Monday, July 9, 2012

Gifts, Trades, and Obtainments. pt 2: Catalogues


Since my early years of writing(drawing) postcards, I would make drawings, and last few years- printouts/cards, for my family, friends, and relatives who inquire about my art. This year I've made catalogues of my work from the last two series StPetersburg and Remain.

If anyone else is interested both books can be bought on this site
There is a full preview online, and a free digital download.

Had a fun time putting them together, some photos of my copies:

St Petersburg









 Remain















Thursday, May 17, 2012

Its been a while...

Its been a while...
Not to excuse this, but things have been somewhat chaotic lately. Once again I am finding myself juggling with too many side projects/commissions/miscellaneous works, while attempting to balance my life out as things come up and/or fall through. Schedules and checklists keep piling up, inevitably unable to all become addressed and fulfilled. However there is a whole bunch of work being produced in the process which I will share. All in good time though.

There is a number of commercial projects that I have been involved with in the last half a year, in order to support myself. The process of what I'm undertaking at this time can be seen on my twitter stream. As there are even more commissions and things I have not even started yet, I'll be dealing with it for a while, and thus will publish those later.

First of all I want to get those miscellaneous things out of the way...

My older painting (Icarus) will be shown at the Society of Illustrators Student Exhibition (that I actually didn't apply for) May 10th - June 1nd.
The opening reception is on Friday, May 18th at 6pm,
come by if you're around.

Saturday, March 24, 2012

Evergreene (process)

My duties at Evergreene extended beyond painting. I learned the process of guilding, both on canvas and sculpture. Was preparing: stretching/hanging, priming, gridding, and working with projection on some very large scale paintings in their beginning stages, and eventually varnishing, assisting the photographer, and getting them ready to ship. Manual labor, and a bit of digital stuff as well.
I though it would be interesting to show the process of work at the company:

After the project is initiated, the work begins on the architect's desk


In order to stay faithful to the designs all of the sketches are gridded, and made into transparencies in order to be projected onto the canvas

which also has to be properly prepared beforehand

an efficient way to get started is to put the darks in, solve the drawing and values early on

then the stages with color begin, mostly working in the areas of light

eventually the subtleties are addressed, though this is as far as I got with this painting in the few days that I worked on it. For the most functional schedule the labor is distributed between the studio artists. Here is Boris finishing up one of my previous paintings

Zinni and Tiger, in front of the murals Zinni has been working on

Tiger, and his mural on a lunch brake (as you can see he's done quite a few)

A lot of the work included tromp l'oeil painting, (piece below by Faizulla) which I was completely unfamiliar with until the last two months

I gave it a shot as well, but it turned out to be a lot more complicated than I have anticipated, since one has to take the drawing(sketch) and make a painting out of it, based on a number of laws that allow the desired effect. Drawing it down wasn't the problem

but I'm not even going to show what my attempt of the painting it turned out to be. Pedro was one of the artists who executed/finished a lot of the tromp l'oeil canvases

the technique is very precise, and I'm looking into it now, in order to get its framework into my head.

Sunok putting some finishing touches on her piece

Max, photographing the work for the digital stage

some initial tryout printouts

the original painting (bottom left), and the final printout on a canvas (upper right), after undergoing digital manipulation (handled by Gustavo), ready to be sent out and installed at the location



As glad as I am to have had this day job, I am very happy to be able to focus on finishing up some freelance, ans side projects, in order to once again get to making my own/personal work.
A lot of catching up to do...

Saturday, March 17, 2012

Evergreene (day job)

For the last two months I have been a Studio Artist at Evergreene Architectural Arts. The variety of skills and theory gained from the experience is immense. I am very fortunate to have had the opportunity to witness how a large scale architectural arts company functions.
Evergreene has been in business for over 30 years, and completed a mound of projects in a number of fields: take a look at all their work !

One of the primary projects Evergreene has undertaken in the last few months is the murals for the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas. The design is largely baroque, and the paintings are based on Giovanni Battista Tiepolo's fresco work.

My first two weeks I was primarily working on two murals for one of the lobbies:
(excuse the quality on a few of the shots, didn't have a camera with me every day)








The murals were further developed/finished by other studio artists.

Thursday, March 8, 2012

Armory

Come hang out at the Armory show over the weekend !

Dacia Gallery is on the list of 2012 Exhibitors,
they will be showing my painting (Icarus).