Visiting Venus

A recent freelance project, and some other works in progress.

"We Are Now Approaching Venus"

I went for a sci-fi/ surreal style on this one. I did a few washes to give me some texture, then I drew out the background and blocked in color. I wanted it to look biomorphic and almost map-like, as if we are landing on some foreign planet. I played off the theme of the synthesis of mechanical and organic; insect, human, and machine. So we have an alien goddess-figure plugged in to an astronaut, sort of like a robo-medusa. Her Isis crown is receiving signals from a bio-sattelite above. Then we have a beetle installed with a microchip and some sort of queen/ant hybrid crawling around. A lot of this was inspired by Amon Tobin's recent work in ISAM.

"Desert Wanderers"

This piece is the beginning of an album-cover project.

My friend Amir and I are creating a story of two explorers, an artist and a bard, who sail and travel the earth, braving danger and bringing vibrancy to whatever environment they're in.

"Leaving the Meadows Behind"

This is part two of five. Here the two amigos stand before an ominous mountain range. Danger and death await. They have no reason to leave these comfortable poppy-fields, but they do...

More to come as things progress...

Caelum

Here is my latest work: "Vita, Anima et Caelum" or "Bios, Breath and Sky"

Click on the images below for a closer view:

I used my fingers to smudge the paint while working on the clouds.

If you look close there is a beer bottle in the window, a bee buzzing around near the sunflowers, and some ants crawling on the cactus. Admittedly subtle and maybe even ambiguous, but I always like hiding things in my work.

Close up of some brush-strokes in the middle-ground.

Me in the studio

Caelum Process

Here are some photos of the process of my creation of "Vita, Anima et Caelum" or "Bios, Breath and Sky".

I began by adding some vegetation with spontaneous strokes.

Building up a shadowy under-layer for the prairies. I discovered some exciting new brush techniques at this stage, and was able to keep applying them later on.

Working a variety of colours into the scene. I wanted to give the impression of a semi-arid zone, close to the badlands, but still a genuine Alberta prairie scene.

The wood-grain had such a beautiful pattern in it; I found it difficult to cover it up with paint. So I decided to trace it out with a few different colors.

After finishing following all the lines in the wood panel, I felt like I had given the sky too many hard contrasts. It was still nowhere close to having a realistic feel, which I hoped it would have in the end. But a joyous deviation for sure...

I spattered white all over the sky with a toothbrush, and added some cloud-forms. However, the resultant confusion between these new clouds and the almost topographical or "paint-by-number" style of the background forced me to make further adjustments.

I went overtop of most of the lines with a wash of blue-purple. There was one particular shape in the original wood-grain that had intrigued me most, which I left open in the middle. I thought it looked like some sort of vortex or celestial gateway, and this excited my imagination.

I created a composition with more clouds, making use of the vast space available in the portion of the panel I had allotted for the sky. The next several days were spent working solely on the barn and vegetation in the lower third of my piece. I painted dandelions, sage, various shrubs and grasses, and also cacti. I covered the barn roof with moss and added a hummingbird emblem on the front.

I continued building up some layers and experimenting with colors in the clouds to balance things out. I also began working on the horses. The next several days would be spent finishing the horses and clouds, and finally taking a good hard look at my creation and deciding:

"I'm finished" (with no small amount of satisfaction).