Marker test

Well this style with the markers would work had I not killed the light grey one :(

The fry cook

They listen all day long to what the costumer wants. They have been trained to listen and follow directions, to become another cog in the gears, ever turning, but never changing. I propose a challenge: break the thoughtless cycle of their day, ask them to surprise you, rather then ordering them to do your bidding. Grant them some dignity and help them think for themselves, with hope that someone will return the favor to you someday.

Sketching again

Life is a constant struggle to find balance between what must be done and what needs done. Responsibilities must be upheld while peace of mind needs to be accomplished.

Gourmet study

Our food has become so processed that I wonder if there is a difference between the food we feed ourselves and the bags of dog food we pay 30 bucks for.

Watch it burn " wallet"

How much money is in your wallet? Why is it there? Pieces of paper and plastic weighing down your jeans only to be handed over to someone else's pocket. What is it really worth?

Here is process shot.

Got the board prepped and a basic sketch of the content. 

Political comic

Legend of SIX

Still working on this concept. I've got the main characters and some sort of plot idea but that's about it. I've also been working with a new drawing style of working quickly am lets mistakes be.

Enjoy

The joke

There's something that stirs inside of me ever now and then. A mixture of thoughts which come together. Today these thoughts tell me that the greatest joke about our society is the story of the boy who goes off to college because it's what society tells him will help him get ahead. But what no one told him was that everybody else would be there and when it came time to enter the real world he would realize the past sixteen years of his life were nothing but a waist because he really didn't learn anything about how to live. 

The class rooms were organized with problems to be solved. Simple formulas were taught so that the young minds would know how to get the expected answer. Nothing was learned. We are taught that life is a formula and in order to achieve the correct answer you must follow each step to the letter. 

But the fact is the formula we learn ignores the variable of life. This variable makes every step some what meaningless. But what are we to do when we fear leaving the steps behind us, fear taking a different direction because it might not bring the answer we seek. All we can do is watch everything crumble and burn around us in hope that the ashes give way to an answer answer.

Not sure

I'm not sure if I like the look of this.

Watch it burn 08.25.12

Here are a few sketches for a painting series I might do.

Not sure if I like the all marker or mix of market and pen.

Electric

"Modern Day Religion" Series

"Modern Day Religion"

This world is filled with some many problems, but there are aspects of society within this country, which the people hold in high regard, aspects, which make this nation, in their eyes, the best country in the world. These aspects include the ideas of democracy, knowledge, freedom, free speech, justice, and equality. My goal with this series of paintings is to illustrate how these ideas have become a sort of modern day religion; ideals we praise. Hidden within these ideals though are elements of evil. They construct a system filled with flaws. Images of holy figures that appear dark and menacing, in addition to images of demons embodying the freedoms this country grants every individual, create a mythology of the good and bad of modern day society. This set of work is meant to illustrate that, which we praise in this society, while at the same time shedding light on the evil that lingers, unseen by the masses.

"Gods of Today"

"Demons of Speech"

"Angels: Equality and Justice"

going away

It's that time again. I'm going away to camp for seven weeks so I probably wont be posting on here. I'm still working on the "watch it all burn series". I plan to make them into paintings this fall.

watch it all burn

The media seems to have an obsession with the end, the destruction of the world as we know it. From zombie movies and post apocalyptic futures to the message of doom in the news. We wanna see it all destroyed, we wanna start over, and to see this through we fantasize about watching all we know burn.

This notion will be the inspiration for a coming series of drawings. Stay posted.

Second Semester Senior: a review

     So as my undergrad career comes to a close I want to take a moment to reflect on the past few months of my life.
     The semester went along just like any other, classes I enjoyed and classes I fucking hate at this point. But when it's all said and done I learned a lot. Even though my methods of sociology class was far from comfortable, I enjoyed researching the role public and private schools play in impacting one's art knowledge.
     Art after 1945 had some interesting moments. I don't hate Pollock nearly as much anymore, in fact I really hate Jasper Johns and I cannot look at the work of Sherrie Levine's work without thinking "what the fuck? you took pictures of copies of pictures, where's the talent in that?" We are taught in grade school that art equals talent and than you take a course on modern art and realize, now its just about who can bullshit the most about the latest psycho-freudian-sexist babble.
     Intermediate painting was a lot of fun. I finally found my style. It needs some work but I'm pleased with what I turned out this semester.
     As for my senior seminar, I finally completed a comic! well at least the first chapter, even then its not finished. But hey I'm finally experimenting with something I've always wanted to do. It's got my head spinning with tons of story ideas, and who knows, maybe that'll be what I do as an "artist".
     I'm still not sure what I'm going to do about grad school. My plan coming into college was to become a professor, but maybe I'll head into animation, or I could go back to the high school plan of being an art teacher and inspire the next generation of great thinkers.
     As far as fraternity life goes, I really removed myself for the house this semester by spending every free moment I had in the studio. But lately I've been hanging around a little more. I've realized that even though there may be moments of immaturity that really annoy me, I used to be that way, and I wouldn't have grown in to the person I am today if I hadn't joined that crazy group of guys.
     All in all it's been a fun four years here, but that time is coming to an end. It's time for me to pack up and move on with my life. Hopefully that includes finding a good paying job, buying a car, and moving in with the love of my life, Jackie.

Accomplishments and important dates:
-Got published in the Mercury again
-Had "Gods of modern day society" triptych and "Graffiti artist" in the Jurried Student Exhibition
-Illustrated a poster for the Precious Souls book series (just finished it on Tuesday)
-Senior show opening reception is at 5pm on May 2nd and the lunch talk is on Thursday the 3rd at noon.
-The show for my painting class opens on May 3rd with an opening reception at 4:30pm.
-Graduation day is May 20th

-Then the real world begins...not really considering I'm hiding from it by working at summer camp one last time.

Here's some pretty pictures!

Graffiti Artist

Gods of Modern Day Society - triptych

Madonna of Cobalt

The Tinman - comic cover

Depth

So I've decided on a title for my 'underwater zombie' idea. But I'm thinking it wont really be a "zombie" story. Still playing around with the idea. Hopefully I'll have a basic plot figured out in the next week or two.

late night sketch

Here's a tattoo idea I thought of. It's inspired by "the escape artist" by august burns red. Here's a link to the song (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJhOJoc_Vbk). When I listen to the song the lyrics seem to weigh down on me. They confront the issue of judgement within the christian faith, and how more often than not, Christians will push someone away because they do not have an open mind, rather an open mouth. People do not take the time to get to know someone before they judge them. this is something everyone is guilty of, not just Christians.

burial at sea

What happens to the bodies buried at sea?

I'm playing around with this idea and how it could be applied to zombies. 

Could turn into an interesting story.

Comics

So I went to an antique shop in Hagerstown, MD with my girl friend today. I never realized the plethora of comics that stores like that have for cheap. 

I only picked up two issue for now, but I need to go back.

Love me some classic 90's comic books.

Sketching out my paintings

I constantly doubt my worth as an artist, but every now and then I remember that my talent at illustrating in conjunction with my story concepts come together to create the art which defines who I am.

Here's a sketch of the next piece in my "Modern Day Religion" series. This series aims to show the dark side of society as good and just, while the good aspects of our society are illustrated as evil and demonic. The painting this sketch is of will be entitled "Demons of speech". It tackles the issue of freedom speech and how the system would have us view it as a source of evil.


Here we have the demons of protest, demons of the internet, and demons of the press (hard to see, it is a figure with a camera).

Sneak Peak

Here's a sneak peak of my senior show.

Identity

The constant struggle of the self is to find who we are. The events of our lie and the way we present ourselves in public work together to build this construct. But what happens when you loose a brick in the foundation? How do you cope with the lose? Do you leave it be and allow the weather and pests to seep into your foundation? or do find a new brick to fill the whole?

I ask these questions because for the past 2 years I have used my gauged earrings as a small outward expression of my self. A gesture that even though I may conform to to social norms there is still part of me which wishes to rebel. By accident though, the one is now damaged and cannot be replaced. What do I do? Do I get rid of the other one to create symmetry? Or do I let the broken whole heal and start over from scratch on it?

A trivial thing to some, but it raises some interesting thoughts about how we define ourselves to the world.

Gods of modern day society

It's been a while.
I've pretty much been living in my senior studio space this semester. So far I have 16 pages of my comic sketched out. Now I'm getting into the inking portion of the project and doing color tests with prisma color markers.
As for my painting class, I made a triptych of the gods of modern society (God of Capitalism, knowledge, and democracy. Now I have to figure out if I want to make a piece about the angels of the religion or the demons. I'll prob just sit down and do some sketch work for that over break.

Here's images of the triptych (so for the low res, my camera is dead right now).

Triptych

God of Capitalism

God of Knowledge


God of Democracy

What's going on

So I've started off my last semester of under-grad school. I'm rather nervous but yet I'm ready to graduate. These past few years have been a lot of fun and I will remember them as just that. But I'm ready to move on. I'm ready to get started with a career, rather then fill my days with classes that I don't really need and drama I don't feel like putting up with.

As far as art goes, I'm waiting on supplies to get my senior studio project started and I'm developing ideas for my painting class.

For painting, I want to return to some old political art that I've made in the past. My focus will be to combine canvas size painting and my love for street art.


AS for my senior studio class, here is a sneak peek at the cover for my comic I will be working on.

New semester

So I've decided that I'm going to make an intro to a graphic novel for my senior show. It's playing off of the whole "Iron Robot" thing except the robot is human sized and piloted by the main character. This winter I really returned to my roots and it has taught me that cartooning and comic books are what I have always loved and I need to stick with that.

This project will be a kind of self portrait; a character based around myself, set in a rural environment (I live in a cabin), with robots, aliens, and cool fight scenes (I had a wild imagination as a kid).

This is gonna be fun.

thoughts 01.06.12

So I had written a post about my life and what the good and bad times have taught me. But I deleted it because I don't think I gave the good and bad times justice. It got me thinking that maybe I should write down some memories from when I was a kid and start sketching them out, both the good and the bad. Just a thought.