yums in the tums

this'uns a new postcard for the "28 cent" group. this month's topic: send some random shmo a vegetarian recipe, whether he likes it or not! ha ha! take that, carnivores!

now i'm going to go eat some delicious veggie fajitas and watch Food, Inc.

new painting, "the listeners"

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The Listeners
10"x10", Acrylic on panel

this painting is going to be in the 10x10=100 art show and sale at south street gallery in greenport, ny. the preview is friday, december 11, and the sale begins saturday, december 12 at 6pm

i am near delirium from paper writing, but i am now 10.5 pages into my 15-20 page paper for my long island environment class. so i apologize if my writing is neither witty or remotely interesting at the moment. my writing muscles are beat right now.

i'll give you one if you give me one

i'm involved in two different postcard-exchange groups right now. one group is arty, the other is wordy, but i'm doing both with handmade cards. that's just how i roll, as you already know. here are a few recent ones i've made (the last card is the funnest, so don't miss it, lazyfingers!):

Design for 'Hope'

Yours for Now just finished their second EP, and they are having a Release Party/Possibly Last Show Ever next Friday, November 6th, at Hank's Saloon. It's going to be a fun time, and you will regret it for the rest of your life if you don't go. You'll lie to your grandkids and tell them you were there, and then you will feel terrible for days about lying to your own grandchildren! As you should. Anyway, I did their album art, which you can see below:

COVER

INSERT BOOKLET - FRONT

BAND PORTRAIT (Side note: This was replaced by a lyrics sheet, but I wanted to show you my drawing instead. I'm starved for attention, I know.)

INSERT BOOKLET - BACK

BACK COVER

get off the couch, loser!

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please join me at what is bound to be a super-fun show. yours for now are good friends of mine, and they gave me the honor of doing their cover art for their new EP "living in circles". i also did the gig poster above, a'course. so get off your bum and go get your face rocked inside out next saturday!

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don't look

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Do You Know How Animals Die?
watercolor on paper
11.75" x 8.5"

this is the latest in my "what humans do to other animals" series--well, now that there are two, i can call it a series.

for the record, i'm not saying that no one should ever eat meat. i do, however, think that everyone--humans and animals alike--would benefit if people ate far less meat than they do right now. if people ate the actual recommended allowance for the meat and beans group(six ounces or less, depending on one's age and sex) the demand for meat would be lower, and we would have no need for factory farms and overfishing. cows, pigs, and chickens could put their feet on the ground where they belong, rather than on concrete or metal wire for their entire lives. fish species would have a chance to recover from years of overfishing to fill all-you-can-eat platters.

what can you do? when you can, try to eat food that is grown locally. greatly reduce or eliminate fast food from your diet (your heart will thank you). never eat fois gras or veal. watch the video meet your meat, and eat mindfully.

freens and fambly

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Ryan, Jo Ann, and Eric P.
graphite and colored pencil on paper
each 5" x 8"

here are three drawings i did today while on hall duty. for the record, eric's neck is not really like that in real life.

flightless wings unfold

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The Albatross about My Neck Was Hung
watercolor on paper
11" x 8.5"

I'm planning to enter this one in the East End Arts Council's next juried show, which has water as its theme.

A question for the audience: Is it apparent what is happening in this picture, or is it too subtle?

By the way, my painting entitled Levi (see previous post) was accepted in the "Bodies at Rest" show, and it's on display until July 10 at the EEAC in Riverhead. High five!

attempts at legitimacy

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Levi
Acrylic on canvas
8" x 10"

i just took this new painting down to the east end arts council for its possible acceptance in their "bodies at rest" show. wish me luck!

fun with the postal service

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my new acquaintance alex, who is a friend of my sister-in-law emily, has started up an art project in which the participants trade hand-made postcards. i signed up at the "no dear" poetry reading (where julia read her lovely poem about the science of consumption!), and i received a postcard from alex last week. so this was my reply, front and back. i have digitally altered alex's last name and address, to protect the innocent, of course. i also added the fake postmark, because i am a dork.

david cross redux

David Cross
graphite on paper with digital coloring, 5" x 8"

i finally colored my portrait of david cross! it was actually the first celebrity drawing i ever did (in 2007? i forget), back when i was only going to draw celebs i had seen in person. of course, now that i live in speonk, that happens less often--although the jules and i did see rachel weisz at an art reception in the hamptons a couple of weeks ago. we were (briefly) listening to some crap band that the geezers were calling "punk", when we realized that ms. weisz was standing right behind us. when we went back into the gallery, she sort of followed us around for a while. embarrassing, really.

that boy's on the drugs, i tell ya

here's the latest insane card i've made for one of my parents. i wonder if they keep these things.

outside: inside:

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Mother's Day 2009
Mixed media on paper, 10" x 13" (double-sided)

colonialism sucks, non-violent protest rules

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Mahatma Ghandi
graphite on paper with digital collage, 5" x 8"

this is for illustration friday's "legendary" theme this week. i'd say he meets the requirements.

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

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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.

me and the beard

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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.

i did not draw this on location

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it's been a while since i've put up anything with scenery. i love doing the portraits, but every now and then i need a change of pace, you know? this drawing was inspired by a photo i came across on the adventure 16 blog, which you can see here.

i'm still working mainly in colored pencil, but lately i've been throwing in a few change-ups here and there (more liberal use of graphite, pen and ink, digital manipulations, etc.)

i've really been pushing to get commissions as of late, putting myself out there as much as i can. i joined hireanillustrator.com, spraygraphic.com, stars-portraits.com, and so forth, in hopes that the right person is going to discover me soon. grad school ain't gonna pay for itself, folks!

a great white guy in the great white north

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here's conan o'brien, in his royal canadian mounted police uniform, from the week he did the show in toronto. i loved the look of the white gloves against the red jacket, though i think the real guys usually wear brown gloves for the most part.

i did something a little different this time, using black and red ink in the belt and jacket areas. i used the ink for the base layer, then added colored pencil over it. it really makes the color all bursty, don't you think?

reunited and it feels so good

some of you out there may have heard me at some point tell a story about myself as a young lad of about seven years of age, sitting in my driveway while drawing a car that was parked across the street. i remember this moment as probably the earliest inclination i might have had about being an artist. i remembered being very proud of that drawing, and i would take it with me wherever i went for the next several weeks, showing it to people.

i thought that the drawing and any evidence of it was long gone, but lo and behold, i happened upon the photo you see above while visiting my dad over christmas! in the photo you can see my brother and i in the treehouse our dad built in grandma davis' front yard, and there i am, clutching that already rough-hewn sheet of construction paper. i must've had it in my pocket, as the six fold lines would indicate. so a big thanks goes to former me, for thinking to whip out the drawing when my dad went for the camera.

this would have been enough to make the present me happy, but when i voiced my excitement about the photo to dad, he said that he probably still had the drawing itself stashed away somewhere. and after two minutes of shuffling through a dresser drawer, he produced this:

holy crap, right?

my life as a potato

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here's a fairly new one of daniel day-lewis and paul dano, stars of there will be blood. i just saw mr. dano as dwayne in little miss sunshine last night, too. i'd seen it before, but it came on television last night, so i saw it again.

julia and i had been away from home for 12 days until we finally arrived got back yesterday morning. we had intended to get a lot of work done this weekend, but when we got here, we found that we didn't want to do a thing except vegetate on the couch. we ended up watching three movies in all, so i feel like we accomplished something, no?