Heget

Alright - this was a hard one. I worked and reworked and reworked this, but all through the process just couldn't get it right. I think the sky was the most challenging for me, and it wasn't helped by the composition. This was a real learning piece for me - and forced me to come to terms with not being happy with everything that I've done. That sometimes, a piece just won't live up to its potential, and you just have to wash your hands of it, and start over if the idea still appeals to you. So this painting is the one I had to wash my hands of. I'll post the newer (much larger) version later.

Anyway, Heget is an Egyptian deity, associated with frogs and fertility.

Tyr & Fenrir

Tyr and Fenrir - another small painting that I really like as a drawing, but once it was painted I felt it was a little static. I like how the boy's face and hair turned out alot. This legend is of course nordic, and is about how they were attempting to chain the wolf Fenrir. Odin, Tyr and others told Fenrir they were only testing to see if he had the strength to break from his bonds - and promised that if he was unable to break them, they would remove them. Fenrir - rightfully - didn't trust them, so as insurance, Tyr volunteered to put his hand in Fenrir's fearsome jaws. Well, they didn't let the wolf out of his bonds, and Tyr gave up that hand.

So it's acrylic on more found wood - another small one 42,5x27 cm

Maman Brigitte

yeah, I know - been forever. Well, been working on a big set of images with varying levels of success. Mostly they're legendary beings and animals they're associated with. This is one of the images that I did first, and while liking it, I think it ended up a little flat compositions-wise. Anyway, Brigitte is big in Voodoo, she's all about graveyards and drinking rum that has been so spiced with hot peppers that no human could drink it (and is known to rub it on her privates, as well, but I thought that might not be such a good picture since I'm painting her as a minor). She's symbolized by the black rooster..... this one's acrylic on found wood. 26x43cm

An Old One

So no, this isn't a recent piece - this is an old one - actually it was my first screen print. It's called "Suma" - sort of geisha meets sumo wrestler.... It was part of a set of drawings I did of "big and beautiful' women.... Took a class on screen-printing when I first moved here to Amsterdam (not really knowing anything about it) and they told us to bring in a picture. So the the dot matrix coloring was sort of an experiment on the fly, over an ink drawing that I had done for something else.
I still like her - she sort of reminds me of that really big woman dancing with the sexy Twi'lek dancer in Jabba the Hut's palace (if you didn't already know that I was a geek, I guess I just came out, as it were. I prefer to be thought of as 'adorkable', though....)

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.

Not New Works, but REworks

Haven't done too much in the way of posting lately - mostly because I've just been terribly lazy. It's sort of like saying I won't drink every night, or that I'll stop at one spoonful of sugar in my coffee in the mornings. Somehow, it's something that sounds totally reasonable at night when I make the decision to be better about whatever it is, but then by the light of day I just make the same old fumbles.
Well, self-recrimination aside, been re-working some old paintings that I was never truly happy with. Here's Cuddlefish one and two - now just Cuddlefish and Myh Tentacular Heart. I really felt both of them needed a lil' sumpin' sumpin', and taking my cues from manga masters and other more Western influences like Ashley Wood, decided to make use of speechbubbles and good ol' fashioned hearts. Along with reworking some of the lighting and rendering. I think they're better. Hopefully you do, too........