Watercolor paintings for the 2010 RoCO 6x6 show

*Dusts off the blog*

It's been a while since I've posted here. Work has been good and busy for a while and with the spring quarter wrapping up at RIT I'll have more time to make new things and show you what I've been up to.

For now, check out these three watercolor paintings I made for the upcoming 6x6 benefit show at the Rochester Contemporary Art Center (aka: RoCo http://www.rochestercontemporary.org/). I've been drawing a lot of Mad Ball inspired artwork lately (primarily black and white ink pieces to ramp up to making a new Eat World based project) but I wanted to try working with some brown ink and watercolors to see what might happen for the 6x6 pieces. Below are the results.

Green Face


Purple Face


Bug Eyed Face


The ink I used is FW Acrylic Burnt Umber, and used Peerless watercolors http://www.peerlesscolor.com/. I'm typically a digital painting/color guy unless I'm screen printing something, but I really enjoyed working between ink and watercolors on these (especially since I could do it from a coffee shop or on the move). I'm definitely going to do some more pieces using this method.

I believe my three paintings (and all the paintings at the 6x6 show) are going to be on sale for $20 each. Proceeds benefit RoCo. If you're interested in picking up one of the three, get yourself to the opening this July! http://www.rochestercontemporary.org/6x6x2010.html. I think I will make prints of these faces too when I get some more print-worthy illustrations together.

I heard they have over 6,000 submissions. There will be a pile of tiny artwork to see at this show, so it should be pretty fun.

Carney Art Show: Glitter Spitter Raisin Face

Here's Glitter Spitter Raisin Face! He's the painting I made for the upcoming Carney Art Show at Monkeyhouse Toys in LA. The shows theme is circus freaks. I hope it arrives on time!

I took this photo before adding a little more red to the background, but it's pretty final. I won't make it to the opening but if you're in LA you should go check it out.
The show opens on Saturday, June 27 and will run through July 12. monkeyhousetoys.com for more info!

2A4TV paintings are done!

The paintings are done! Here are both of them.Painting 1...

Painting 2...And some process! I decided to do both paintings of skulls after finishing the first one. Instead of redrawing the first thumbnail I used a mirror to reflect the image to start with.
Pencil on canvas. Painting number 2 isn't a mirror copy of the first one. I changed the expression on the second painting. I wanted this one to look sad instead of angry. I wanted them to look interesting side by side or back to back, so a little bit of semi symmetry was o.k.

Pencils next to painting.
Monk figured out he could warm up by sitting in my chair next to the space heater. Warmth mooch!
The green and blue base colors. I was having a rough time getting the colors right on painting two. I was being lazy about mixing too much paint, so I tried working from the tube if I could. It worked ok since the paintings are mostly flat colors.I started off painting the outlines this dark grey blue. It was too dark compared to the burnt sienna outlines on the first painting. They ended up being a dark olive green in the end.
Then I painted the outlines a dark blue, but I changed that too! haha. The tentacles got filled with a light blue, but that was mostly covered with the same purple color from painting 2.
Now comes shipping the paintings to NYC and then the actual show. You should go!

Warmup painting

This guy happened before the first canvas painting below. I wanted to warm up with something small, so I painted this on some wood panel I found lying around.
He's very fancy. Maybe he'll end up on Etsy some day.

Too Art for TV paintings in progress

Too Art For TV is having its 3rd show in NY beginning December 5th. I'm going to have two paintings in the show and one of them is nearly done!

Here's some of the process (with notes) that got me there...

When talking to the 2A4TV folks they said they would like to have some energetic paintings of mine similar to the picnic table I painted for the Art Park benefit (previously posted here). The picnic table was big, so I was able to do a huge image across it. For the pair of paintings I'm working on 18" x 24" canvas. Big, but no picnic table. I liked the scale of the table painting so I decided to do close up monster faces for the canvases. After some sketching I settled on these two thumbnails to move ahead with:

Then came sketching the image out on the canvas. I already gessoed the heck out of them a few weeks ago so they were ready to go:

I started by painting the background color and moving forward in depth (trying to let areas overlap as I went):

And then it's a big jump up to the painting I posted at the top! I'll try taking more photos of painting #2. Originally I was planning on using complimentary color schemes for the paintings (you can see my original notes on the thumbnails say R/G/W and B/O/W for red/orange/white and blue/orange/white) but I decided to go for analogous sets for both. The next one will be primarily blue, green, and violet. Also, I ended up liking the skull image so much I think I'm going to scrap the ape thumbnail and do a different skull for painting #2. Choices!

Just a few more details to change on painting 1 and then it's done-done. Then onward to #2!

Find more info about Too Art For TV via Liz Artinian's page or "the facebook": http://www.bunnycutlet.com/2008call
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1538561657&ref=ts