Front man of the holy trinity......

Yeah I know......way too long since my last post. Sorry.

I'm a huge Rush fan and slowly worked on this for about 6 months in my spare time (which wasn't much). Do you think Geddy Lee would approve?

Joe's Scotsman

So this was one from a recent art challenge at work. One of my co-workers (Joe Olson)is an outstanding artist and did the drawing for this one. There is a link to his blog over on the right hand side in the list of artists that I like. The assignment was to just do a color version from his excellent line drawing. This was my color version. I'm also posting his original line drawing.

Japanese Girl

I've been working on this for the past few days. I found a picture a while back of the costume being worn in this painting and thought it looked beautiful and would make for an interesting part of a painting. At the same time it would be a good challenge for me because I struggle with value and color range when I paint whites. So using this as an excercise I gave it a shot and here's where I ended up. I'm not completely happy with the whites (as I expected, I guess I need more practice). But the overall feel of the image I'm happy with.

Commentary on the Great Perfection of Wisom

So I had a little spare time at work for the last couple days so I thought it would be a good idea to work on a painting. I had a fun photo to work from as reference of the Dalai Lama on his visit to Hawaii. So I sketched out a quick version of my own and get to painting. This was a really quick and rough painting but all in all I like how it came out. No disrespect to the Dalai Lama at all with the characaturization. Having lived in Taiwan for a couple years and being somewhat familiar with the Buddhist religion and other far eastern religions I have the utmost respect for him. Anyway fun painting and nice to get a little break from regular work.

In the background is the Buddhist painting depicting the circle of life, and a Buddhist text called the Commentray on the Great Perfection of Wisdom.

Broken Nose

Well, I never would have thought a relaxed game of pick-up basketball would result in something like this. Oh well. Here's a few progress shots over the last few days. Starting with the earliest. Swelling and bruising has gotten worse over time, but it should start going away now.

Gangster - color version

Finally wrapped up a color version of this guy. Not exactly what I had originally planned but turned out ok I guess.

1920s gangster

This was a quick drawing for an art challenge at work. The topic was 1920s gangsters and I had worked out a fairly complex composition with several characters and city scene background. It has a much more realistic feel than this drawing but I realized it would take much more time than I had for the art challenge. So I worked on this little guy instead. I always found the idea of the "boss" as a little squirly guy that was still able to intimidate his minions kinda funny. Oh, what you can do with money and power. This guy is intended to follow that cliche a bit.

A couple o' wierdos

I figured I could post these since they are quite out of date and obsolete now. These were a couple of character concept sketches for a project at work. Both of these were pretty fun to paint and design. There are some serious issues with both of them but that's part of the point of the concept work is to figure out the problems and fix them. Anyway, it has been a long time since I posted anything so I figured I better add something.

River Painting Update

A while ago I posted a couple versions of this painting I've been working on of part of the Snake River in Oregon where my mother-in-law grew up. Well I've still been working on it and I've almost entirely repainted it. I was able to salvage most of the sky, but the island and water was completely scrapped and repainted. I am pleased with most of the changes but there are some tweaks I would make. I waiting for some feedback from my mother-in-law since she comissioned it, so maybe I'll have more changes than I think. We'll see. Anyway here's the latest version of it.

And here's the Tractor

I posted some photos I took of a tractor on the farm where my mother-in-law was raised. They were all little details of the tractor that I thought were interesting. As I looked at them again it made me think back to what that day looked like and more importantly, what that old tractor looked like. It's a little bit surreal thinking back on that. There are some very beautiful and picturesque views on that little farm. This is one of them I think. That little island is very peaceful. My wife Michelle and her brothers and sisters spent a lot of time up there while they were growing up and they've got lots of memories on that island. I just have a few, but the few I have are pretty neat.

Nothing like a good tractor

I've had these photos for a while. I took them a couple years ago at the farm where my mother-in-law was raised in eastern Oregon. The farm has an island out in the middle of the snake river (actually the same island that's in the painting I've been working on). On that island they grow melons and the day we were there, an old Massey Ferguson tractor was sitting out in the field and it was just way too interesting to not take some pictures of. So here are some that I took.

Happy Halloween

This was a really quick little sketch I did for our latest art challenge at work. The topic was "woggle of witches" kind of like a gaggle of geese. I didn't get the whole "woggle" and just have one witch, but it was fun. I was trying out some new custom brushes that I made in photoshop, so this painting was mostly experimenting with new brushes. I'm still learning how to use them, but I'm excited about how they worked for a first try.

Weekly Figure Drawings

I've been meaning to post some of these drawings I've been doing over the past several weeks. At work we have a weekly figure drawing session. I've been excited to get back into figure drawing because it helps the rest of my artwork so much. I have been very out of practice. Prior to these sessions at work which I started going to just a few months ago, I hadn't done any figure drawing since school and that was over 10 years ago. This is one area where you can really struggle if you don't practice consistently. Most of these drawings have been very frustrating as I try to re-learn these skills. But each week it seems to get a little better.

The right Hitman for the job!

I did this for our weekly art activity at work. Hope you like it. It was done really quickly.

Progress on River Painting

I've made some adjustments to the river painting I posted a while ago. I've changed the lightsource as per my mother-in-laws request. Now the sun is just off the right hand side of the painting and slightly higher in the sky rather than lower and behind the trees. This is more accurate to how it really is. However this required that I completely repaint the sky along with a good portion of the painting since the light changed on the trees and water too. It's coming along but I still have some changes I need to make. I need to rework the trees (particularly along the shore) and make them more willow-like. I'm pleased with the lighting and color for the most part, it's just down to details at this point......I think.

Update on the yard.

Well our sprinklers are done and our sod has been laid. Very nice to have a useable yard finally. We're stoked to be able to have the whole summer to enjoy the yard now. We'll slowly be buying trees and shrubs etc to fill in all the flower beds but that's going to take some time. OH well, at least we have grass instead of dirt. The picture of our back yard is just before we finished laying the last big of sod.

Spent the weekend in Moab

I took Michelle and the boys to Moab over the weekend with some friends from our Land Cruiser club. We had a great time camping and driving on some really fun trails. We saw some amazing scenery that I hadn't seen before.

This first picture was near Dead Horse Point, just before we headed down Long Canyon. Long Canyon is a beautiful road that isn't that difficult but has scenery that's hard to beat.

The second picture is all of us standing near the edge of the rim above Kane Creek road. Hard to tell in the picture but we are about 900' above the canyon floor and about 10' from the edge. Weee!

If you'd like to see the rest of the pictures, you can see them here. [url]http://www.fjexpedition.com/pics/gallery/gallery2/main.php?g2_itemId=19904[/url] There are lots, over 400 shots mostly of the Land Cruisers on the trails.

Our yard's going in!

Well we've started to get our yard in finally on the house. We have a neighbor that owns a landscaping company and he made us a good deal on the sprinklers and sod. That's all we're doing at the moment since that's all we can afford right now, but we'll peice it together slowly. As it sits right now they are just about done with the sprinklers. They should finish them up tomorrow and get the initial grade done on the yard. Then we have 4 big trucks worth of topsoil coming in. I'm renting a skid loader from the landscape guy to use to get the topsoil spread. (that's part we're doing on our own) It's gonna be a busy weekend. Enjoy the pictures. Lots and lots of dirt. Can't wait until we've got some grass. Another couple weeks and we should be set. I'm feeling extremely lucky that we've been able to afford to have the sprinklers done professionally. Sprinklers aren't really that difficult but they can take a long time and when I did our own sprinklers in our last house, that was enough. So this will be good. :)

Here's a shot of the front of the house. I'll show the yard in the next few.

Since we're in a cul-de-sac our front yard in fairly narrow. We having some concrete work done where they'll be enlarging our back patio and putting an RV pad along the side of the house by the garage.

This next picture is from the southwest corner of our yard. You can see our relatively small front yard.

Now for the backyard. This will be my nemesis this summer. We've got a 1/2 acre lot and nearly all of it is in the back. We don't have a riding lawn mower (yet) so this could literally take me all day to mow with our mower. It's going to be really nice for the boys but it will be some work. You can see a little bit of our patio that will double in size. Also the RV pad will come all the way along the side of the house to the back corner of the house. This corner where I'm taking the picture will be a 30x30' section that will be bark or something on the ground where we can put a playground and the trampoline for the boys. And our neighbors on this side are putting in a fence right away so we'll have a fence down this side about to where the back of the white trailer is parked.

One last one for now. This is the back yard looking from the northwest corner. All the way along the fence in the left side of this picture will be a bed about 10' wide for trees and bushes to hopefully give us a little privacy from neighbors. You can also see blue flags along the right hand side that are approximately where the other property line is. We will eventually have a fence here as well along with more trees and bushes, again as some added privacy. The west side of the house here (just right on the side, not into the backyard) will be our garden for vegetables, and berries and a couple fruit trees. This garden will be enclosed by a fence along the property line and across the front, and will have a short stone wall with a trellis entrance from the back yard. Hard to envision but that's the plan. Hope you like it.

Dining Room Mural

This is another old one. I was commissioned by my mother to paint this mural in her dining room a couple years ago. I took these photos of it while we were at my parents home for Thanksgiving this year. There were particular visual elements that she wanted in the mural which dictated each of the scenes, but it is meant to transition through the seasons as it goes around the room. It has a slightly stylized approach and was painted with acrylic.

Riverview Landscape

I thought I'd post up a recent painting I've been working on for my Mother-in-law. She grew up on a farm in Eastern Oregon right next to the Snake River. They owned an island out in the river where they grew melons. She asked me to do a painting of the river and the island as she remembered it as a girl. This is the view from the farm side of the river looking over to the island. This is where I'm at with it right now. There will be some changes with it and I'll post up the finished version when I get it done.

I have a blog!

I've been getting pressure from a bunch of the guys I work with to create a blog to display some of my artwork etc. So, like the spineless weakling that I am I buckled under the peer pressure and here I am. Stepping one rung lower on my ladder of self-esteem. :)

My first post is something really old. I did this a few years ago after a humorous discussion with my family about some medical issues that I have. I toyed around with the idea of creating some short adventure stories about these two characters...Dr. Chrons and his sidekick Colitis Boy....but quickly realized that the stories could easily become too graphic and/or disgusting for young minds so I abondoned the idea and this image of the dyanamic duo is the only evidence of their existence.