Lavinia completed

Created entirely in Adobe Illustrator. Lavinia is from the play Titus Andronicus by Shakespeare. To understand the shadow, you need to read/watch the play!

An enormous file, what with the amount of detail and vector work on the background mosaic. I'm rather pleased with the results.

WIP "Rosethorns"

I was doing some research for this latest piece on the drawing table, and I came across this in my Arms & Armor of the Medieval Knight. It's the last surviving piece of a gift suit of parade armor giving to Henry the VIII by Maximilian I. I have not read the full text of the book, but I like to assume there was a tease or insult in this gift.

Specifically that he thought Henry was a myopic demon.

Work in Progress - Lavinia

An unfinished figure modeling in this state takes on new meaning when it's Lavinia, of Titus Andronicus. To understand what the hell I'm eluding too, you'll have to read the play to get all the grim details.

Heian Period and beyond

I was doing some research yesterday for the illustrator Heian piece, and I refound my favorite site for japanese historical costume. The Costume Museum - The Rebirth of The Tale of Genji. They've got dolls and line illustrations of the Jomon-shiki culture's Nara era and portions of the Heian, Kamakura, Edo and Meiji periods, as well as some setting shots with miniature buildings and the like. It's VERY hard to get realistic picture or art of antique costume anywhere. And not just nobles! Commoners, soldiers and the like. They don't give in urge to play with only the most elaborate clothing. I'd love to own a few of those.

My usual reference, the first book I grab is Albert Racinet's Historical Encyclopedia of Costumes. I wish I had more of his collections. Any time you work from another artist's work - no matter the effort at realism - there's some loss in detail with each interpretation, like playing the telephone game. But as illustrations go, Racinet's is among the best if you have no existing costume examples to draw from.

Upcoming auction and appearances

It's close enough now that I should post appearances for the end of this month and November.

On October 30th, two of my pieces will be in the Minds Island auction through Live Auctioneers in New York, NY. I've got very nice placement in this session, sixth and seventh down on the page.

Lot 4010 "Did You Hear Something" - this is the orginal art, for the print that's had two runs and great sales over the years.

Lot 4011 "Stone Gods" - Shown at the spring 2004 Dane Gallery show, Indian Orchard Mills.

Very pleased with both peices, and hoping they find a good home.
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Next is the Autumn/Holiday Show at the Dane Gallery on Saturday November 13th and Sunday the 14th from Noon till 4 each day. My piece will show with 30-40 other artist's works and there will be open studios in the Mill. Cool place to work, and now you can visit and have a look at all the art and this interesting 1800's mill. Suggested $2 donation for entrance, refreshments in the gallery. Directions Here. I'll link to this blog entry on my front page so it can be found again.

Tiles complete

Whew. I'm done! The tiles at least. The individual tiles for the figure was the most tiring stretch. With the white tiles at least I could do a fair bit of copy and multiply. The full piece coming soon.

Appropriate...

This is from a traffic meter/rank over at Epilogue.com where I post a bunch of my fantasy work to drive in extra traffic to my site... and I happened to look today and saw this ranking for my halloween picture. I had to screen-capture it.

Why yes, I am insane

I got this design from the old tile work at the Lullingstone Roman Villa, a scene from the Rape of Europa by Jupiter. All those little stone tiles. It's both easier and harder than real tilework, which I've done a little of before. And this thing is going to be a background, not the feature.

I'm liking it though, and it's given me a fun idea for a future project that you'll just have to wait and see...

Halloween 2004

9"x12" w/1" border
Colored Pencil, Black Artagain.

I had fun with this one, so I've gone and put this on the front page of my website for October.

The current projects

Works going well on a few Adobe Illustrator drawings I'm doing. The next Afterhell design is turning out well, and very funny. I'm pretty sure I'll be able to show it off once done and approved. Titus's Lavinia is turning into a interesting project, and I've finally figured out the perfect background for it. It'll take time, but I think it'll be worth waiting for. And for the Heian period illo, I've got the plan mapped out in my head, but I'm still in research mode. Should be fun.


All framed up and fancy. The lighting for the photo makes the frame look a little garrish.

Now that the PBS donation's out of the studio (seen above), I'm also about to get some attention back to the drawing table. I'm taking a break from my next big piece to do a little halloween drawing. I did one last year, seen below in an eariler post, and I think I'd like to make it a tradition.

Tweek tweek

Well, I got impatient, and went and spent a morning reworking my site a little, which included tucking my blogger acct into place on my site. I'm still quite in love with my Live Journal acct, but you can't beat the quick and easy access to editing the look of blogger... and on my site's server to boot.

When the dust settles, this will be the place to keep up with art updates. If you want to get that, plus random bits of things I find interesting, too many pictures of my cat and book and movie reviews, head on over to Live Journal.

Now, lets have a few faces.

Red Blossoms

Red Blossoms
9x12"
Colored Pencil on Artagain paper

It's decided, this piece is going to the PBS auction. It will remain to be seen if it fits in, but I'm pleased with it, even the title. It feels as if, with a different intonation, it can turn from uncomplicated, to something dark. I feel an attack of Haiku coming on...

Tomorrow morning, with any luck, I do some Adobe Illustrator work. Both on a client project, and my open call subjects.

First Step

Well, I've finally grabbed a Blogger account.

When I first got into blogging it was with Live Journal, and I never really considered looking beyond it. I wouldn't have even bothered with this unless the number of people on Blogger I'm interested in leaves me wanting to post as something other than anonymous.

For those curious, here's the link to my Live Journal Account. This is where I will continue to post my ongoing art projects and whatever else leaps to mind. Here... well, it's under development. Perhaps I will use this space to review books I'm reading, or movies. I usually enjoy speaking about both, but I've kept my art journal as tightly focused as possible, and so excluding these other things of interest to me.

It remains to be seen if I can keep up two journals at the same time, along with my other projects, but I will try. To those who stop by, hello! Please don't hesitate to comment - I enjoy meeting new people.

And now, to give you something to look at, and because it's the right month for it, here's a piece I did for Halloween 2003. Enjoy!