Roadtrip 2008: Half-Dome, Yosemite National

The view from the edge of the world. 

This is the descent from Half-Dome. After we came back down, we spent the night in what looked like the most pleasant forest in California, at the base of the mountain. In another ill-advised act of man versus nature foolishness I thought I would sleep under the stars without a tent. Just me and a sleeping bag. What I hadn't counted on is that the Beijing olympics for bears being held in that forest that week. There were perhaps 25 campsites in the forest, each in its own cozy little pad of forest. As soon as the stars came out, the bears took off their warm-ups, put on their headbands and ran laps through the forest. Every few minutes we would here a nearby campsite cry "Bear! Bear! Hey Hey, There's a bear!! He's right there!!" And headlamps would flash on and pots would bang, people would trip over one another and curse in the night.

The bears would then run from campsite to campsite to repeat the scene again and again. They spread chaos and terror the whole night long. I kept imagining a bear stumbling over me by accident, getting caught up in my bag and then shredding everything in a 20 foot radius in a blind panic. 

I didn't fall asleep once. 

One of the huns did in fact come lumbering into our campsite at around 3am. I heard it approach (after the screams from the site next to ours died away) I lept up and shown my light in the direction of the footfalls, expecting that this was it, I was about to die. The bear would freak out, seeing stars and eagles and bacon, and in a frenzy, pummel me and my pointless sleeping bag into the earth.
Instead, the halogen light catching him off guard, he looked shocked and horrified, as though he had been caught doing something particularly wicked and embarrassing and he immediately shuffled away sideways, averting his eyes.

I could hear his trail of destruction as he made his way through the rest of the campsites away from ours.  

In spite of sleepless nights, climbing Half-Dome was one of the most rewarding hikes I have ever been on.

Roadtrip 2008: Yosemite

ACM #1 Watercolor

Digital Painting offers both versatility and efficiency. The digital tablet allows projects to be finished in a fraction of the time of traditional media. There is no drying. There is no mixing. There is essentially no media preparation, and client corrections are easy to handle. It is one of the best ways to stay competitive in the market. However, the imagery can tend to look plastic, worried, and disposable.
Traditional materials feel more organic. They feel more human. They are, like humans, finite, inefficient and have a tendency to go crazy on you. There is a warmness to them that humans can connect with easier than something digital and synthetic that lives in a world I's and O's.

But more than the organic, authentic 'feel' of traditional painting, there is also the difference in the processes. With traditional painting the shortcomings of the media force the artist to compensate with a more careful, craftsman-like approach.
For instance, in digital painting, you do not have to wait for anything to dry. You simply plow ahead at whatever speed you can move the cursor. Whereas in watercolor, you must wait for layers to dry. You must plan for layers to recede in intensity and depth once they are dry. This demands more contemplation in the piece. You are essentially forced by the medium to contemplate your future brushstrokes, while you wait for the current application to dry.
I have been torn between digital and traditional media for many years. There are effects that I can achieve digitally in moments that I could only otherwise achieve traditionally by spending months on (and having to mix my own colors with egg yolks and toxic chemicals). Yet I love the look of old weathered oil paintings more than anything in the 2d art world.

That being said, I have embarked on a new method. My plan is to paint these pieces in watercolor. I take them as far as I can towards a finished piece in the amount of time I have. Then I transfer them to the computer, and polish them using CS3 and Corel Painter (after which I print them on canvas and then varnish them). I hope this allows me to use the strengths of both traditional and digital media.

ACM #1 Digital Sketch

ACM #1

"Ah," said Turquine, "Launcelot, thou art unto me most welcome that ever was knight, for we shall
never depart till the one of us be dead."


I have always wanted to illustrate scenes from the story of King Arthur. It is a rather ominous undertaking since so many greater artists have already done fantastic work with it. N.C Wyeth and Pyle come immediately to mind. Yet Arthur's story, like most great mythological classics, can't help but inspire. Despite the possible unflattering comparisons to the giants of illustration, I found that I couldn't wait to begin this project.

I listened through Le Morte D'Arthur to find the scenes that would fit best with the demands of the commission. I had many ideas for some of the great battle scenes in the story. But I was told battle scenes would possibly not quite convey the right message for a room where they would be meeting clients.

I found myself listening and rewinding to a few passages on the adventures of Lancelot a great deal. For the first piece in the commission I decided to try one of my favorite scenes from the adventures of the Knights of the Round table. Here is an excerpt from Mallory's excellent version:

"It is well said," said Sir Launcelot, "but sithen it is so that I may have thy friendship,what knight is he that thou so hatest above all other?"
"Faithfully," said Sir Turquine, "his name is Sir Launcelot du Lake, for he slew my brother, Sir Carados, at the dolorous tower, that was one of the best knights alive; and therefore him I except of all knights, for may I once meet with him, the one of us shall make an end of other, I make mine avow. And for Sir Launcelot's sake I have slain an hundred good knights, and as many I have maimed all utterly that they might never after help themselves, and many have died in prison, and yet have I three score and four, and all shall be delivered so thou wilt tell me thy name,so be it that thou be not Sir Launcelot."

"Now, see I well," said Sir Launcelot, "that such a man I might be, I might have peace, and such a man I might be, that there should be war mortal betwixt us. And now, sir knight, at thy request I will that thou wit and know that I am Launcelot du Lake, and very knight of the Table Round. And now I defy thee, and do thy best."
"Ah," said Turquine, "Launcelot,thou art unto me most welcome that ever was knight, for we shall never depart till the one of us be dead."
Then they hurtled together as two wild bulls rushing and lashing with their shields and swords, that sometime they fell both over their noses. Thus they fought still two hours and more, and never would have rest, and Sir Turquine gave Sir Launcelot many wounds that all the ground thereas they fought was all bespeckled with blood.

D'Artiste Digital Painting 2

The new D'artiste has just been released. I am very honored to have been included in this year's issue by Don Seegmiller. His books on digital painting are what originally moved me to pursue digital painting. I, and many others, owe him a great debt for his wonderful contribution.

TS&TS Final

The Swashbuckler & the Sea

Watercolor and pencil. 4 x 8 on 500 series Strathmore bristol, vellum.

The Ace of Spades

This is an entry I am doing for Zach Franzen's forthcoming post on the Portland Studios Blog. You should check it out. He got most of the staff at Portland to submit an illustration on the theme of cowboys, rendered on a 4x6 card. There are some real gems there.

I love doing these little things. I'd like to put together a full set of these gunslinger playing cards at some point...

Civilization

Recently, Zach Franzen, our once-peaceful Keeper of the Blog here at Portland Studios, in a moment supreme enlightenment, discovered that civilization, as a concept, is best described with the tea. (strange, I know, bear with me)
When he arrived at this illumination, he was immediately impelled on a terrible, terrible crusade. In a stupor, he went downstairs to the Dollar General and acquired ten thousand packets of the most inferior and evil looking tea I have ever seen. He threw all those packets (and a rock badger and a spare tire) into a huge vat and boiled them for 3 days and nights. When he was finished he brought in a super concentrated brew of semi-liquid death and held all of the artists here at gunpoint, forcing us to paint pictures of "civilization" with only this evil concoction of his. Waving an AK-47 in the air he cried repeatedly, "Either you paint with this bulwark of civilization, or I'll make you drink it! What's it gonna be people!?" He threw out all our computers, he burned our pencils and he flushed all the watercolors down the drain.
I hid under my desk while he cried, "In the new millennia, there will be, only TEA! No longer shall we wear the stains of our high fructose corn syrup! No longer the cold, synthetic hum of fluorescent lights! No longer shall we be shackled to the chains of these poisons and greasy black machines! NO! Society will be green! Civilization will be pure! No longer bereft of the blessed sap we, as a collective body, united in Tea, shall be transported to new heights! TEA! TEA! TEA!"
Fearing for my internal organs, I painted...



He has written his sinister manifesto on the Portland blog, for any who are discerning enough to see through his glittering generalities to the underlying poison written between those tea-stained lines.

Anglerfish TV shirt design

Later this year, Portland hopes to release a few more t-shirt designs. As part of my ongoing campaign to convince mainstream America that their television sets are actually alien mind-control devices, I submitted this design.

Portland's beloved attack dog Susie