Belated Dia de los Muertos...

Back in November I joined in with other members of the Autumn Society for the "8 Bit Calavera" show at Ground Kontrol in Portland, Oregon. *Note: calavera is the spanish word for skull and is significant in decorations for the Mexican Day of the Dead holiday- and who said blogs can't be educational. The artists worked under constraints for creating pieces for this show, we were to use old Nintendo cartridges to create faces and after all 40 individual calavera's were created, they were installed at Ground Kontrol to make one mega calavera.

My piece for the show was "Barracho Nacho", "barracho" being a word for drunk and "Nacho" just being a name that rhymed, I thought it worked with the lolling tongue under the teeth. The format for creating work being outside of my usual style, I just was looking to do something fun. The eyes are made out of some bling'ed out buttons that I found, the teeth are just clay covered over with aluminum foil, its painted with acrylics and I think my favorite touch is the curled moustache, which is made from a couple of craft feathers.

Here's some shots of the final installation thanks to the people at Ground Kontrol:

Madame Marie D'Sangre

Madame Marie D'Sangre is a sophisticated mosquito, she enjoys sipping her favorite drink, Mary's Blood, on warm summer evenings.

She was created with sculpey, fabric, acrylic paints and other found objects and was photographed by the artist. She is currently on display at Jinxed, Philadelphia, PA.

Delightful Pets

Here's a piece I did for my recent show at Jinxed in Philadelphia, PA. It was a part of a series of fantasy creatures I had conceptualized. I'm also going to repurpose it for an Illustration Friday challenge, "Cage"- shhh, don't tell anyone.

Hellboy 15th Anniversary Group Show

Last Friday, Dec. 4th, I had the pleasure of showing in the Autumn Society's Hellboy group show. It was a fun night and I would like to thank everyone for their hard work in organizing the show. I decided to make my own rendition of Hellboy's gilled side-kick Abe Sapian. The piece is titled "Two Lost Souls Swimming in a Fishbowl". I liked the basic design of the character and I enjoy his quirks, Abe's love of classical music for one. Along with the finished illustration, I've included some work in progress shots and detail shots.

-Poster by Peter Wonsowski & Justin Grey

-Basic sketch and color study. I couldn't find the right object to make the phonograph have that nice arcing fluted shape. This is the down-side to working with found object elements, you have to find the parts of things to use them. As I was working in time constraints, I had to settle for a smaller cone shape. The composition has also changed somewhat from the sketch to the finish.

-On the right of this photo is a kind of "visual shopping list" comprised of collected reference and I also attached a couple of swatches of fabric that I knew I was going to use to make the main figure, Abe Sapian.

-This is a detail of the phonograph in the shot. I wanted to include it because it is out of focus in the finished illustration and I like the way it turned-out. It's constructed from a ring box, armature wire, K&S aluminum pipe, the top of a cone incense burner, a washer and a couple of nails.