Stranger Things Series - Reflection, 12"x30", oil on canvas

I've decided to start a series of paintings based on the show, "Strange Things". I'm a huge fan. It has the look and feel of my childhood, with hints of Goonies, Close Encounters, Stand By Me, etc... Everything that I loved.

Below is the initial sketch, and finished piece, of the first painting in the series titled, "Reflection", 12"x30", oil on canvas. It portrays Eleven entering the Upside Down, but if you've see the show, you already knew that :) I hope you enjoy the show as much as I do, and the paintings as well. More to come.

-Steve

I Shall Be Too Late

Here is the final. I titled it "I Shall Be Too Late"... which is the first words that the white rabbit speaks in the book, (with the exception of "Oh my!") It wasn't selected for the fair this year, but I really like how it turned out. I hope you do too.

Enjoy.

New Alice in Wonderland themed painting

The San Diego County Fair theme this year is, "Mad about the Fair". So, I thought it would be fun to do a fair themed painting this year, and see if it gets in. This is my take on the infamous "white rabbit". Here is the original sketch and the value study under painting(black, white and red oxide), done in acrylic. The next step will be painting on top of the value study in oils. This is my preferred method of painting.

*sorry about the lighting on the sketch... it was late when I finished it. :)

I hope you like it so far.

-Steve

As The Crow Flies- gif animation

I thought it might be interesting to see what this painting would actually look like animating. Not bad!

Enjoy.

Steve

"As the Crow Flies" Paintings Complete

I'm pretty pleased with how these turned out. I wanted to keep it simple, very limited palette. It was designed to be hung either horizontal, or stacked... I prefer horizontal, though. You can see the center of gravity shift up and down better, and it reminds me more of a Muybridge sequence.

These paintings can be seen at the Studio Door gallery, in San Diego, from February 6-28th. The artist's reception is February 6th from 6-9pm. I'll be there, so swing on by. For more information on the show, check out my Upcoming Shows section.

I've added a few process pictures as well. One is the completed sketch, and the other is the first pass of flat black, loosing and thinly painted in order to allow me to be able to follow the original drawings.

Enjoy.

- Steve

Beginning stage of Crow Flying Sequence Tryptic Painting

After a huge transition over the past few months, in living situation and the start of a new in-home art studio space, I've been able to start on a new painting which I plan to submit to "the Crow Show 2016", at The Studio Door gallery in San Diego. For the past 17 years, I've been working as an animator. So, for this painting, I decided to create a flying sequence of a crow, with inspiration from the Muybridge locomotion studies of the 1800s. I've always wanted to do something like this in painting, and thought that this would be the perfect time to try one out. Muybridge never captured a crow flying, or at least I haven't been able to find it if he did. I've done my homework on the crow's anatomy and flying style, as well as finding Muybridge reference of a raven's locomotion, so I hope it turns out looking appropriate.

This is actually the 3rd canvas 1st, and the 1st canvas 2nd... if that makes sense. It should create a looping sequence, so as long as the order stays in tack you should be able to start with any of the three canvases. (1,2,3... or, 2,3,1... or, 3,1,2)

The tryptic is designed to be displayed in either a stacked vertical format, or a sequential horizontal format. And, I want to try to keep an aged, weathered look for the background, contrasted with a bold, detailed crows which will be painted in oil on top. Well see how it turns out in the end, but so far the background is pretty much exactly what I hoped for. I used a bone colored base acrylic, then used coffee grounds and water to randomly stain the canvas. Then I used black chalk line for the grid, and blended them all together with gel medium. The result was a slightly worn, slightly grainy, slightly blurred background that should really help pull the background back, and push the the crows forward.

Six sketches of the crow sequence are ready, only three more to go... then comes the oil paint. I'll update this blog as soon as I get the first crow done. I hope you enjoy the process as much as I do.

-Steve

New Jazz Inspired Paintings

About two weeks ago, I decided to do two new paintings inspired by Jazz. Here's a look.

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Take 5 - 22"x28", oil on canvas

They are both painted in oil, and both of famous jazz musicians, but that's about the only thing they have in common. The first painting titled "Take 5", is based off of photo I found online of the Dave Brubek Quartet, playing a set in North Carolina in 1966. I originally painted this in black and white only, and then used a blue glaze to give it that classic Blue Note feel. Here's a peek at it before the glaze...

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The second painting is a portrait of John Coltrane. 

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Coltrane - 30"x40", oil and acrylic on canvas

This was very much experimental for me. I chose to use a flat red ground, which I painted in acrylic, and used that red as a substitute for black. Needless to say, this kind of messes with your brain! Especially when the 50% grey, that I chose as the darkest color in the painting, is actually darker than what would really be the darkest color... black. It was almost like half painting normally, and half of the time thinking in terms of a photo negative. I also wanted to experiment with painting much more loosely and "painterly". This painting has lots of scumbling, a little pallet knife, and very distinct brushstrokes. The technique is much different than the smoother toned Take 5 painting. I also noticed, to my surprise, that the Coltrane painting looks a lot more interesting when hanging on the wall. The red tends to trick your eye into thinking it's actually black, especially at a distance. Maybe the human eye knows it's "supposed" to be black, and switches the colors unintentionally? I'm not sure, it's pretty interesting though. I'll definitely put that in the memory banks for another time.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy them. I'll be trying to get higher resolution images up in the painting section soon.

Block Party: Expanding on Reutersvard's Impossible Cubes, 48" x 48"

This is my newest painting based off of the design's from Oscar Reutersvard. In this painting, I wanted to create an "impossible" repeating pattern that also contained depth. The seemingly simple design that Reutersvard created is extremely fascinating to me. So, in this painting, I wanted to try to harness that impossibility of the overlapping cubes, and make them create what appears to be an endless stack. This design can repeat for ever, but does not appear to be flat. It's one of my favorite aspects of the painting. The color scheme is a 9 color value scale in blue. Each combination of "impossible cubes" contains a 3 step separation, starting with 1 as the lightest blue and 9 as the darkest. So, the top cube has values of 1,4,7. The middle side cube has 2,5,8. And, the bottom cube has values of 3,6,9.

I hope you enjoy looking at this as much as I do.

As with my last post, I will be posting higher resolution shots to my gallery section later in the week.

-Steve

Impossible Link To The Past: Inspired by Reutersvard

Last weekend I started a new painting based off of the impossible designs of Oscar Reutervard. This is one of the first paintings that I've created using my own "impossible design". My process began with an initial sketch (not pictured), and then I moved on to recreating the design on the computer (pictured). As well as this type of drawing really messing with my head while I tried to conceive it, the biggest step was figuring out the scale of the grid in order to produce the design for the canvas dimensions (in this case 24" x 48").  After that was determined, I carefully drew the grid and design onto the canvas(pictured). The next step was choosing the color scheme, in this case I chose a complementary scheme using mustard and plum, and decided on an airy dulled out blue to give the impression of a sky and depth, while keeping the color flat in order to not detract from the foreground design.

For those of you not familiar with Reutervard's work, I strayed slightly from what I have determined to be his "rules". From what I have seen of his work, he never allows his drawings to show more than three surface planes, meaning every plane of every object in his drawings live in the scene together on these planes. By inverting the two objects, I have purposely created a fourth plane... I like to break the rules a little and see what happens. If you look at the painting as two separate designs, they individually abide by this three plane rule. But, if you look at it as a whole, I used four. They each have a left and right plane. The mustard design has a bottom plane but, no top. While the plum design has a top plane but, no bottom. Does that make sense?

Also, I realize these pictures are not of the highest quality. I like to take process pictures with my phone while I progress through a painting, specifically for this blog.  I'll have some higher resolution pictures added to my gallery at the end of this week.

I hope this little insight has been helpful.

-Steve

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I will be updating this section with pictures and descriptions of my creative process. Check back often for a sneak peak of my latest paintings!