Who ya gonna call?!

Ghostbusters!! That's right! If Dave Perillo can make illustrations of movie characters, why the devil can't I??

Oils and kittens!

This week I forayed into the world of OIL PAINTING. Woah. I must say, it beats the pants off acrylics! Altho this was my official First Time painting with oils, I had lots of fun! Being able to put paint on your canvas and NOT have it dry in about ten microseconds is a blessing! That said, I did realize that I paint FAR too anally and need to loosen up a whole bunch. Need to not focus on creating something decent, but relax and let the paint lead. As such, I'm not really diggin' the painting and need to get it done and see where I stand then. Maybe I'll just gesso over it and start again.
While I was painting (oil paints and space to paint in all graciously lent to me by Nichole! thanks!!) I realized that I was using oils exactly like acrylics, which is probably not the best way to use them. I realized that when I mix colors on my palette I tend to mix every on top of each other...mostly because when I do this with acrylics, everything has already dried. Miraculously I managed to NOT get a big puddle of mud on there. heh. So this is Yavin The Fire-Eater:

It's been such beautifully warm weather this weekend, I finally had a chance to reopen the sunroom! Needless to say, the kittens are very happy about it. Skittles has already spent many hours sleeping in there and even managed to entertain a fly around the room! Somewhat documented it:

And just because its fun, here's Butter:

Sock Animals

I was productive this weekend and made a couple sock animals for my mum and my nan (belated birthday presents). After making them on saturday, I decided I needed to add an illustration to each of them, explaining their professions.
The Great Zambini: Magician!



Yavin: Russian Fire Eater! (that's eating FIRE not Russians)


Also, that snow by the windows in the photos? yeah, that's on the INSIDE. It snowed on the INSIDE of my sunroom. Friggin' New England. >.<;; Also Yavin's illustration isn't done yet. Sketched, but not computerized. Phooey.

Planning paintings...

In lieu of possibley/maybe/hopefully getting a gallery gig, I realized that I haven't done any actual REAL physical non-computer art for a long time! Shame on me. So I've decided to start a couple pieces and maybe dabble with the long-forgotten gouache paints!
Here is the return of the Adventures of Skittles and Charlotte - color studies for their Great Bank Heist (cuz really, how else can you afford to travel around the world and visit Butter in space??).
I'm thinking possibly getting some long, smooth boards and painting on those. Or maybe just some nice paper. I'm not sure. I kind of want a little texture in the backgrounds - probably just something I can get with a dry brush...altho the thought of collaging is tempting...and using the grain of a funky wood would be cool too. Anyways, I need to find somewhere that sells 12x5 boards...>.> home despot? pearl?
Ok, now I must go play with Butter, before he meows his little head off for neglecting him. Oy kittens are demanding.

Robot Love

'Tis the time of the season..for crazy robot lovin'.

The last days of winter.

(I wish!)

Experimenting with heavy texture...

Yesterday I discovered another wonderful artist to admire and draw inspiration from: Matthieu Forichon. Here's his blog. His style is almost reminiscent of Galaxy Express 999, but FRENCH and awesome. I think he does most of his stuff in photoshop with varied brushes and texture overlays...at least that's what I've gathered from his blog (its all in French and I can only understand about 2 words - the ones that look most like english words! haha).
Also helping me understand more about texture was a making-of video I saw yesterday. The making of a short film called The Tale of How, explained layering textures and video (which is totally something I've never thought of doing before!) footage together for a very organic look and feel, even for 3D. I think it mentions having over 300 layers of stuff in a single scene! holey moley!
Anyways, I decided to do my own Forichon-texturemania-inspired piece.

For posterity's sake, I'll include a step-by-step sort of thing, so you can see what it came from! teehee!
Ok, Step 1:

Sketch! I do thumbnails as tiny as humanly possible - i think this is about an inch by 2 inches. >.<;;

Step 2:

Illustrator-ma-fy it! Penned around all the shapes and did the character with different line color so I could distinguish all the bits and make it easier to fill them later.

Step 3:

Fill with color! I started with a palette from kuler, but the colors sort of had a mind of their own and went all red-bluegreen on me. hehe. Put some transparent shadows in there to get some abstract forms going in the background...

And then I plopped it in photoshop and added about three different textures to it at varying degrees of 'mulitply' and layer opacity. As well as some yellow brush work for the windows 'glowing' - I LOVE glowy effects...I dunno what it is about it, it just makes it look so much cooler. hahaha. And viola!