x.34

acrylic on Fabriano 300 watercolor paper 8" x 10"

Some of my aliens are designed to answer a specific theme or idea I'm chasing. Others are mined from sketches that I've accumulated over the years. i find value and enjoyment in both approaches, X.34 is a modest refinement of a quick doodle from 2011.

Boy Blockhead's Big Book of Outer Space Aliens

It was 1993 when I first started kicking around the idea of making some kind of alien-zoo art project. I wasn't really sure what form the project itself should take. I was keen on making some paintings, or maybe even some shadow box constructions. It was the first time I started really thinking about art that was outside of my book cover, illustrator niche. Maybe it's because a couple of my friends had success with their own book projects, that I thought a book proposal of my own was the best way to help this alien menagerie happen. I have to admit though, I didn't have much of a story to tell. Well, I did think that a collection of paintings under the title "Boy Blockheads's Big Book of Outer Space Aliens" might be a way to approach it. Boy Blockhead was a character I would occasionally doodle, and it seemed logical to enlist his aid in hosting my alien menagerie. I had a couple theories about his role in the whole thing; one had him finding a mysterious book of aliens, the other had him traveling in his spaceship documenting the aliens he encountered. A later, more surreal concept is that the box environment each alien is depicted in, is actually the inside of Boy Blockheads noggin. I still like that one.

I was typically painting more than 20 covers a year during this period, so making the time to do more than the occasional sketch was a big problem. I'm sure this is a pretty typical scenario for any busy freelancer too. It's really difficult to carve out time to indulge personal projects, and I was still finding a lot of satisfaction in the cover work as well. Another problem I had though was trying to imagine how "alien menagerie" and the other work I was doing would coexist. Here's a slice of the work I was doing in 1995, and my aliens were coming from a pretty different direction.

Without a solid plan, I would work on the idea every now and then. These are from a sketchbook I started in 1995. The sketchbook itself, is a really handsome, bound book that completely intimidated me. Of the 100 pages, I filled a dozen. I'm sure that available time took it's toll, but i was really afraid of making a bad drawing in that book!  After a couple of these partially filled in sketchbook debacles, I took to drawing my aliens on loose leaf paper and tossed them into a box for future reference. It certainly helped me keep a more steady stream of sketches coming, and eventually I got over my fear of working in a bound sketchbook too.
 

An awful lot of time would pass before I finally got around to painting the first one. Even today, I still run into periods where other work keeps me from my alien menagerie for much longer than I like, but I'm glad I never gave up on them either.

x.33

acrylic on Fabriano 300 watercolor paper 8" x 10"

Happy Year of the Horse!

no comment on my absence from blogging except to say I'm glad to have something new to share. Happy Year of the Horse!

acrylic on Fabriano 300 watercolor paper 8" x 10"

~the evolution of a horse.

新年快樂

새해 복 많이 받으세요

chúc mừng năm mới

Happy Lunar New Year!

alien menagerie #7 • spring

This is a painting that I've had around for quite a while in a mostly completed state. I added the final bits to this last month and I'm finally comfortable with calling it finished.

oil on wood panel 18" x 20"

Alien menagerie #7 is "SPRING" from a series devoted to the four seasons. 

I haven't done these in any particular order, but three are now finished.

It's the first day of autumn here in the Northern hemisphere, but south of the equator the September equinox brings spring!

alien menagerie #12 • the atomic alien

The atomic alien #1 tunes in from the new frontier, a retro-future where bubble helmets are all the rage and time stands still. I bet they listen to Dave Brubeck out there. This one is a small, 6" x 8" painting. I'm pretty sure there will be more...

oil on wood panel 12" x 12"

alien menagerie #9 • the red alien

I've recently completed a few paintings, two of which have been on and off my easel at various times. First up to share is The Red Alien. I concepted this a couple years back as part of a Red/Yellow/Blue series of paintings. Pretty much everything I plan for alien menagerie is, or could be part of a small series of works.  The thing is, I get more ideas for pieces than I have time to paint so for now the Red Alien hangs alone.

oil on wood panel 12" x 12"

Color theory in the foundation studies at the art school I attended, the Columbus College of Art & Design is built around the Munsell system so it was about this time of year in 1980 that I first encountered it. The first project is learning how colors can be understood as a combination of hue, value and chroma and starts out as loose color chips:

to be assembled into a set of 10 color charts

After that, it's a year long series of small gouache paintings looking at different aspects of color and their combinations. Mixing and organizing colors by these principles has been a natural part of my work ever since then. I couldn't imagine doing a series of aliens organized by color without building in an homage to Albert Munsell.

I'll be showing this, along with several other new Alien Menagerie pieces at Illuxcon later this week in the Allentown Art Museum.