Some of my first paintings

Here is the first painting I did after graduation. It is also the first painting I sold to someone that wasn't a friend or family member. I sold it to family in Norway. This painting along with the one below I painting in the hallway of the apartment I lived in. It was kind of tough because I could only back up about 5 ft and these paintings are about 4 ft wide.
This is the second painting I did after collage. It was part of my first show and I there are still large parts of this painting that I'm quite proud of. My mom bought it so I get to see it anytime I go home. This is nice because so many paintings get shipped away and I never see them again. I'm not sure I should care but when you invest so much into something it would be nice to revisit it from time to time. Something they taught us at the Illustration Academy was to not get attached to your artwork. If you get too scared of messing something up you'll have a lot harder time improving. Nothing like throwing a piece of art across the room and against the wall, after you spent the last 50 hours driving yourself crazy to get it the way you want it. And that my friends is a run-on sentence.

17 degrees aint nothing

Hey guys. Guess what? My friend Carlton Mackey and myself made a mini documentary. What you see above is the poster I designed for it and above that is the film festival we are going to be in this thursday. It's called 17 degrees aint nothing. it's about 18 minutes long and it's five homeless people in atlanta. We also got this fellow into docu-fest that will be held at the carter center and we will be showing at Emory University in late June. We have other viewing planned in Atlanta and we will enter it into some national film festivals after our first few viewings and get some feed back. We will have a website to view in it's entirety later own for everyone who couldn't make it out to one of the shows. Carlton Mackey's blog is http://visionphilms.blogspot.com/ Check it out, it's good stuff!

There were four in this series. I believe I posted two others a while back.

If any one still looks at this blog I thought you might be tired of looking at my sketches so pulled this up out of the archives. A women's tee shirt I did a few years ago. There are two others in the same vibe. I'll post those later.

another sketch.

I recently went to philly to see a friend and while I was there I had plenty of that great time to read and draw. So I did both. Here is some of what I did. I was rusty at first so it took a few pages to shake off the cobwebs but then it started to come back. I get in these modes where I don't do any fun sketching. It's always prep and study drawing for a painting and then the painting. I felt my drawing skills fading, so I took about a week or so worked on fundamentals. None of those drawings are here but being an artblog I though I would mention it. I'm also working on a couple of paintings and I'm really excited about how they're turning out

This is a sketch of a painting I want to do. I've stretched the canvas, and drawn it several times but I've never painted this many figures so I always choose to do a little more prep or work on something else.

This is a drawing from a photo I came across of toulouse lautrec. Wait... I'll just post the photo too. It's hilarious!

Here's a sketch for another painting I'll be doing soon. There is more going on in the final composition. This sketch was frustrating me and it probably comes threw. I need to do these sketches in rapid succession and not get hung up on just one. They're just studies for the final painting, but sometimes I get hardheaded and want to fight a drawing into submission. It's a fight a rarely win. Anyways I plan on getting some more done tonight and tomorrow.

Here's a sketch for the next painting. It's a commission. This is a little outside my comfort zone but I kinda excited about this painting. I going to get a chance to try my hand at that rippley, reflective water that people paint. There is alot going on in this painting but I think I can be pretty loose and free, have fun and paint fast. We'll see.

Hey guys. It's been about a month. Alot has been going on and I wont get into it. This is what I did with my last few days of Holiday vacation. I wanted to combine some of the techniques I've developed with my freelance time in front of the computer, with some more traditional painting and drawing. I want to turn this into a vertical layout with a giant lion head looking back in profile. This was just for fun and now I need to get back to the stuff that pays the bills. There will be more soon to come and I'm really curious to what art projects and or messes I will get into this year.