A Show & Tell

I Finally hit up the Frida & Diego Show at the AGO on the weekend.  It was alright.  I can appreciate it, but I’m not huge into Frida‘s stuff.  Diego, I wasn’t framiliar with his work before, and I was pretty down with some of his stuff.  The guy pulled off some pretty crazy murals in his day.  I couldn’t grab any pics in the show so if you click their names above it will jump you to a google search of their work.

Afterword I went in search of the Evan Penny Exhibit which I’ve wanted to see since it opened and has also been up for a while.

There should be a warning before you check out this show…”This exhibit will mess your depth perception up enough to walk sideways and feel like you’re on a boat for the next 5 minutes.”

This cats stuff was off the chain.  It was hyperrealistic, but oversized.  Everything was massive, and 50% of the sculpture was stretched or distorted in a way that completely messed with your eyes.

Such as this one.

This one below I actually saw about 10 years ago at Museum London.  It was cool to see it agian, but in different context.  I could also see that light plays huge into these sculptures.  In London this dude looked 100% real, the way he was lit.  In Toronto he looked a bit grey in his flesh tone, but it was more than likely the wall colour reflecting on him….still sick as hell.

I realised as I was creating this post you might not want to follow an Evan Penny with your own sculpture, but let me tell you… if you were to create cardboard sculture, you would aspire to make work like this!

Booyah!  Hahaha, doesn’t look that glamourous after Monseur Penny’s tres dopeness, but I’m happy with how it’s going.  Right now it’s standing at about 10 inches tall.  It’s taking longer than expected, but what else is new.  The plan is to make about 5 of these bad boys which will lead into a larger group of work.I’d like to have the bulk of this figure done by the start of next week so I can get working on the next phase….if only I had some of those keebler elves that shoe maker had.

Give Me Five

Up until September, I spent the last year  not working on any of my own art. For Some reason, at the end of September i started again.  I’ve been on kind of a tear, painting and drawing.  I was on threadless last week and thought I’d try a couple of the competitions.  First was to create a design based on a band that does not exist.  Here’s what I made.

Once upon a time Rock Band hit the scene…all the kids were doing it. My buddy Jobin had just bought it and had some friends over. We needed a name. A name that said we will sing just as garbage as everyone else. I looked to his fireplace mantel where he had Predator figurines (dolls if you will). We became Predator Mantel for one night only.

The second design was for the World Wildlife Fund.  Here it is.

The idea was that we are in this together.  With the overnight success of Ikea monkey, I decided to add him.  Thought it was a nice shout out to Toronto.

If you’re down with these designs and would like to see them on some shirts, please click the images above to vote.  You will more than likely have to sign up to the site but I’m pretty sure there is an option to not get notified by them.  I’ve been signed up for a bit and they don’t seem to hastle me.

Ok so even if you hate these…sign up and vote for me by clicking the images above.  My bank account will thank you if i win.  Not by me giving you any money (heavens no)  but you will sleep easy knowing I got paid.

Peace

and Happy Holidays

Punk Bird Update

My last post  was about helping my buddy Paul out with fundraising for his Birding Documentary Punk Rock Big Year.  I said I was donating a punk inspired bird original art piece…here’s what I did.

Started with taking some reference photos, literally assembled a pile of garbage.

Drew a blue jay, and did a basic rough inking.

I then assembled it in the computer to make a transfer.

Took a couple tries though.  I switched up the file a bit, changed printers, and the paper I was working on and it came out perfect.

Last but not least, I hit it with a bit of oil painting to bring it all together.  I wanted to keep a bit of the “marker/ink” look to the bird so I only added it mostly to the face and the underside.

Really happy with how this turned out.  I tried to mix it up from my regular processes.  My original idea was to paint a bird with a mohawk, but ended up going a different direction –  I just made a nest out of plaid shirts, spraypaint caps, pins and band flyers.

Here’s the final:

Later

Helping Out My Fellow Man (or Lady;)

I have a buddy named Paul

Paul has a blog

Paul’s blog is Punk Rock Big Year

Sound familiar??????  A while ago I wrote a post about Paul being a birder.

He spent 365 days attempting to see as many different bird species as possible in Ontario, Canada and documenting it.  Oh ya, he’s also getting every sighting he had last year tattooed onto him (Latin name of each).  Paul’s trying to show birds are cool, birding is cool, and we need to help them from being endangered.

He basically funded the filming himself.  There are countless hours of footage to go through, and without the help of a few post-production professionals, producing this doc would be impossible.

He has set up page on indiegogo with perks at different levels to help raise funds.

I asked Paul how I could help out and he asked if I could donate a piece of bird art.  I said sure.

Over the last few years since I started making fine art again (2007-present) I’ve drawn, painted, photographed,  and dribbled paint to make a few birds and smeared it around with a stick.

Here are some examples of my past bird work:

It’s not going to look exactly like all of these, but it will be awesome…

the LAST person to donate to Pauls documentary (tonight 11:59 it ends)  will get a punk inspired bird original art piece by myself….. say what SAY WHAT!!!!! (you must pay shipping for the piece – unless you live in the GTA I’ll drop it off).

So if you can spare a couple bucks and want to try your hand at getting some art dontate here

A Random Thought

I’m really not sure what came over me, but after almost a year of not painting anything, I pulled out my only blank canvas and started messing around.  I decided to only use red, yellow and blue paint with white.  Here’s the progression.

I wasn’t giving too much thought about the colours I was using, but tried to just get the tones I wanted.

As soon as I had the hair in I hated it.  I liked the colour, but to me it just looked whack.  The ends of the hair were more defined than up near her face, and her collar bones looked like they were bursting through her chest.  So I waited a week for it to dry, and hit it again last night while watching The Dark Knight.

I’m way happier with it now.  The hair bleeds back into the image at the bottom instead of just sitting on top, and it covers up more of her body.

It felt good painting again.  I think I might try more often to just sit down and start and see where it takes me.

R.F.A.

Brad

Time McFlys

Feel free to blast this track while reading – The Power of Love

The Summer’s almost coming to and end.  Geeeeezze where did the time go.  The year started out with me deciding to take a step back with my fine art and reevaluate where I’m going with it all.  I made a plan to first update my portfolio which hadn’t been touched in over five years.  Then work got in the way.  About three solid months that turned into a blur, combined with some freelance design work, followed by a “I don’t want to do anything” hangover has pretty much brought me to the present.

I can’t say it was all work and no play.  Part of the hangover was just chillin and reconnecting with friends and family.  I went to a few talks and I saw all kinds of art.

From seeing Picasso a few times to Coeur De Lion Textiles beautiful representation for the National Ballet of Canada’s The Tutu Project.

Ben Sellick’s Solo Show

Kestin Cornwall’s Solo show

Karen Abel’s Installation at EiM Gallery

and Most Recently Seeing Brian Hoang, Jillian Newland, Zen Rankin, and Thadeus Maximus at Fan Expo Canada

I’ve watched a pile of documentaries some on the world, some on art.  Last week I watched Crumb – A flick about the controversial comic book writer/artist and his family…pretty crazy stuff.  As the fall quickly approaches I’m chipping away at my portfolio once again, thinking about finishing old projects and planning some new ones.  I finished the plan for a mural I’m working on the other day.  I’m not quite sure if I will start on it now or in the new year.

I have read The Artist’s Way which says you should write out your thoughts every morning to get rid of all the garbage in your head to open you to your creativeness.  I haven’t read it yet, but theres a book called Steal Like An Artist which sounds like its saying to “borrow” your ideas.  At some point recently I saw, or heard, or read (can’t remember the source) that to be producing great art you need to be obsessive about it, to be living it.  I’m sure they’re all right.

That’s it for me…back to work.

Grinding Out The Details

I would be lying if I said every time I sit down to work on a project/painting/anything I kill it from start to finish.  The pinup illustration I did for Easy Tiger Records was one of those occasions where I had my own personal stops and starts to get to the final image.

I started out with a few roughs showing different positions the pinup could be in.

From there, two roughs were taken to a colour rough with text placement.

The pose where the model is saluting was chosen to move to final linear.

The guys at Easy Tiger felt the first linear above had a face that was too aggressive and wanted a softer and more wide eyed look.

From there I transferred it to paper and began water colour painting it to get that vintage look.  Not far into it, I decided this just wasn’t going to be the look I was trying to achieve.  I would  ultimately have to digitally tweak the water colour image to get the desired result.  I decided to scrap the water colour and move to a digital painting.  It’s actually been close to five years since I’ve done a digital painting.  This took some extra time but it was well worth it.

This is when the good, the bad, and the ugly showed up.  The good – I realized this was exactly the look we wanted.  But I’d realized that there were aspects of the original drawing that were somewhat off.  The pinup’s bent leg was massive.  If you look above the red outline shows the original drawing overtop of the final proportions.  I brought the leg in quite a bit and changed the bust to be more natural.  Also, I changed the shape of the dress.

Here’s the final:

I’m really happy with how it turned out.  I’m not giving up paining by any means but I might have to do a little more of these in the future.

Check Out This Show: Ben Sellick

I have been working my ass off at my real job lately.  Loads of overtime.  So nothing art related to update you on that’s my work.  But I have made some time to get take in some art.

Last week I made a quick stop at Awol Gallery to see their Season Opener Garrison Creek Bat Co. show.  It was packed so I didn’t so I bounced after only being there a little bit.

On Saturday I made it out to the Picasso exhibit at the AGO before it opened to the public.  Morgan and I are members and free preview tickets are an awesome perk of the membership.  The place was rammed.  Pretty nice set of his work so I’m going to check it out again in couple of weeks.

This week I’m going to check out a good friend of mine’s show.  Ben Sellick is presenting a retrospective of 10 years worth of art.  I’ve been chatting with him while he’s been gearing up for this, and I know he’s put his heart into this show.

He’s a sick artist and has been chosen by  #Hashtag Gallery’s to exhibit in their first solo showing (they opened a only few weeks ago.)

Details:

• Ben Sellick: A Retrospective
• Grand Opening: Thursday May 3rd 7pm
• #Hashtag Gallery, 801 Dundas Street West, Toronto
• Click here for Facebook Event

Hope to see you there.

The Only Time

Man I have been so busy lately. I just finished another class yesterday at OCAD – video editing. I’m now two credits into my media certificate. I’ve decided to take the summer off. The summer is the best time for me to work on my own projects since I can work outside.

I’ve also been doing some graphic work for clients, which has kept me really busy.

Last week I was uploading some of the last good pics I had to Flickr and I realized I hadn’t been out to shoot in a very long time.

The only time I could find to shoot was early in the morning.  Last Thursday I woke up at 5am to go shoot while the sun was rising, tried to do a time lapse.  Not going to lie it turned out like shit. But as my latest self help tape says – it takes 10,000 hours to become an expert. At least the temperature is going up these days.  I froze my ass off at 5am.

I’m looking forward to having my weekends back now that school is over and I’m sure I’ll be getting into lots of personal project soon. I’ll update what’s happening here.

Final First Draft

Life’s been pretty busy lately. I finished my course on after effects a couple of weeks ago. It went well. I didn’t get exactly where I had wanted to with my final animation. I spent the majority of my time drawing up all the elements to animate and had plans for more effects then there are now. Here’s what I completed for the last class…

I’m really happy with it as a first rough cut. I say rough because there are some changes I want to make.  I’m not quite happy with how some areas are moving, I want to add details like lightning flashes, and I need to finish the rest of the animation I had planned. I’m really psyched to finish, but (as most things) it’s going on the back burner for a few weeks.

I’ve still been working away with Easy Tiger Records and everything is really starting to take shape.

The biggest project I’m working on right now is a new portfolio. I haven’t updated it in 5-ish years. With my design work, photography, and fine art all spreading in different directions. I need to make tough decisions on what it is I’m aiming for. Its not like I don’t put my flavour on everything I do but at one point in my life I drew sperm for textbooks and other times I made graphics for 5 year olds. Might be interesting though having a page of sperms attacking a dinosaur.