Drawn to Distraction

One of my paintings “Murder of One” has the honor of cover image for the latest and unfortunately, final issue of the Rose & Thorn Journal of prose and poetry. Please visit their website and wish them well in their future endeavors. They also have a facebook page.

Rose & Thorn Cover

I posted this a while back and I imagine that is how they found me and graciously offered me a place in their last issue. They included a brief bio and artist’s statement on their website so check that out if you are interested in that sort of thing.

Thank you Alaine Benard for including me in your swan song. I wish you all the best for the future of you and your fellow R&T staffers.

I finished my Frog Prince digital painting today. Pretty cut and dried. I inked one of the sketches from my May 1st. post in Manga Studio 4 and painted it in Photoshop CS3. I then added him to the logotype, created in illustrator and rendered in Photoshop.

Froglodyte

Final Art for Storytime

 

My intention for this piece was to get an image of Jimi Hendrix on a bandana that felt like a holy relic for a local art show where the only theme was that the work had to include a bandana. My first thought was Jimi Hendrix was famous for wearing bandanas and is also famous in pop culture as a “guitar god” so why not give the piece a Shroud of Saint Veronica vibe.

Once I had a sketch I liked, it took four attempts to get it right. First I tried bleaching the image into the bandana, fail. Then I tried creating a transparent acrylic transfer, fail. After that I tried drawing the whole thing, bandana and all onto a sheet of archival paper, it sort of worked but did not have the spontaneity of the original sketch and definitely did not have any hint of a shroud vibe, so again fail. Finally I re-scanned the original drawing and painted it digitally and that seems to be working. It’s still not what I saw in my head but at least it is not a failure.

The roots of this piece is an old spot illustration I did for MakeUp Artist Magazine back when Tim Burton first announced he was working on a remake of “Planet of the Apes” so we had a little fun speculating what that would look like. I repainted it (digitally) for an upcoming show of work inspired by Tim Burton and made a giclée canvas print and mounted it on a wood panel. I hope to snap a few photos at the show and post ‘em here.

Fun with Tim's monkey business

I’m working on something for an upcoming show so I thought I’d try to capture the stages. Does anyone recognize this guy?

original sketch, pencil 2.5" x 3.5"

Stage 2: gray wash & facial rendering -Medium: AcrylaGouache

Stage 3: lay in hair and background

Stage 4: hair rendered getting closer to finished

stage 5: finished?

Here is an old painting I am still fond of that my buddy Pete scanned for me recently. It was for a multi media show I directed/art directed back in the day that went into high schools all over the USA & Canada. Pretty big production for the time, 10-projectors, 3-screens something like 15 feet tall by 45 feet wide? -can’t quite remember. This particular show dealt with how our different appetites can be our undoing if we don’t control them. We of course used U2′s “Desire” as the theme song which was still pretty new at the time. I wish I could find one of the actual posters, the title treatment on the bottom third was pretty fun. I had this printed as a Giclée recently and it turned out great.

Illustration for Desire

the master, Pete Ruiz at work

Today is Marcel Duchamp’s birthday. Back in his day he constantly courted scandal so what better way to celebrate him than to drag out this scandalous painting I did a few years back for Fox Kids Magazine to further sully his reputation.

Duchamp's Nude descending a staircase No. 2

Eek Descending a Staircase No. 1

This is an older painting I kept re-working. There are actually 2 paintings under this one that didn’t really work.

oil on canvas/assemblage "Murder of One"