Monday, February 16, 2009

i'm not dead. i'm the lion. you're dead.

rainn wilson

click image for a closer look

I Hate Jim
graphite and colored pencil on paper with digital coloring, 5" x 8"

here's a new one. can you tell which part of the yellow background is hand-drawn and which part is digital? if you can, you win...um...a sense of self-satisfaction, i guess.

Saturday, February 07, 2009

me and the beard

self portrait with floral motif

click image for a closer look

Self Portrait with Floral Motif
pen and ink on paper with digital coloring, 5" x 7"

here is a self portrait i made recently. the first version is a simple pen and ink drawing, without the color bits. i made it for my friend mike freiheit's new project, in which he is enlisting several artists to do portraits of jesus. my first sketches were of a truly semitic jesus, as opposed to the anglo-jesuses we see here in the west. but then, while i was working, i happened to see my reflection in a window, and thought, "hey my beard is looking jesusy, i have a shorter haircut (which my research had revealed would probably be more accurate), and i happen to be 33 years old right now. also, i was wearing a hooded sweatshirt at that moment, and i figured it would be a good stand-in for a shepherd's robe of some sort. and maybe it could be read in a "jesus is in all of us" sort of way, as well. i certainly do not mean to say that i am the messiah or anything, so don't look to me for salvation or anything--i'm fresh out at the moment.