Thursday, April 16, 2009

Tree Frog


Going through some old folders of art and copies, I came across this color copy of a gouache painting I did back in September 1993. I haven't been able to track down the original yet. At the time I was working at my second full-time apparel job, doing kids activewear at Dadco Fashions, in the Empire State Building. I mainly worked on a line called Kids For Animals, so I got to draw lots of animals and dinosaurs and naturally had reference books lying around. (pre-internet folks!). At the end of one day, I picked up some gouache paints that were around, but had never been used, and started painting from a photo of a tree frog in one of the books. I didn't do any pencil under-drawing on this one.

5 comments:

Jason Quinones said...

hand painted? no pencils?

and it looks great?!

very impressive man!!

Anonymous said...

Hey Justin, this looks really good! I can almost feel the slickness and slipperiness of his skin! Nice job! And the shine on him pops right out at you! Wow, those were the days, huh? Plenty of time to loaf around and draw and paint whatever you wanted...no responsibilities.

The Keeper's Notes said...

Thanks J and J! Yeh, look ma, no pencils!

Jess -I remember being fairly busy at that job most of the time, but that one day I did have a little extra time later on in the day. I didn't spend more than a 1/2 hour or so on this.

It's true, I had less responsibilities back then, but even with being 'grown up' now, I still find time to draw and paint whatever I want! If I had more discipline, I'd have a lot more work going up on this blog. It's not neccesarily the time issue for me, just sometimes the motivation.

Jason Quinones said...

i hear you on the motivation part justin!

it's the reason why i started a blog.

figured seeing you and other guys and gals work would light a fire under my ass to get more work done. especially seeing what guys like alberto have done. but hard to compare oneself to someone like alberto because he is one driven work horse!!!

i guess it all comes down to what one expects out of life.

Everybody's gotta be in a Gang said...

That's a good one!