Messages and meanings

         What do you think?

Should an artist concentrate on entertaining, 

or should they strive to inform, to enlighten, to
move an audience in some way?

Art, to which I am personally drawn, must have some
meaning, Some moral good or ethical truth that motivates
and inspires me to better myself. 

We are always encouraged to speak from our hearts, 

to pull from our own personal experiences.

              Risky business.

We all know the sting of an open heart, slapped by

the palm of indifference or rejection.

Charlotte

Meet a new character from GREW. 

Her name is Charlotte, inspired by a literal Charlotte, Charlotte Gerson of the Gerson Institute. Charlotte's selfless efforts in promoting the work of her father Max Gerson in the face of ardent opposition by the modern medical community are, (in my opinion) an artistic expression in the truest sense. A Beautiful Truth,  Perhaps not with brush, paint, pen or ink, but with nutrition. With fresh, raw, organically grown produce and vegetable juices. With a vegan diet free from food additives, artificial colorings and preservatives. Things with which the Food Industry continues to envenom the public and which the American Food & Drug Administration continue to claim to be safe and non toxic. This in spite of the mounting evidence to the contrary. 

Foodmatters.tv   

Food Inc.

sweet misery

Aspartame

MSG

What dose all this have to do with GREW?  

   

We are integrally tied to our environment. It is an extension of our very being, not a place where we live.   The importance of our paying attention to what we eat, to what we drink, and to the air we breathe can not be avoided or ignored. GREW will explore a world which has all but eliminated it's natural environment, replacing it with a panoply of man made marvels to "improve" upon what fools in their ignorance have eradicated from the earth. More importantly, it will shed light on the ability of the environment to cleanse itself from such cancerous incursions. Like the human body, freed from toxic impediments, which can dissolve a malignant tumor.          

        

                          

            

Through seeming absence, progress is made.

It has been awhile since my last post, I apologize, but I have been very busy.
Vacation is coming, which will mean a trip back home to Texas, so I will be
absent again. Meanwhile, I hope this new page from GREW will be of
interest. Please leave any comments and I wish you a happy productive day.

   

What art is, and what it can do.

   Close to five years ago I was moved to execute this piece.  Five years later, and the specter of its muse still haunts. I will reveal to you only that it's subject can easily be discovered in the morning paper and what spurred it's birth is an issue of great controversy, great sadness, great loss. Loss of innocence, loss of trust. An abhorrent deformation of human conduct and character that must not be overlooked, excused or dismissed. 

   I've always tried to bring something relevant to my work, convinced that as artists, no, as human beings, we have a responsibility to reveal what lay hidden in the imperfect mortal heart. By doing so, perhaps, we can expel, exorcise, eradicate such lesions in behavior so that no child should ever be so wickedly betrayed agin.

TRUST

It is perhaps only stained glass, wood and florescent light, but if it is anything more, I suppose that that will be decided by those who view it.

Please leave a comment and share this post with others. 

  

     

Sorry for the delay, let us press on!

Spring is always one of the most difficult times of the year for me creatively. I'm burning inside to work on my properties, but the Physical and mental demands of the day job, saps every ounce of strength left at the end of the day. I have since just before Wondercon, finished a couple of pages to share. Hope you approve, and that you find yourself able to press on in spite of what life throws in your way.

  

Illustration Friday Brave

Thought this one worked well for the topic this week.

Development of Character, or what is happening in my brain.

To future, not in the applied style of the story.

This Guy's more like it!

How the minister came to be.

I thought it might be of interest to some to lay bare a bit of my processes since method differs so much from artist to artist.

Like most, I do a lot of exploratory work in the beginning.

trying out different techniques in this faze and learning much

about these new digital tools in the process.
Once the character has been discovered, I then work in gradual steps to refine the visuals.

First a rough sketch which used to be done in pencil and then scanned into the machine.

Now I find it much more expedient to work directly from my Wacom Pad in Corel painter 11.

I still use the pencil brush tool in the rough sketch faze, usually with a burnt umber-ish color.

I then Refine the rough sketch further using the blending tool. my workhorse blender is the smooth tool. By playing with the bleed, re-saturation and opacity sliders, I push the pixels laid down in the initial sketch to a more finished point. Then I raise the drawing to a water color layer. I can then start to explore the color of the piece with a mid or half tones approximating local color.
I then pull out of my box of tricks, the old burn & dodge tools. these two tools not only allow the variation of value & tonal qualities, but they also do wonderful & unexpected things with color leading to all the happy accidents that I love. Then, more noodling with the blending tools to refine even further. To finnish, I then raise this stage to a water color layer and with a grayed, complementary color, plot out the shadows and refine those again with the smooth blending tool. add finishing details and then the piece is ready to incorporate into the panel, and then finally into the page.
Lulled into a vision, our protagonist is about to be rudely brought back into the real world.
More to come on both story development as well as GREW itself.

Perspective I.F.

A piece inspired by the music of Ian Narcisi of Ianmusic.com

The song is Burning. You can give it a listen to at his site by checking out the link above.

please do, he is incredibly talented.