Watercolor Sketches

I wanted to share a few recent watercolor sketches. There really is few things as pleasant as sitting on a beach and painting. I think I am hooked.

Underground

Last week I finished the cover image for The Pitch, Art directed by Ashford Stamper. The piece was about a guy who is building a luxury bomb shelter for the wealthy Americans who want a nice place to survive a nuclear holocaust. Who wouldn't want that kind of contingency. Here were some sketches that missed, But I was pretty happy with them.

Check out the great article by Ben Palosaari. The only Safe Place When the end Comes Underground

The Grey

I just saw The Grey, this past weekend. And although it wasn't fantastic it's worth the ticket price. If you like The man vs. Beast film genre. This might be the film for you. It is primarily an action film it reaches for some kind of existential exploration of man and his place in the natural world, and most principal to this film is the temporal nature of life itself. If you want to also see some creative uses of airplane liquor bottles and electrical tape it may be the movie for you.

I am a sucker for these films. I spent a good amount of time working in Alaska in the winter on a few television shows. The job required flying around a good amount of the state by plane and by car. Of all the places I visited the area of the state that left the most lasting impression was up above the Arctic Circle north of Fairbanks about 100 miles. There is something staggering beautiful about a place that would take your life so easily if you were to not be prepared or say your car battery died. It's definitely worth the trip.

New Work,Cincinnati Magazine

I was recently commissioned by Cincinnati magazine to create the above images for a piece by William Powell about Occupy Cincinnati. Art Director, Megan Scherer gave me this great opportunity to depict the Occupy movement. I worked on it while I was visiting my folks over the holiday. The Only draw back was that we were without heat the entire time. Drawing in the cold is harder then I thought.

Armageddon

I recently was commissioned by Hearst's Popular Mechanics to make an image lampooning some bad Sci-Fi films that were part of a feature rating Sci-Fi films on their implausibility. Armageddon, that late 90's crap sandwich of a film rated the number one worst film. I was asked to highlight some of the film's absurd qualities in an image.

Unfortunately, for research purposes I purchased the film on iTunes. This is tough for me to admit...I now own the film. And in case your wondering, no, it does not get better on the second viewing. It does, however, take the cultural temperature of the time. It's not like we have really matured though. The Michael Bay films of today share the same vapid emptiness and force us to exprience emotional moments with whaling guitars and blaring Aerosmith.

Obviously, I am a fan of Sci-Fi and I will gladly stomach a bad Sci-Fi flick purely for the spectacle and absurdity. Armageddon is not a fun film to watch.

FINAL IMAGE
TIGHT PENCIL

SKETCH

This was the sketch I pushed for the final. It had Bruce Willis reaching out for nuclear war head that was spewing uranuim. While the mounted machine guns on the Rover in the background unloaded it's machine gun. But pop Mechanics thought it was to far of a leap from the film. so we dialed it back to just have Bruce holding the bomb and drifting off into the expance. Maybe less drastic, but fine none the less.

New Work

It is hard to not be inspired by the headlines these days. The coming election, the European debt crisis, the uprisings in Syria and Libya. There is no shortage of events worth pondering in a visual way. Here are a few recent images.

Rick Perry: The Most Jesusy

After watching the two recent debates it's clear that the leading republican candidate for president, Rick Perry, is fully committed to the social and fiscal conservative agenda. He has presented himself as the frontrunner the religious Right. Christopher Hitchens has a great article on Rick Perry's motives for aligning himself with the Christian voters and questions his authenticity.

Bullets and Blackberrys, The Syrian Riots and the Future of Revolt

It is amazing to watch the "Arab Spring" and see how technology is the ultimate weapon in the revolution. It is still dangerous to fight a regime with a camera vs. a machine gun.

Travel Paintings

A recent trip to Cabarete' in the Dominican Republic prompted me to make some watercolor paintings and sketches. It was incredibly satisfying to sit and try and capture some aspect of the landscape. The works themselves leave something to be desired, but it has re-invigorated my desire to paint. hopefully I will have some more to show soon.