Adventure

The American adventure into space, which started nearly fifty years ago, saw the landing of its last shuttle at 5:57 a.m. on Thursday.

For centuries, our species has found the next big adventure and jumped in.

Whether it be a flight of fancy,


or a harrowing journey to an unexplored land,

we carry the spirit of adventure to the next horizon.

There we find beauty.

We find mystery.

We find majesty.

Is it possible that we are the generation who has the burden of saying that, because space exploration doesn't turn a quarterly profit, it is not worth our time?


We don't have to let money dictate our dreams.







On a side note, this is Timmy.

I keep him under my bed to ward away monsters.

All Day Speed Painting

So after finding out that The Lion Sleeps Tonight is an incredibly old African hunting song, I decided to see if there were any dubstep versions.
There are.
They are terrible.


I always imagine dubstep as the music that large robots dance to.


(1.5 hours from imagination)

(1.5 hour from a photo)

I have been trying to figure out how to paint faces.

(30 min. from a photo)


(30 min. from a photo)

(30 min. from a photo)

(1 hour from a photo)

(1 hour from a photo)

Fine folk, I have been anti-socially on my computer for the better part of the day, so without further adieu, I wish you all a beautiful night!


(45 min. from imagination)

A Scattered Summary of Speed Paintings

I've heard it said that on average the trauma of moving is greater than that of loosing a spouse.

(30 min. from a photo)

Being that I don't have a spouse, i can't really attest to the truth of that statement. After a month of moving two houses, though, I can certainly say that it is immensely unpleasant. There is a sort of horrific nostalgia to the process of repeatedly putting yourself in contact with memories you are no longer a part of. Then you are faced with the choice of what parts of your childhood you can keep and what parts you no longer have room for.

(30 min. from a photo)

So many memories have become homeless.
I've been trying to keep my sanity in tact by doing speed paintings.

(1.5 hours from imagination)

Though it did not make the moving process any more fun, it did help keep me sane.
My first few paintings were a bit rough.


(30 min. from a photo)


(30 min from a photo)

(1 hour from a photo)

I'm never sure whether or not people know this is a painting of the surf.

(1 hour from a photo)

Shortly after doing this painting, I discovered how to turn on the pressure sensitivity on my Wacom tablet.


(45 min. from imagination)

I no longer felt as though I was imprisoned by this "helpful" technology.
(Speaking of which, I just figured out a faster way of placing these images into my blog-- woohoo!!!)

(30 min. from a photo)


(30 min. from imagination)

(30 min. from a photo)

(30 min. from imagination)

I painted these last five today. The similarities are quite intentional. My newest assignment to myself is to take what I've learned from painting a photo and translate it to something from my imagination.

Well, it's time for me to go. I hope you all have a fantastic evening.

And please, don't do anything too crazy =)

(30 min. from a photo --Rioters in Greece)

The Things They Don't Teach You in School

Yikes! I haven't put anything up here in forever! Well, I guess it will take a couple of posts to update ya'll on what I've been up to. Mostly I have been doing school work, and in my free time I have been teaching myself Photoshop.

My first attempt was a little shaky. I think this took me a couple hours. (it's a self portrait. Yikes!) After a couple of discouraging months, I started painting from life again.




These were my first four attempts at painting other people from life. Kaitlyn Malone, Michael Montafi, and Joe Raffanti.

Doing portraits of friends turned out to be a wonderful little adventure, but complications arose when I started painting strangers from life. When I paint in a coffee shop, I have my Wacom tablet in my lap, I am usually squinting intensely, and if I am concentrating especially hard, i tend to lick my lips. I have been told the lip licking thing has something to do with poor exercise during my youth. Regardless of why I do it, I realize it must look rather creepy to see some random stranger, squinting in your direction, licking his lips, and doing something in his lap.

I was working on the book and the coffee cup when I looked up and saw she was staring straight at me with a look of disgust.

She hastily stood up and left.

I moved on to inanimate objects after that.

Evolution

I have been thinking about evolution recently. I don't mean humans and their upright apeness. My musings are more along the lines of consciousness: at what point is consciousness evolving and at what point is it merely changing? I can see changes in myself, but the question that haunts me is whether I am truly becoming a better, more sociologically equipped adult, or whether I am merely changing into a different person. Either way, while the face in the mirror is the same, the person is different and I'm not sure if I like him as much as the other guy.

Sometimes I feel my shadow has more color to it than I do.


Or perhaps my life is just a sort of washed out dream.


Maybe it's just that age changes you. Each moment is a further experience to confirm or deny ideologies of the past. Enough denial forces an ideological change. Ideally, the weak and sick ideologies die and the strong survive. Okay, so less of the philosophical talk. I'll talk about a different kind of evolution. Artistic evolution.


With this one, I drew it first in pencil and then started in with pen. By the time I got to paint, the motorcycle had driven off.


I was more secure in my abilities when I did this one so I just sketched with pencil before I started in with paint, but it's floating without a background.


This one has a background.I decided to paint this one without using a pencil lay-in.

So, besides these motorcycles becoming more motorcycle like, I just realized there was a hair on the scanner. Extra points to those of you who can find the hair in each picture! (I guess future personal artistic evolution would include examining the scanner to make sure that there are no hairs.)


Another example: this is an early drawing of one of my dear friends, Michael Montafi. It looks absolutely NOTHING like him. (30 min)


This one is a lot more like him. (10 min)


This one is more developed, but is ultimately not a great deal better than the one above it.
The gentleman on the right is Michael, the gentleman on the left is another very dear friend: Joe Raffanti. Unfortunately, this is one of my first attempts at doing a portrait of Joe and it is lacking in Joe-ness. (20 min)

So, I have decided i am frustrated with technology. I could have rendered this computer in the time that it took me to upload these images. I have to remind myself that I am lucky that I don't have to set the type for these words, but still--This post took me three hours. Perhaps someday I will have a more evolved sense of how to deal with ones and zeros as a medium of communication. Until then, have a beautiful day!

Summer Paintings

So, I definitely am not sure how to do this whole posting business! I want the text to appear on top or in between the images, yet it always appears at the bottom! Yay for the efficiency of the computer age! Trivial griping aside, I have been painting!!! It has been amazingly fun to tackle things that just scare me half to death. (from an artistic standpoint) My first self portrait in a year. In all past self portraits, I have looked young, drugged, or Asian. I am not sure why it is always these three things, but suffice it to say, this is the best I have thus far done!

I have always wanted to do a painting of a Converse shoe. I'm not sure why.


And, of course, I love trees! They represent a level of design, aesthetics, and pure scientific genius that human beings have yet to scratch the surface of!


Speaking of design, this is a P-51 Mustang that I came in contact with the other day!


This is a scaled suit of armor. All of the joints move and are put together in as accurate a form as possible. Hundreds of pounds of fitted metal armor would be strapped to the stalky folk they called Knights. On a horse, these warriors were a footsoldier's worst nightmare. Knock a knight off his horse, though, and the weight of his armor mad him an immovable pin-cushion.


My friends and I are convinced that the Armenians at Starbucks are part of the mafia.


They drive expensive cars, speak in Russian, and glare at the artistic ruffians in the corner.


(artistic ruffians in the corner)

I think the griping was in vain. I believe I have figured out how to post text between images. when I hit "Publish Post" I guess we shall find out! So, on this beautiful summer afternoon, this is Sparky, signing off and ready to paint!