Monday, January 26, 2009

Stephen


Another painting from my days at S.V.A. (1990 to be precise-yikes, nineteen years ago, that's insane...), a portrait of my brother-in-law, Stephen Falvo. This was done for Marvin Mattelson's Illustration class. Mattelson was an illustrator famous for his very tight, super detailed acrylic paintings. He gave that up a number of years ago and began just doing commissioned oil portraits in a classical realist style. He still teaches and holds workshops at S.V.A., though I don't know if his methods are the same as when I studied with him. Back in the early 1990's, he had a very developed system, where he had everyone work according to his steps and technique about mixing colors and working with pre-mixed gradients of tone. Though he used his technique with acrylics, I did my painting in oils. The original measures 10 3/4" X 9 1/4".

Tuesday, January 20, 2009

The Return of Kooky Mini-Comics



The second Kooky Mini-Comic. The first one can be found by clicking

here

This has been sitting around since I did it sometime last year. Maybe it should have stayed sitting.

Sunday, January 18, 2009

Lycanthrope


I've long held a fascination for werewolves, going back even before The Howling and An American Werewolf in London finally realized on screen an amazing Werewolf transformation. In High School, wih a fellow film-making friend, named, I kid you not, Wolfgang (who also had a love of werewolves), we made our own version of An American Werewolf, dubbed Lycanthrope. Basically it was An American Werewolf in High School. Here, in honor of the werewolf, a quick sketch.

Sunday, January 11, 2009

Tenement Funster!



My new purple shoes
Bin amazin' the people next door
And my rock'n'roll forty fives
Bin enragin' the folks on the lower floor


I got a way with the girls on my block
Try my best to be a real individual
And when we go down to smokies and rock
They line up like it's some kind of ritual
Oh give me a good guitar
And you can say that my hair's a disgrace
Or just find me an open car
I'll make the speed of light outa this place


I like the good things in life
But most of the best things ain't free
It's the same situation just cuts like a knife
When you're young and you're poor and you're crazy
Young and you're crazy...


Oh give me a good guitar
And you can say that my hair's a disgrace
Or just find me an open car
I'll make the speed of light outa this place


music and lyrics by Roger Taylor



This was done as a project while at S.V.A. in 1990. The subject was to illustrate a lyric from a song. I choose Queen's 'Tenement Funster', written and sung by their drummer, Roger Taylor, for their third album, Sheer Heartattack. I went back into it with some Photoshop fixes, mainly the socks, which I was never happy with in the original. Painted in oils on 15X20 hot press Bainbridge Illustration board. The only two sketches I did for the project are here, where I tried using a different lyric from the song for one of the them.

Thursday, January 01, 2009

Bettie Page



Here's my contribution to a blog agreement among a few friends, to draw a pic of the recently passed away, great pin-up queen of the 50's, Ms. Bettie Page.