Cancer is back at it again.

Bad news everyone,
Our little rabbit, Hazel, is once again growing tumors on her belly. This time the tumor is over 6cm long. A smaller one can be felt just below the big one. She was jumping and playing around until a few weeks ago when I think the tumors just got to big to be comfortable. The surgery this time is going to be about $650 for x-rays and removal. The vet wants to see if there are more nasty things inside her before exploring around in her chest cavity. So, this time around, I'm going to be putting up the offer of a custom painting by me, as a fundraiser to help with the surgery. I know it seems like a lot of money for a little rabbit, but I really like her, she is our only rabbit that hasn't destroyed any of my expensive electronics. And she's messy like me. And she's really cute. So if you would like to help me keep her around for awhile longer and have a chance to get a painting of whatever you want (a value of $525 mind you) go to my wife's web site here: CLICK ON ME!  It will make everyone's day better. Thank you.

Skintones anyone?

Good news everyone! I was looking around the Internets and found a really cool thingy (technical term). I quite often have a realllly hard time figuring out the proper skin tone for a given humanoid figure in my work. Skin tones are hard. Lucky, someone with much more time and models on their hands made this little help for skin tones. They reference Pantone colors as the main color the person is. I think it's a really fun way to picture what the skin tone  of you subject matter would be. The reason this is helpful, at least it will be to me, is that once you know the "base" color of the skin you are working with, it's only a small matter to darken and lighten as you move across the different planes of the head and body. Please enjoy, link to original article.

Here's a little something I've been cooking (WIP)

To go along with the panda known as, The Gumshoe, I'm working on this creature. I haven't totally decided whether to make it a boy or a girl vulture. It's a rich vulture none the less. This creature could also be the villain in the story. Sort of the Gumshoe's Moriarty. A little about the process, I painted this in Photoshop and then I'm going to paint it on a panel traditionally. What does everyone think?

Somethings that are in the works

Good news everyone! I'm ready and am now making a new posting for your viewing and reading pleasure. I've been lax in my postings lately. This time though, it's not been because of any visual distractions (for awhile I was catching up on the last 5 seasons of Lost...I sort of spaced out for a couple of months) or recent family reunions. I haven't posted because I've actually been working on artwork! Am I amazing or what? The projects undertaken have been for both fun and profit. The fun stuff is what I'm going to show off. Now, I'm not done with any of them, these are works in progress, so be kind.

The first one I'm doing as fan art for the series of podiobooks called Heaven, written and narrated by Mur Lafferty. She's an awesome author and has many many podcasts to be found at her site. Heaven is about a couple of friends that end up kicking the bucket and travel through the different parts of the after life. I've taken the liberty to illustrate one of the cities from season 5, Lathe. It's full of tinkerers and madmen.

The second image is an idea I've had for awile and is totally my own self promotion for self promotion's sake. Now that you know what I'm working on, feel free to bug me about seeing the final projects.

Oh, I forgot one other thing, I've started a flickr art page, check it out be clicking here.

Mixed feelings

I have news everyone! Well, as some may know and some may not, tonight was Bregelle's and my time in a small spotlight. I mentioned before that we were having a "meet the Artist" showing at the local coffee shop, Diva's. Our art has been hanging up for about 3 weeks or so, no calls about buying it. But tonight was the night to meet us and I sold a small (8"x10") painting, there were jewelry sales, and I even sold an Altoids tin (I'll post some pics to show you what they look like). As the title of this posting says, I have feelings that are mixed, stirred about inside my soul...for I am actually parting with an original. I haven't sold an original painting since I was like, 17 I think. And I've only sold 4 originals in my lifetime; I mostly sell prints. The first original I sold was to a professor at Montgomery Community College, the same college bought a collaged self-portrait, the third was purchased by a citizen of my childhood community, and the fourth tonight. I'm not really to stressed out though, it went to a good home. I take it as a huge compliment that someone liked my work enough to purchase it. There's only a little bit of me that is posseive of my painting. Thankfully, that is also why I have a scanner. In the end, my news tonight is good news.