This Week’s Art: Sickert’s “The Camden Town Murder”
What I find fascinating about art is how much the idea of audience interpretation comes into play. Whether it’s a detailed illustration, or something abstract, there’s always a sense that good art brings the viewer into this new world, for better or for worse. In this case, in a much more overt way than the painting […]
This Week’s Art: Henry Ossawa Tanner’s “The Banjo Lesson”
One of the challenges of memorable art is capturing an emotional moment between people. It can be something extreme like a moment of action, or something very subtle in the way a profile looks. Hitting the middle ground of softer actions and subtleties is difficult, it can lean one way or the other very quickly. […]
There’s probably something to be said about me when it comes to the reasons why I like “The Prisoner” by Yaroshenko. Maybe I’m a darker soul, a lonely one, or even just someone who contemplates life frequently, but this type of image really speaks to me. It’s not that this painting is particularly complex, either. […]
This Week’s Art: Processions in the art of John Singer Sargent
As I was looking at John Singer Sargent’s work, in anticipation of writing today’s article about his wonderful “Cashmere” painting below, I started looking at many of his other works. Now, that’s not at all unusual, I find myself leaping down the rabbit hole when it comes to art most of the time, and looking […]
This Week’s Art: David Roberts’ Great Temple of Aboosimble Nubia
There are certainly artistic sways to and fro, but his accuracy is truly astonishing. Roberts not only captured the sense of being there, but accurately captured the details as well. He used time honored tricks for showing scale as well, such as the fine folks shown in the close-up below. They don't seem very interested in being so close to these epic statues, I guess that's not the reaction I would have personally.
When I talk about art, and believe me that’s pretty much every day of my life, I often touch on the things that I really love about particular pieces. Sometimes it’s composition, or texture, even just a color within the piece. Sometimes I get very technical with it, often it probably comes across more like, […]
I get asked a few times a month for my current commission rates, for folks interested in having me do cover work, or maybe an ink or acrylic piece. Sometimes they hire, sometimes they don’t, that’s just business. But there’s an underlying element often of folks who don’t want to pay anything. Ever. They just […]
Life influencing art, scaring the bejesus out of me
Earlier this week, author Ray Garton (who’s awesome, and you should read all his stories) asked on one of the social networks (the blue one) about sleep paralysis. For those who aren’t familiar with the phenomenon, sleep paralysis, also known as night terrors, is perhaps the scariest thing you could ever imagine. You wake up […]
I think it’s important as an artist to look at various kinds of art each day. Just as it is important for graphic designers, filmmakers, authors, and anyone with a creative side, seeing the works of others can help a creative person learn more about what they do. In that respect, I used to write […]
No, I didn’t misspell that title, it actually is spelled “valravn”. The valravn is my new artwork, and new Alphabeast. From Danish folklore, a valravn is a half-wolf, half-raven creature. From Wikipedia (and a couple of other sites): “The valravns appear in traditional Danish folksongs, where they are described as originating from ravens who consume […]
For some time, I’ve been wanting to create another “loose” piece, using scratchboard, ink, acrylic, and seemingly everything else I can find in my office. Quite a few people like the previous piece like this, last year’s The Lost Nightmare, and I thought today would be a good time to try another. I had picked […]
Recently, I’ve had a couple of commissions to do ebook covers. Which is great, because I really am a starving artist (unemployed and all), so commissions help me survive. But that’s only part of why we’re here, the other side of it (and the point of this article) is designing for ebook covers. Now, at […]
I started out to make a new sketchcard (same size and specs as the others, 5″x7″ inked), with the idea of doing one of Lon Chaney Sr.’s famous monsters. I chose his Phantom of the Opera, basing it off of a couple of photos. As I worked though, for some reason a certain softness, a […]
I was hoping to do quite a few more small inked cards (I’ve been calling them “sketchcards”), but I haven’t had as much time as I’d hoped. But, tonight, I managed to get one finished. I call it Phibes, and it’s based on the character from the “Dr. Phibes” movies. Since it’s Vincent Price Day, […]
I’ve been lucky over the past few weeks to get to work with the fantastic Thunderstorm Books. I’ve been working on three books for their Maelstrom imprint, beginning with tonight’s showcase, the cover for author Kelli Owen’s Six Days. For me, this first book is special because it’s Kelli’s first novel. As she and others […]
Being a graphic designer as well as an artist can lead to some fun projects. When I’m working with authors, I tend to try to help them with what they need to push the books I’m doing the covers or other artwork for. After all, if they do well then hopefully I’ll get noticed as […]
I decided, since I had a few old frames left over from another project, that the best thing to do would be to destroy the ever-loving hell out of one of them.
Sometimes, I shudder to post new ideas or new techniques that I try. I never know if they really work out, if they are ok but just need work, or if they are so awful that the sun will shrivel up and we’ll all die. But, I also think that as an artist I always […]
Awhile back (and by “awhile back” I mean “over a year ago”) I wrote an art blog of Frederic Edwin Church’s beautiful painting called The Icebergs (check out the blog here… I”ll wait.) I won’t bore you with the specs again (I’ll be boring you with other ways now), but seeing it in person I […]
I’ve been trying to get back into art as strongly as I can, especially with my being a guest at VisionCon in January. It’s been tough, between family life, day job, being out of town for said job, and so on. But I managed to squeeze in some time this afternoon, and I created an […]
An interesting discussion came up today (both online and in real life) about what music drives our particular passions. I decided to go through my iTunes library and really see which tracks influence my art, or at least which tracks really drive me in certain directions with the type and style of work I’m doing. […]
I’m working on a Flash book trailer for a client (you’ll see soon enough, it’s not a small client), and for testing with converting Flash animation to video I decided to create a promo for my own art. After a number of unique issues (I’m looking at you, Kaspersky), I was finally able to upload […]
While I was helping my daughter with my homework, I decided to work out some Monday sort of frustrations with new artwork. I don’t think it turned out too bad actually. I call it, “Asylum Days”.
I created a few computer desktop/wallpapers from the art that I did for Brian Keene’s Scratch. Here they are below: Download here Download here Download here
