BREMEN: "Miah Faces 01"

digital.

D'oh! I forgot that I hadn't put these here.

Squishy face is squishy.

BREMEN: "Miah"

Designs for the cat character. She's supposed to be a kind of lanky midwest tomboy/tomcat who wants out of her smothering, conservative, country upbringing and into the urbane tolerance she believes she'll find in the big city of Bremen. She also wants to rock out and nobody seems to understand that back home.

She's a sphynx cat, for those who aren't familiar. Which also contributes to why she doesn't feel like she fits in among her fluffier "prettier" peers.

My research into names shows that "miau" is German for the "meow" sound that cats make. "Miah" is a name that sounds close to this, and is also both a boy's and girl's name.

"Oracle" and Gamma

9" x 12". gouache.

A spontaneous portrait of The Yellow Kid. I needed to paint badly today.

If you don't already know who that is, I'm sorry - I'm not going to get into it now.
The wikipedia entry is perfectly adequate.

The other image is the same painting, just digitally altered by moving the gamma
correction slider over a half-inch.

BREMEN: "I Put A Spell On You"

digital. Gerik singing a cover of the Screamin' Jay Hawkins classic. I imagine him to have voice like that, or relatedly Nick Cave; a big booming voice in a relatively small body. This was done as a kind of proof of concept. If I can't draw him singing the way I see it in my head, then all the design in the world won't help. The dramatic close-up is mostly because I haven't worked out the rest of the band yet :P

BREMEN: "Gerik Faces 01"

digital.

Thinking more about how he might emote. This guy is obviously going to let me express my inner Heckle (or Jeckle, if you prefer) and (to some small degree) Ren Höek :)

I also figured out how I want to think about the wattle. I was concerned with it looking like some kind of spherical "scrotum" hanging off his face, but now I see that I can show the way they hang and move like "gauged earplugs", which is quite fitting :) Yay, process!"

BREMEN, also "Gerik"

A while ago I was doodling some initial concepts for illustrating the folktale of The Town Musicians of Bremen as recorded by The Brothers Grimm (my favorite story, as a child). I didn't get beyond these initial loose sketches, but I just now found them while looking through old sketchbooks. The donkey plays bass, the rooster sings, the cat is on guitar, and the dog is the drummer :)

I think I'll go through with it now, as it's still interesting to me to interpret the story.
I want to be better about my process for this, so there'll be stuff before the Stuff.
Here's a beginning, with character designs.



The rooster, Gerik, is the last to join the group on their way to the big city. I envision him as the washed up singer. Though not much older than the rest of the band, he is practically burned out on fast living and mild successes at an early age. He still manages to put his voice to work, though it was a sweeter sound long ago. As a veteran rocker, he's the one with the most performing experience and helps round out the group. During the design process, I learned that in German the "cock-a-doodle-doo" sound that roosters make translates to "kikeriki", and that the name "Gerik" (which has a similar feeling to my ear), is a version of the German name "Gerald" (which means "spear").

Notably, despite the title of the tale, the animals in the original story never do arrive to Bremen to make their fortune.

"Coelacanths"

24" x 36". gouache, on canvas. A quick post up, while I'm on campus. I'm not used to working so large, especially compared to the other fish paintings, which are like almost five times smaller. This took a week to make. The last time I painted on canvas was over three years ago, and the time before that was four years earlier. It's not something I'm that familiar with. I would rather paint on a hard surface, than springy canvas. But it wasn't so bad, I guess. It's cheaper than wood panel!

"Kit"

8.5" x 11". gouache.

I'm working on a large painting at the moment that's been taking days to complete, and might still take longer. I thought I'd be done with it by now, so I made this other painting because I'm feeling restless; I'm not used to long projects. Yay, sense of accomplishment! Also, I haven't painted Kit in a while :)

"Botched Self-Portrait"

~8"x10". gouache. Earlier this summer I sat out on the front porch with a mirror to make a self-portrait. It was extremely sunny, which accounts for the scowl as the light was directly in my face. Halfway through it, I realized that I didn't like it and that I didn't actually want to be painting. So I started to slop paint over it. Then I stopped that because it seemed like a waste of paint. I figured I should keep the surface because I'm poor and things to paint on with good surfaces are hard to come by. So I could always paint over it later. I just now found it in my studio behind a chest of drawers where it had fallen. I don't know if I like it or not. When I look at it up close, there is stuff going on that I like but don't understand.

"CAEKTIEM"

It's my birthday :)

Silhouettes: "Zombies", "Figures", and "Brides"

digital.

Images made while thinking about using outline and silhouette as a way to sketch; suggesting complexity without getting bogged down in rendering any actual detail.

The "Brides" refers to a resemblance to the "figure" in Duchamp's piece.