a good idea to take reference photos when planning out a painting. Not a great photo, the lighting is poor, but I shot this as inspiration for the painting I'm working on.

really.