Phil and Matt Survive a Pan-dimensional Cataclysm

January 25th, 2010

After playing Brutal Legend and being perennially entertained by supernatural cataclysm I was in the mood for something that Boded Ill for Humanity. After doodling some colossal beasts I began this small painting. After getting a round layout done I needed something to show the scale, so I got a couple of friends to pose for me for a quick photo reference.

After finishing the painting, I took a photo and pulled it apart into layers in Photoshop so I could animate it in After Effects.

An Actual Conversation

November 25th, 2009

This past summer Lauren and I overheard our niece and nephew as we had ice cream together.

Udder Destruction

October 1st, 2009

This was prompted by a request for a cow robot from months ago. I decided to try oils again, and was pretty happy with the way the oil paint behaved compared to the acrylics I’ve been using.

Caturday Nite

August 31st, 2009

As a companion piece to the other WoW druid painting, I present to you, Caturday Nite is All Rite for Fite.

The chief inspiration again is Alamo’s guide, somehow combined with Elton John for no real reason. The Alamo is in the background on the left.

There are a few other details alluding to some other things. The cat in the left corner is inspired by this video. The robot references Keith Kadera’s main complaint about WoW: not enough robots. Pilot Mountain looms in the background as a reminder of my native region.

I found an awesome frame for it at the flea market.

Tommy vs. the Pirates

August 29th, 2009

I finished this months ago but haven’t had time to post it.

Prompted by the news reports of Somali pirates, Tommy penned this masterpiece.

Here’s my execution :

Odilon Redon Redone.

June 2nd, 2009

In my early years, I often spent time absorbing the pages of my mom’s art books. It was invaluable, and at least in this one case, amusing. At some point, maybe I was 10 I stumbled upon a reproduction of Odilon Redon’s painting of the Cyclops.

I don’t remember exactly what I thought, but I think I found it a little creepy. Although this monster seems soppy and is probably harmless, the fact that he’s leering at a naked woman didn’t escape me.

Regardless of speculation on my psychological response, I now have hard evidence of an artistic response.

Here we see the monster is back, but wears a pointed horn and carries a spiked club. A knight wearing a spartan style helmet challenges the beast. Pegasus is tied to a rock and is none too happy about it. Now that I think about it, couldn’t Pegasus just fly upwards pulling the loop of the rope off the rock? It reminds me of how I got my bike stolen in Savannah.

The triumvirate of spartan warrior, Pegasus and the Cyclops certainly recalls Harryhausens work in the 7th Voyage of Sinbad and Clash of the Titans. Clash of the Titans was released in 1981 and it was certainly an influence.

Harryhausen's Cyclops My Cyclops' Ugly Mug

Perhaps the knight is saying “Stay away from my woman!” or perhaps I was just disappointed with the flowery sentimentality of Redon’s impressionism and wanted to create a more meat and potatoes take on the Cyclops.

Everything is Everything

May 24th, 2009

Here’s a poster I did real quick for America Town The Movie.

In the Leafy Treetops, Max Says ‘Good Morning!’

May 20th, 2009

I finished this painting a month or two ago, but I’ve been busy with a lot of other things that have prevented me from updating the blog.

A while back, Lauren was singing this nursury song :

In The Leafy Treetops

In the leafy treetops, the birds sing “Good morning.”
They’re first to see the sun. They must tell everyone.
In the leafy treetops, the birds sing “Good morning.”

In my pretty garden, the flowers are nodding.
“How do you do?” they say. “How do you do today?”
In my pretty garden, the flowers are nodding.

But she was changing the words a bit. In her version, one of our cats named Max was saying “Good Morning.” I was amused by the idea of our bright eyed fluffy cat cheerfully greeting terrified birds in the morning.

There’s also a tiny tribute to Q*bert in this one.

Exterminate Alien Kexts

March 10th, 2009

So I finally figured out why my Macbook Pro was barfing and otherwise misbehaving when I plugged in an external display.

When I first got the MBP, I used the Migration Assistant to pull all my files over from my Hackintosh desktop. It did a pretty good job of pulling over all my apps, settings, and files. But it also pulled over some Hackintosh kexts for the mutant display drivers people use to get Hackintoshes to work.

So I found ‘em and removed ‘em. The MBP has been happy as a clam since then.

Classic Space Legos

March 9th, 2009

Because of a recent dispute with Tommy Long about Legos, my appreciation of Legos has been renewed. So I got a few old sets out and ordered a few replacement pieces from Bricklink and built some of the very cool old school Classic Space Lego sets my brother and I had as a kid.

This is a custom design. I think my brother built it.

These two shots are from the Legoland 6927 All Terrain Vehicle set.

Here’s a shot of the Legoland 6970 Beta-1 Command Base. I was only missing one or two insignificant pieces. I still had the flag and the large printed brick you see here.

Yes, there are Hessians in Space.