Post show thoughts

This Saturday was Eckman’s Toy and Comic show. I have to admit I have mixed feelings. So many positive comments and responses to the artwork matter of fact I had absolutely nothing but positive reactions to the artwork, but that did not translate into sales which was slightly disappointing. I know this show is a tuff gig for artist. I usually go around and talk to other artist there and have rarely heard anyone say oh man I killed it I made a bunch of sales. There is a reason that artist tables for this show are only 10 bucks.

 Instead I’m going to concentrate on the positive, all day long I had such positive reactions to my paintings and hanging out with my two sons there was such fun... so much so that my oldest son would like to return in January for the next show.

  If we do get the opportunity to return in January I have some notes on things I would do deffrently, I took my 2 large easels I would leave them at home, I took a lot of frames that I didn’t need , just in general I would take less.

 My sons only comments were he enjoyed it and wants to return, but was disappointed with the lack of ppl stoping and actually coming to the table. Many ppl would pause and point comment and then keep moving without even looking at all the work or the prints that were available.


 So here’s the pics of the table from the show and the 7 paintings that I had prints available to buy, I had a few more paintings at the show as you can see in the pics.

So as mentioned last post now this show is over I’m going to go back and try to get a more solid foundation and work on more original art like the dragon I just painted with the graffiti word CREATE on it. Till next time

Eckman’s toy and comic show and the one I forgot

in 2015 i attended Eckman’s toy and comic show, it was GREAT lots of venders selling all kinds of toys and comics. I bought a lot of comics there were so many great finds and bargains. There I met a local artist who was selling his prints there he had some awesome work. I bought his sale which was was 3 prints for 20 bucks. I picked out 3 of his prints that I liked the best, they were really cool and I love them still 2 years later they are some of my favorites. Since then I have bought a porfolio book to put all the prints I buy in, I love pulling it out and looking at it. At the time I was drawing and doodling filling up a sketch book but after meeting this artist and buying his prints I got inspired this is what I would like to do I want to get good engough that someone else would buy my art. This is when I started to take it more seriously I wanted to improve and learn and make art that ppl would like engough to buy. Well now that is still the case but a bit different. I AM NOT A PROFESSIONAL ARTIST but, you can see that right now this is a hobby and I’m growing and maybe someday I will be what I consider to be an ARTIST.  I do have to announce that I will have a table at Eckman’s Toy and Comic show on Oct 21st I may not be a professional artist yet but I have some new pieces that I haven’t posted here, that I hope ppl will enjoy because I enjoyed making them
 

   After Eckman’s show I am not going to take a break from art but I am going to try to go back and concentrate on learning the basics of drawing, I want to really get better I have some online courses lined up that will be at my own pace. I also want to work on my creativeness and originality, I love painting comic themed paintings and I’m sure I will always do them but right now I want make original art that is totally owned and created by me. Now that doesn’t mean I won’t paint cartoony or comic type stuff it just means I want to create original things and really find my style.

 The one I forgot... so in 2016 my wife asked if I would paint something for the school she works at. They were celebrating Dr Seuss birthday and she asked if I would paint and donate it to the school, of course I said yes. Knowing that I was painting this for a school for them to have and keep was maybe the coolest thing ever. It really made me feel great that this was not just going to be for me or stored away somewhere this piece was going to hang in a school library. Im glad I took a couple of pics so I can remember it. It was so satisfying to know this was going to be for some one else.

My next post will be how the show went and new works from 2017

Throwback Thursday 2016

So last time I posted some of my first paintings I did when I just got started painting so now we will move on to the year of 2016. In 2016 I started to really get into painting and I wanted to see improvements in my paintings.

  I was able to take a class from a local artist who I am not going to name because I'm going to say some negative things and some are there fault but also I take some blame myself. The amount of money I paid for the class was kinda steep but it was for an entire month 3  classes a week. Due to my schedule I had to break up my classes over 2 months so I took the 1st 2 weeks of the course and came back the next month to take the last two weeks. The 1st 2 weeks were pretty good I was learning the instructor was teaching, the problem came when I returned to take the last 2 weeks. Basicly the last two weeks I hardly learned anything because the instructor had 2 other students who were just starting their class from the beginning so I was basicly repeating the 1st two weeks, also 2 classes were canceled an never made up.

 We were supposed to complete 2 painting in this course, I never even finished one, I was left with a half finished painting. Now I will take some blame I should have never taken this course thinking I could do 2 weeks then come back a month later and resume the course but I was desperate to learn and improve. Things could have been done differently, but there are what they are. Again I won't name names because this person is not a bad person and is talented and a pretty good instructor.


  Engough crying and complaining let's look at some paintings the 1st is Thanos and this is the painting that came from the art class when I left it was about half done I had to finish it on my own and wasn't very happy about it. I believe it shows you can see the end result was finished just so I could be done with it. Next we have Captain  America , Spider man , Wolverine Vs Batman and one of my favs Speed Racer which is on a very large 4ft x 3ft canvas that pretty much takes up most of a living room wall. I think you can see that I continued to learn on my own, but I would take a class again if I was able fit whitin my schedule and completed straight through. Till next time.

Throwback Sunday?

So being way too long since I made a new post. I've been planning to post pics of older art work I've done, well no more planning lets do it. These are from 2015 with the exception of the last one (winking manga girl) that was 2016. These are before I knew how to do anything, I just grabbed some paint and tried things. If anyone out there wants to make art just go for it, and if it doesn't come out the way you like you can always go back and fix it. Deadpool and Captain America went threw a couple of touch ups before I moved on to other paintings

Lately what I'm working on

just a quick post, these are things I've done very recentl. The dragon is finished from the July 4th post, then we have a Native American done in watercolor. Then lastly some 2.5 x 3.5 artist comic and manga trading cards featuring Star Lord, Picachu, Wonder Woman, Kirby in a tanookie suit I'll be doing a lot more of these cards with all kinds of characters from comics, cartoons, games, etc

 alien female character done in watercolor 

Happy 4th of July

Happy Independence Day,


  What a great holiday, it not my favorite as Christmas and Thanksgiving occupy the top spot as far as holidays go. The 4th is still a great time to spend with family and friends. With lots of great food and activities such as Fireworks, baseball, concerts, cook outs and just general time off to relax and get together with loved ones.

 It's also a time say happy birthday to a great nation, Happy birthday America. America is not perfect but you can't deny the awesome amount of freedom that we enjoy. I have a little time to enjoy seeing my parents and endulge in one of my favorite hobbys... art. So I tried to do a patriotic art piece one of three that I have planned. It is also a salute to the USA military, by air, by sea, by land. The frost piece is a salute to the Air Force.

   The second piece is a dragon, a dragon from a book that my Dad read maybe 30 years ago. It must of made an impression on him because he made a photocopy of the picture and kept it all these years. He asked if I could make it with color. It's a very detailed piece it, it's pretty awesome looking. I wish I knew who the original artist was because I don't like posting it without acknowledging who drew it but we don't know who the artist was or remember what the name of the book was. It is not an original art piece from me but this is prob very close to what an Inker would be paid to do is take the artist work from pencil and turn it into colored page or panel. This is not uncommon in the comic industry, comics are usually put together by a handful of people. In my local comic shop they have a artist dedicated to the shop and recently he has been working with another artist on collaborations which look great, so again I'm not claiming this as my original art but you can see the progress and hopefully some time soon I'll post updates and a finished piece.


  The Jets and Flag are done on 11x14 watercolor paper with watercolor, and the dragon of course you can see I'm working on the iPad in Procreate with an Apple Pencil

Continue to learn

Just a quick post today, I have a little time off next couple of days...not sure how they will be used. I could use a couple of months instead of days lol. Today's pics are of a large painting I did about a year and a half ago of Tim Duncan of the San Antonio Spurs. It was right after he announced his retirement, I tried but I think I bit off more than I can chew. It was a very ambitious attempt which is typical of myself. A lot of times I try to do stuff that is beyond what my artistic ability can accomplish. Today I'm posting the finished result and the first step to reuse the canvas for another project. The third and fourth pics are of My Little Pony Minty Christmas someone at work asked if I would draw it the dark blue circle is done by hand with Fabre castle Pitt artist pen, sketch marker, and watercolor. The one in the light blue circle the drawing of the pony was transferred to iPad and done with Procreate. Doing this helped me learn how to better use Procreate I now know how to cut and paste, also colorfill (coloring in a shape with a solid color.

   Hopefully I will do some 4th of July themed stuff and post soon.

SUMMER DAYS, FATHERS DAY BUSY DAYS

Summer has begun and it is way hot which also means it's hot at work as well. It's the worst to sweat and work long hours, 12hr days st work have become the norm. Leaving very few hours to do anything which becomes frustrating. Which led me to draw a zombie. Zombies are not really my thing ill watch a show or movie but I'm not really into zombies but that's what I felt like. I felt as though I had become a zombie just going to work and nothing more.
  Today is Fathers Day so Happy Fathers Day everyone. Which also means I wanted to draw something for my dad (he always enjoys my artwork). My sister gave him a Star Wars themed card so I stuck with that theme.

This was done on iPad with Procreate and Apple Pencil 

iPad as well

This is watercolor

At some point I will post more of my older art work some of it needs to be posted before I paint over it, it's what you call a failed work which for me is double painful because of the time spent making something that your just not very satisfied with 

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Shoutouts

I wanted give out some shout outs to everyone who has given me encouragement since I started making art. First off I have to give a shout out to my wife, she has always given me love and support in my quest to make art. Shes always fast to compliment my work and give suggestions. In the living room there are 3 paintings that hang on the walls all comic related. These aren't small paintings they are rather large. I'm not sure most wives would be cool with their husband hanging these huge comic book paintings in the main living room.
   My two sons also are always a great help they always give feedback to help improve my artwork. They help with ideas and always have time to look at whatever I'm working on.
   Both my parents as you would imagine are very supportive I usually share my work with them. As you would imagine all my family members give me encouragement including my sister and my nefew. All of this support and encouragement just helps fuel my desire to make art.

    I used to have a Instagrahm account so to anyone who gave me a like or left a comment thank you. Thank you to all those artist on instagrahm who keep turning out great work just know that seeing your artwork was a inspiration. I'm no longer on instagrahm instead I have created this Blog which brings me to the last shout out.

   This last shout out goes to someone I never met or even spoken to in person. Don Moore has a Comic book Podcast that I found on iTunes called Two Dimension Comic Book Podcast (a comic book podcast with no direction). I have communicated with Don via email and regular mail so we have never met... kinda crazy right but I guess that's the times we live in. Don reaffirmed what I all ready felt myself. What he really should get credit for is this Blog it was his idea and he's the one who told me how to get started. The guys at Two Dimension comic book podcast are coming up on their 200th podcast, they are currently on #197. It consists of 4 friends who talk about comic books of all kinds new, old, funny, superheroes, supernatural. In celebration of their up coming 200th podcast I drew their logo in different forms and mash ups ( mash ups are two different characters drawn as one, like Homer Simpson as the Hulk or Mickey Mouse as Speedy Gonzales). Below you will see A video Preview of that artwork it was made on my iPad Pro on iMovie which was super easy to use.

My journey though art

I really like art and really enjoy making art. This Blog is dedicated to my art and my desire to make better art. First let me tell you that I don't consider myself an Artist. When I think of artist I think of ppl that actually make their living producing art. We all make art, mostly as kids we love to draw and doodle color, but then as we get older we stop. We forget that we have this artistic ability. We don't use it or excercize it, so like a mussel we don't use it doesn't get stronger or progress. This is a big reason I feel as though I have such difficulty getting better. I need to constantly try to produce art no matter what it is. Wether it's a sketch a painting or just even doodling. When I take long breaks between drawing I feel like I have to start over from the beginning. I'm not someone who can take long periods of time off.

  Hopefully this Blog will be a motivational tool as well as documentation of my progress.

This is the first painting I ever attempted. It is 8 x 10 canvas board with acrylic paint early 2015

Painting number 2, pretty easy to tell that I hadn't had any kind of lessons but there are things here in these two pieces that are somewhat correct. You can learn quite a bit just by trying things.

A lot like artwork, I'm learning how to make this Blog by doing it and I'll sure I've made mistakes but  it's not important what's important is that I'm doing it. Now it's your turn go out do something.