Friday, August 1, 2008

Jenny Greenteeth Gets Her Guy


I've always loved (loved, loved, loved) Mike Mignola's comic creation "Hellboy" - it took me a while to warm to it, since it started when I was still (only) embracing the Jim Lee style of drawing comics - so anything that wasn't picture perfect with all the t's crossed and i's dotted (in a drawing sense, if you get my meaning) sort of missed me. But I finally made the plunge and bought a used copy of the first TPB and instantly fell in love - with the story and with the artistry. Well, long story short, in one of his Hellboy short stories (see what I did there?) Jenny Greenteeth was featured - and for whatever reason she's just really stuck with me. Of course a part of it is Mr. Mignola's artistic interpretation of this folkloric femme fatale, hell, maybe all of it, who knows? But I instantly wanted to do my own interpratation/iteration of her. So here it is.
Somewhere along the way this painting began to be a somewhat tongue-in-cheek commentary on my own feelings of inadequacy and ugliness and being an outsider. Maybe those feelings are a little too large to be expressed by my current skill-set, so take from it what you will. All in all, I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out.
Acrylic on found wood. I'm trying to embrace a little more of my illustration influences and not try and be so literal/wannabe-photorealistic with my paint process.

Yet Another RE work - "Comin' Thru!"


I think I called this "helium icarus" before - I had been experimenting with a rougher painting style - and ended up not being too satisfied with it - obviously since I reworked it. I felt that my perspective needed a little more forcing, and also something about the composition wasn't working for me - I felt the piece was lacking focus, and the roughness I almost felt detracted from the humor that I wanted to be part and parcel. Did I go over the top with the speech bubble? Maybe. I dunno - I'm just really liking the thought of them in paintings these days.