New and exciting news - HOTEL AWESOME!

I have been working full time in the day teaching animation for the Aboriginal Youth Animation project. I also teaching most evenings and week-ends. Obviously I am keeping really busy and can't get out much. In order to still have interesting interactions with people, I decided to bring the travellers to me! "Hotel Awesome" is listed on airbnb! Come stay with me:D

https://www.airbnb.ca/users/show/10315154

I had the director of the Melbourne animation Fest stay recently and he say's this:

"Firstly, a very belated huge THANK YOU for everything that you laid on when I swung through Calgary .... totally sensational experience all round."

I had two others stay since then and I'm awaiting their review on the new listing.

This week I have an Olympian from Nigeria staying with me this Sunday. Following that my next guest is the incredible animator Richard Reeves who will be staying at "Hotel Awesome" until December 15th. I am looking forward to it!

We are the Champions

my friends.....

 I had to make myself wait until after the Versus show to share the piece on this blog. I started with a little bit a month ago but then stopped just to be fair. Hopefully you got out to the exhibit if you could. There were over 40 artists involved in the project and some amazing collaborations. The Gentlemen Destroyers made some cool walls in the front space to hang all the work and there was a good turn out while I was there.

A quick review. I ended up cutting out two different stencils back in may of the champ Batista, also a means to sign my piece since we share the same last name.

I had drawn out my anatomical heart which eventually became completely covered by my ballistic gel inspired victim figure. I started in pencil and painted in with acrylic on the re-stretched canvas.

Here is an early process shot after Ray got his Rich stencil cut and applied to the surface.

 So jumping ahead, I added the beam out of the characters mouth as an integration challenge to bring the two sides together. I have eyeballs popping out of the skull, they still need irises at this point. The blood is red but still too transparent. I splatter painted in the Batista Stencil and rubbed iridescent silver into the negative space then gave it a light sand.

I allowed a variety of browns to drip down the canvas to create more layers and depth. I cut a second negative stencil of Batista and splatter painted blues over the silver. I applied a thick pink to cover the blood and I was going to stain it red afterward but liked the interplay of pinks and blue so much I left it.  I painted in the irises in the eyes and blocked in the lower jaw.

A little further along and now there is a bit more back and forth between my collaborative partner. He added the laser rays to the piece. I decided to add a background of stars and rework the depth and shading on the skeletal elements. I created some star stencils and some tear drop stencils. I sprayed in some reflective gold spray paint and worked out some finer details.

Here you can get an idea of the detail and layering that went into the piece, this is after it is frames and varnished.

This is an angled shot taken the day Derek picked up the piece to bring to the gallery. You can see the frame job and the interplay of light on the reflective surface. ray stayed up for 2 nights working on a party binge to get the piece together with BONUS framing = sweet surprise to wake up to!

Here is the final piece to be delivered. I hand wrote the pieces title with my favorite gold paint pen. we gave it a healthy coating of outdoor vehicle clear coat. The piece has a nifty little write up explaining our process making it. Hopefully you get a chance to see our handy work in person =;)

Versus show piece, the process proceeds

Finally after grabbing some supplies, rayzor is ready to get going on his part of the piece.

A stencil of our good friend RicHard. The original photo was from a post card he gave me. It was scanned and I brought it into photoshop, did some adjustments and printed it out on a number of sheets to be a suitable size to create the stencil. Rayzor cut the vellum stencil by hand with a tiny swivel knife.

It looks pretty good. He gets his airbrush out and adheres the stencil to the canvas. Here is it applied to the canvas. There is a lot that can be done creatively with the hair. I suggested he paint dancing flames to make it really dynamic. We lined up the mouth to continue diagonally into what will be the weapon jutting from his cavernous mouth.

I picked up a large piece of watercolor paper to create my stencil. I will be using this stencil for other projects but it may come into play here. It's of the wrestler BATISTA - No relation.  Rayzor's swivel knife and other exacto blade are no good for my needs. I will have to pick up new blades for mine and get working on it tomorrow. This printout was made using the same technique and has been taped down ready to go.

BATISTA = NO RELATION!

Back in the saddle

What a start to the day. I'm slaving away doing catch up. While I was under my rock things began to pile up. I've got all sorts of exciting new opportunities and developments on the horizon.  Back to the subjects of quality and integrity.... if you are going to do something you might as well do it right and as best as you can the first time.

I am part of a show at the house gallery titled versus. 
here's the rundown: basically 2 artists share a canvas and create two characters in conflict. I've partnered up with Ray Kruger my room mate, making it extremely convenient)

The canvas was dropped off to us. Unfortunately it needed a lot of work to be adequate for us to spend hours painting on. It had a very rough surface, with a few coats of gesso sprayed on it. I could sand it down and apply some more coats to make a better ground on which to paint.

There were some tears in the canvas, it appeared to have been stretched in a rush. Small staples had been used so I began to weight the option of pulling every single one out, repainting the canvas and restricting the canvas over the frame again. but there there was the frame......

Here was the clincher in this adventure for me. The canvas had been stretched over a frame without a beveled edge. This means the canvas was loose and had an edge all the way around in contact with the support material. Basically, it had become glued to the lumber all the way around. This does not fair well for quality or longevity. It need a beveled edge before we can do anything.

I had to painstakingly remove each and every staple to remove the canvas so that I can give the softwood lumber frame to Ray so he can use a router a bevel on it. I do have concerns abut the frame. Softwood is not the most ideal lumber for building stretcher frames, it tends to warp, especially if it is cut from cheap stock like 2x4 or if there are changes in humidity and temperature. what might be good for inexpensive furniture is not for fine art. Plywood laminates are much better choice if cost is an issue. Mainly because of the criss crossing grain pattern offers strength and stability. I got all the staples out and the canvas off the frame so I could take it back home for some woodworking.

Ray-zor cut the bevel and I took the frame back to the studio. I decided to use some of my higher quality heavier stock canvas since we had already gone thru this much work repairing the canvas. The original piece was thin and torn and pilled.

This shot shows the beveled edge some staples that were added to further stabilize the corner seams. I noticed the lumber was quite torqued so with proper stretching my fear was that it might pull the canvas apart under the tension. also some of the corners did not line up.

Here is the backside as I get close to folding the corners. The pieces of lumber didn't quite line up so I added more staples of a thicker gauge to hold it together better.

After some time spent, a labor of love........ I get the canvas stretched over the frame. I hammered in any staples that did not go deep enough into the wood and now it is ready for the next stage= priming.

Alongside some canvases I stretched prior, is the canvas with the first oat of gesso applied. I used what I had left in the bucket a purple tinted one. You will notice that it sits in the rear of the photo flat on the ground, not that flat,  the frame still appears to have torqued wood. After another coat or two of gesso dries, I will re-assess whether or not it has settled, or whether it news repair or replacement. My fingers are crossed, I want to get started painting this guy;)

Integrity and artwork pricing

or Show some respect!  My uphill battle selling art.

I premiered my latest creation "The Wheel of Deluded Existence" at Derek Bisbing and Jim Laing's House Gallery show titled Horror 2. I feel it was a tremendous success, so much so that two drunken attendees insisted they love my painting, and had to have it even if it was unfinished. I was highly flattered.  Then one of the ladies became really belligerent referring to herself as a  "bitch" <---(her words not mine).  I was stone cold sober, so I can say with great confidence that it was mostly over the price tag.

Fact: There was no price. I simply stated how many hours had been put into the piece so far. 50 hrs. to be exact.  I explained that the work was not complete an that the final price would reflect the additional hours I hope to put in in order to make the work exceptional. She went as far as telling me, the artist, that I would ruin the work if I kept working on it more.  Expect at least 30 hrs. more on this one!

 Above: The Wheel of Deluded Existence @ 50 hrs.
Photo by Derek Bisbing

They said they wanted it anyway, as is. I couldn't let it go unfinished especially at the price they were willing to offer. Now at this point is when I realized that some people are going to be cheap and really low ball you and disrespect you to get what they want. These are not the type of people I want to deal with, and especially not the type I want owning a Brian Batista original. I asked how much my 50 hrs. were worth to her? No reply. So, I asked what 50 hrs. of her time would be worth. Hell, she could even trade something....No answer. I said if she wasn't willing to offer anything remotely close to $1000 for my 50 hrs. (that is equal to $20 per hr. -art materials) She should not bother talking to me about it.

That's why I don't just put a price. People scoff and judge the work differently if the price is too high or not high enough. Its a real art killer. There was no resolution, just dancing around the issue of me not listing a price. "Make me an offer."  What resulted was pussyfooting. However, they were so emotionally attached to the fact that I put my hours of labor over a definitive numeric value that they just couldn't let it go. It did not help them avoid embarrassment with the small change they were willing to trade.  They insisted that since the painting wasn't finished it should be cheaper. Seriously?!

I learned a valuable lesson here after a friend turned to me and said "did I just see you NOT sell your painting to them". I nodded. I was not valued by this person, and underneath it all....... neither was my work.  Sure she loved it, but not as much as it is worth.  I'm not making stuff for a pitiful $10/hr. plus materials. At the end of the night,  she still asked me for my card. I told her to visit Market Collective where I was selling prints, where she could pick up something she could afford. BAM!

 The result of this event is helping shape my artistic business practice: 

I'm the type of artist to work on something in great detail. I do not  make short pithy ideas or contemporary "one liners" that can be sold at an inflated price. My work takes DEDICATION, SKILL, CONCENTRATION and EFFORT to produce. For this piece I tallied up the hours on the top of the painting as I went! It can take a surprising amount of TIME to paint something. So far..... 50 hrs.

I think this is the way I will label my work  from now on. This is my profession and people are constantly under valuing my skills and efforts.  On the other end are the artists who give the rest of us a bad name, selling lazy crap for millions of ddollars. I'm willing to trade my 50 hrs. for 50 hrs. in their craft and take $ out of the equation all together. It may be a luxury but it's my integrity:


I decide who gets my work. I decide if the deal is fair and I decide if the painting is done!

If you like my work and what I have to say, I just created a facebook "fan" page, click here to 'like'!


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