Many jobs, many hats, it's monday mish mash

In an effort to save up for my trip to Italy and keep productive and out of the house, I've been working triples. Wake up early, get home late. I taught after effects all last week to grade 9's at one of the CBE art schools. I hd 6 lasses of 30 or more, it was brutal but the impossible was accomplished. I am also teaching all my regular classes as well as working on a mural with Martinho plus I have some commissions on the go see a sneak peek below.

My kitchen table has become a make shift studio once more until I figure out an alternative space.

I do love painting anatomical hearts this way.  I have also keep up a very fulfilling and busy regiment by teaching on my only free day off at Swinton's. Alas, there won't be another for a few weeks but I do love the samplers.

I paint neon pink on all my sampler supplies in the case somebody gets into my stuff. I do a big into at the start and then we mix colours to see how the pigments behave.

I love colour so much and I am always amazed at the colours the participants choose to create during this part of the session.

 We then select an image to pant and go about blocking in the large areas of colour. I love it when the background colour shies through. This landscape is very enticing to me.

 Here is one more refined, all the leaves etc were done with the tip of a palette knife, I really like this artists style and choice of colours.

 Here is this lady's first sunflower painting, she brought her mom who also made a nice piece that day.

 In our cartooning things got wiggy by the end as I crammed tons of perspective drawing techniques and exercises into my 3 hour tour.

hat was really hard but I always aim to please. I hope to deliver the most amount of education I can so that artists walk away having learned so much they can keep running on the fumes for a while and what they learn they can carry with them as important techniques and tools for their artistic success. When I get another break there will be more to come. All work and no play make Jack a dull boy. But not me,  I'm not sure I'll ever be dull.

Sacred heart

This is the final stages of my piece that I created for the Chatterson Drive project.  I took the piece home to put in a few more hours on it before handing it over with a nice thick clear gloss protective layer.

I revisited the sacred geometry portion and drew it back in with a very thin sharpie marker. I then followed along and filled in the vesica piscis with black gesso. From this view it resembles a heart.

I used golden acrylic gold paint to dot the connection points and to add reflectivity. Here is the final piece on my kitchen linoleum, I like how the grid looked in this composition so I didn't crop it out.

Here is the iphone/instagram selfie Mandy Stobo took of us the day we started in on this project. Fortunately, my beard has come a long way in the past week. lol.

Here is the finished piece:

Harmony and Connectivity

This Wednesday evening, after work I was fortunate to be asked to join two other awesome artists (Mandy Stobo and IronbrushYYC) in creating pieces for Chatterson Drive Strategic Real Estate Solutions. We were given a subject and we were filmed by their motion department creating original pieces for a project they are pitching. They were a really awesome group and the four or so hours I worked I had a lot of fun.

They gave us an example pitch of what they hoped to achieve with the work and then they gave us each a 2 X 2 canvas to get to work. I decided to find the centre and begin with some sacred geometry. I began with drawing a flower of life using a scrap CD I had laying around. I don't know why I didn't think of this before!

I ran the fine liner I had right into the ground. I then turned to my trusty bottle of ink and dipped the pen nib in and used it like that. I then squirted some clear medium and smudged it over obliterating the surface. I water for it to dry before applying some paint.

I started by doing the touter part and edges of the canvas with some copper. I just let the brush tell me what to do and where to go and then I applied the cat pee (ammonia solution) to the surface allowing it to drip and chemically react with the copper surface.

I painted in the centre circle and allowed the chemical process to take place. Then went in with some fluorescent pink. I kinda wish I had the nerve to call it done at this point. Alas I like layers too much.

I followed suit with bright yellow and a neutral grey. I began picking out shapes and enhancing the circles. I don't know which direction will be up yet, i'll figure it out when it is done. Painting for me is a discovery. It is a challenge of push and pull in order to create harmony. In fact, often it creates itself and I'm just doing the work but am along for the ride.

I went in with some orange as time began to run out and I needed to clean up my make shift studio space.I thought I would be able to finish the piece, but my perfectionism wouldn't let me leave it as is, so I brought it home to put in a few more hours of work on it. More to come when it is done!

A beautiful day in the neighborhood

It certainly was nice out.  It was also the day voters were out and about walking to the voting station. I had many people stop by and talk to me while I got the tiniest bit of sun painting the Ramsay mural on the side of my neighbors garage.

This is the lettering I drew in my sketchbook for the design and took a photo of to get it into the computer to help me get it up on the wall quickly.

This is where we left off previously. My neighbor got into his coveralls and began blocking in the taped off lettering.

Most of the bold black shadow was filled in, in the bulky areas with a 1 inch painters brush. He eagerly awaits me to come finish the piece. Alas, I had to recover in bed licking my wounds and then it was wet and rainy the day I was supposed to finish up.

The next morning, after breakfast at Reds and being one of the first people to Vote in Ramsay that morning.......... I got out my lettering brushes and began fixing up the details and outlining the letters so they would pop more. It was tedious with the quality of paint we were using, but it is water soluble and not sticky enamel that is a pain to clean up and hazardous to ones health. But man, my one shot black lettering paint is way more velvety than this water based product. Difference in price was $11 in favor of the more health conscious variety.

I got down to it at about 11 and I finished around 6. I ended up outlining the lower letters in white and managed to snap a picture with me in it while the sun was still up.

I did some more details by adding darts to the lower letters but the sun was quickly falling and it is time to call it a night. Pack up my gear and clean up my brushes and gander on with a job well done.

Next step is to clear coat it with a satin or mat finish to unify the entire piece and protect it in the off chance it gets damaged or vandalized in the months and years to come.

Mr. Lee, Bruce Lee

I love Bruce Lee

I was commissioned to paint a 12 X 16 portrait of Bruce Lee for a friends father for his X-mas present.   I knew what I was going to paint because she selected an image for me to work from.  At first, I thought I'd do a black and white rendition and paint the background in a shiny gold. The finished piece will be mounted in thick black frame from Wal-Mart. I had to pick up a canvas panel that would fit her frame.

I know that I can make something beautiful in paint, but I wasn't sure how it would turn out.

I decided to try out a new technique and do an image transfer.  At the Emmedia X-mas party Melody J. at Fairytales was kind enough to print it out for me on her printer, in colour.   I ended up doing some photoshopping prior to get it to fit onto two 8.5" X 11" sheets of standard paper.  Then I covered the canvas board in clear primer, put the print face down and let it dry.  I used water to wash the paper off the back of the print allowing the ink to stay imbedded in the clear primer. I rubbed it down to make it look like an old movie poster from the days of Bruce Lee's film releases.

I clear coated the image to make sure it would stay fixed down. I then applied a wet wash of Burnt Umber to the entire image. I used a paper towel to wipe more of it away from the surface of the image transfer than the rest. The colour darkened the whites of the canvas. I then thickly applied a red background over the dark umber wash. At this pint I'm choosing red because it works as a great underpainting to gold in case I still apply it later on. I love how old its looking at this point, I want to keep it for myself.

Then I began to block in the painting starting with the darks. I outlined the drawing to help it to pop. I used brown washes and added back some yellows and high lights.  I used black Gesso for his hair and pants. I mixed iridescent silver with Paynes Grey for the shine on his pants. I used an iridescent gold, not for the background but for his skin. This changed my initial idea to have a gold background and solidified the next step, painting the red background for a third time to creating more depth and texture.

I am really proud how this piece turned out. Of course, I low balled to get the gig. But damn, she is getting a really nice piece of art!

Studio party and new furniture!

Studio Party Tonight!!


I will be joined by a few friends and anyone else who want to pop in for an impromptu Studio Party.  DJ Cosmic Lurk N Bang will be spinning sweet tracks. I have some students from my November Canvas Building Workshop coming in to pick up their supports,  while Jesse Gouchey and Myself work on our respective commissions. Al Chu and Ej Negre will be in the house and maybe a special guest appearance or two.

Got some new furniture for the studio. Here it is stacked in the freight elevator on its way up to my studio on the 5th floor. I'm bringing in my pine book shelf from home so I can have all my art books and reference material close at hand. I also purchased this custom "easy - fit" Animation table from the Quickdraw animation society for  a steal $75, it used to be from the Alberta College of Art and Design's previous Animation program. It even came with x-tra light bulbs.

I can't believe how the furniture blends in to my floor. Here are all the components, laid out ready to assemble.  I started putting the shelf together but once I decided where things were going to go I realized there was a lot of stuff that I had to move. What is that old saying, "you've got to make a mess to clean a mess"?! So I changed out my table to create room by the plug for the animation stand and book shelf.  I began putting together the animation table, had it 98% complete, then it came crashing down on my head. It's a two person job, even when it is together its still pretty wobbly. I will have to add some structural support to the "easy assembly- fit together" design because it doesn't quite cut it.