For this first compilation, I designed the album art to look like a science fiction novel from the 70s, with the painting being inspired by Frank R. Paul’s work (not 70s, I know).
The cassette itself was supposed to be yellow to go with the yellow on the cover logo but unfortunately we weren’t able to procure yellow cassettes in a reasonable timeframe.
The original painting is 8" x 10", acrylic on canvas board.
I did a pin-up painting of Pira for the latest online issue of Josh Tierney's Spera, "Fetch Quest," illustrated by Mike Dialynas.
As you can see by the date, I did this last month. It took a couple of days to paint it with acrylic on 9" x 12" canvas, though I ran into trouble with the trees and ended up having to redo them entirely with ink.
If anything, the biggest trouble was photographing the piece because of the poor lighting in my house. I had to do some extensive Photoshop color adjusting to make it match the original as best as possible.
Also, Spera is being published in hardcover by Archaia next month, and it's available for an awesome price on Amazon, so you should definitely go pre-order it.
The Spoilers! show at Fête Coffee the other night was a surprise success; I didn't end up selling my piece (but it's still for sale!), but there was a decent sized crowd which was great. So now that it's over, here he is:
A portrait of Blaster, from Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome. Acrylic on 11"x14" canvas, in a gold wooden frame.
It's been years since I got the chance to paint traditionally, let alone on canvas. So when I finally put my name in for the show, I figured it was time to make something different than my usual. And even when I did paint, I never painted people, so getting back into it after all these years was a challenge, but I managed to do this in 8 straight hours.
And for those curious of my process, here's this:
There's a few photos missing in the painting process because I didn't take any when I hated how it was looking (his skin was solid green at one point, thanks payne's gray). Also, the canvas I actually found sometime last year, with a crappy unfinished painting of Converse on it, which I gessoed over for this piece. And yes, because my easel is at home, I held the canvas up on my wall via a newspaper that was stapled to the canvas then taped onto the wall. It held for a few weeks.
Last day of vacation, so as promised like before, here's my final film from spring semester of my first year at SVA: Pat E. Puss the Platypus in "T.V. Time"
This film, in all honesty, is the result of laziness. It wasn't storyboarded like OctoCop (which makes an appearance), and quite frankly I grew tired of the character even before I started the film, I can't even explain how I feel now.
But, the film itself, is basically a clip show, the main two of which have some explaining to do. "Dear Journal" is a parody of Brad Neely's Baby Cakes, starring myself, and basically is me venting about my first year. During the making of the film, I managed to get in contact with Brad via e-mail and discussed his process and he was very helpful, hence the Special Thanks credit at the end.
The longest segment is a special little short called, "Doctor vs. Doctor," and it's special because it's actually a re-shoot of the first animation I ever did. It was also made shortly after Matt Smith was announced as the 11th Doctor, hence him appearing in his promo shot outfit; I assume this would be his first stint as a Doctor then, since this is from 2009, haha! And yes, I still have all these cutouts.
And now for some history, Pat E. Puss was and is so far my only character created to appeal to other people, as it was an assignment specifically made for me by my high school art teacher.
Some early drawings of Pat from 2007; the ones on the left are the first ones, when I first settled on making a platypus character.
The final assignment I handed in, 18"x24" painted in gouache.
But yeah, I think the whole aspect of the character being made for other people's appeal and not my own is probably the main reason why I have no connection to the character anymore. Unlike Derek Goldfish or the character in my 2nd year film, I have no personal connection to Pat, and I think the time spent not thinking about him has made me stop liking him even more...
