Jake and I's show during the month of August

For those who live in the area, I've got a show with AMAZING poster artist Jake Sauer opening Saturday, August 1 at the firefly coffee House on North Anthony. It'll be up during the whole month of August.

Dying Pastry Men

Just woke up from a very unsettling dream. I was in an ice cream/bakery locker, where there was a ton of packaged ice cream and desserts stacked up along the walls. I got the feeling it was old. The air in the small room was stale. I was in there with another family and we were looking at the items in the room like one would look at animals in a petting zoo.

My eye caught a cardboard box—like the kind you'd get from a store if you bought a dozen donuts. The box had a cellophane window on top and contained 5 or 6 living "pastry men" replete with eyes, noses, mouths and little moving arms.

They had been in there for a very long time, I recall someone mentioning 90 days. All were halfway wrinkled and dried out.

Again, I had the feeling I was observing something in a petting zoo. These were alive. They had eyes that moved and arms that fluttered about.

I pause and observed a knee high old man emerge from a storage space on the wall. He had blue skin (all you could see was his face) and wore a "Where's Waldo?" type red and white stock hat, sweater, scarf, and pants.

He was holding an ice cream cone and had pink ice cream dripping sloppily all over his mouth. He remained silent and then disappeared.

My attention once again returned to the living pastry men, only to discover that some had exploded. Upon further examination, I noticed the explosions occurred because they were forcefully ripping themselves apart.

I watched as the leader, a red, whose body and one eye was half dried and wrinkled, fruit sized pastry who was supposed to resemble an apple, trembled, then violently ripped himself in two leaving only the grotesque aftermath of spilt brown pie filling in its wake.

Favorite Books

Every now and again, I'll do a post on some of my favorite artists. My good friend Brad over at Identity33 Design recently did a blog post on some of his favorite books. So just for kicks I thought I'd do likewise... sort of but not completely in any particular order.

1. The Weight of Glory - CS Lewis
2. Mere Christianity - CS Lewis
3. The Great Divorce - CS Lewis
4. The Screwtape Letters - CS Lewis
5. Orthodoxy - GK Chesterton
6. Sense and Sensuality, Jesus talks with Oscar Wilde - Ravi Zacharias
7. The Lotus and the Cross, Jesus Talks to Buddha - Ravi Zacharias
8. Art and the Bible - Francis Schaeffer (Excellent book detailing God's appreciation of and attention to art and beauty, particularly in the context of the Old Testament temple and tabernacle designs and adornements - a must read)
9. Addicted to Mediocrity - Franky Schaeffer (greatest diatribe about the church's overall freaking ghastly, crappy, underachieving second rate copycat taste in art during the 20th century - a must read)
10. Tales from the Farm - Jeff Lemire
11. CreatureTech - Doug TenNapel
12. Earthboy Jacobus - Doug TenNapel
13. Heaven - Peter Kreeft
14. Table Talk - Martin Luther
15. Confessions - St. Augustine

The more “up to date” the book is, the sooner it will be dated.
-CS Lewis

The Temptations of St. Anthony: part 2

Took a few more hours and finished off this painting over the weekend. This was fun once I got it past the "Oh crap is this going to survive?" stage. I was actually ready to re-gessoe this and start over a few hours into it.

The Temptations of St. Anthony: Part 1

So after Dracula was completed I decided to burn the midnight oil on one more piece for an upcoming show. This is a 24x24 piece based off of an etching/drawing by Martin Schongauer. Stayed up way too late working on this.

The original piece by Martin Schongauer.

Red Haired Dracula Painting: Part 2

Pretty much finished this guy up over the weekend. This may have been one of them most fun and enjoyable artistic experiences of my life painting this guy's ugly mug.

The final painting is 24x36.

Red Haired Dracula Painting: part 1

So a couple weeks ago I did a series of Monster drawings based off a 1970s toyline that I'm somewhat obsessed with. I did not have it outta my system yet. I have an art show next month at a local coffee house, so I figured I'd do a 24x36 painting of this dude in hopes that it would quench my mania.

It didn't.

But here's the painting in process....


First step as usual is to blow the original drawing up, print it out, tile together, rub graphite on the back and transfer to canvas.

here it is transferred, I've "inked" the lineart so to speak and am beginning to paint the underpainting and establish value scale.

Underpainting is roughed in and now after a trip to the art store I'm ready to start laying in some color.

More to come on this.

Graphic Novel

Another panel.