When you think you SAW it all.

Not that long ago I picked up a commission from a coworker, which started out because I told them how I was in talks with someone else to do a tole painting on an old saw they had. They had an old saw as well and thought about having a painting done on it and asked me to do it. They wanted to have an american flag painted on the saw, so I took a picture of the saw and used photoshop to come up with some rough concepts to show them what was possible and this was the concept that was chosen:

It's been a while since I've done a tole painting, but it came back to me pretty quick as I went about painting this one and it was also a great learning experience. Since I wasn't painting on a traditional medium like canvas or paper, it took a lot more time for the paint to dry to the metal of the saw in order to allow more layers to be painted. To add to the depth of the design, if you look closely you can see white stitching in the blue and the red to give it a feel of a traditional cloth flag.

It was a fun project and hopefully I'll get to try my hand at a few more in the future. Other projects I'm currently working on are adding color to some old sketches I made a number of years ago, also working on another painting and some special portraits which I'm eager to share when they're done.

~Patrick

Going old school

Well it's been a very busy month with some excitement over new projects, but the excitement that I have now was returning to an old school medium. For a long time I had this idea of a landscape in my head and the more I thought about it the more I realized that it needed to be an painting in order for it to work.

The idea I had was for a mountain range landscape with a cloudy overcast and since it had been so long since I've done a painting I did little by little over time for slowly shaping it to a finished piece. I posted a preview of the progress for it a few months back showing how it was coming along at that point, so here's how it came out:

I saw this piece in my head having many shades of blue so to add to the challange of it I used only three aryclic colors in this piece, ivory black, titanium white and primary blue, all the shades in between were achieved by mixing them together. It was a pretty big challenge, was a lot of fun and one that I learned a lot from.

No previews on this posting of my other projects but I can say that I'm working on another personal acryclic painting, as well as two commissions for tole paintings on saws and I'm also excited about working on two other side projects. One is creating models to become figures and the other is being a concept artist on authors project to turn his book into a feature film. It makes things busy but also very exciting.

~Patrick

Something Special

For this month I've got a piece that is really something special. A very good friend of my family came to me asking about doing a portrait of a dear friend, but she wanted it to also illustrate his faith and she wanted it to be something to give him strength when he looks at it.

A big challenge to say the least, but I came up with three ideas and made some rough sketches. After meeting with her and having a pretty deep discussion, one of the three was chosen and I slowly built it up to get what you see below,

This piece is special on so many levels, one being that this year I've been experimenting with a lot of new mediums and combinations of them and each one always gives me a better insight for my next piece for experience is always a benefit. For this piece I leaned towards traditional pencil techniques, but I also worked in a few other colors as well. The red was layered in with red color pencils and added a  nice bold and powerful feeling to it as does the gradient background that I did with a few layers of graphite powder and I love the effect that I was able to achieve with it. The passage at the bottom was a bit of a last minute touch but also helped tailor it to the receiver.

Another hard part about this was waiting to post it in order to share it with everyone, but I couldn't post it online until it had been given to the person it was intended for. A little more than a week ago it was given as a nice surprise and I hear it was very well recieved and also got a little something to show it.

 

As I look back at this piece I can honestly say that it was one of the hardest ones I've had to do, it's a portrait of a man that I've never met and had limited photo references of (none of them from that angle) being embraced by J.C., so you know...no pressure at all to make sure they both look like who they're supposed to be. It was definitely a great challenge and an experience that I'll take with me going forward to be a better artist.

Thanks for reading,

~Patrick

To compete or not to compete...

his time around I got a special upload, one of my best friends told me about a contest that talenthouse.com was having for the movie King Athur:Legend of the Sword. The contest was to create artwork inspired by the movie and they would select ten winners out of all of the submissions to help create some PR for the movie and give some artists a chance to get their works seen as well.

Here's what I came up with:

The concept for this is one that I've had for a while now, but kept waiting until a friend of mine told me about the contest and I knew this would be the perfect context for the concept I had in mind. Original looks a lot better in real life than what I have displayed, mostly because I rarely use a full black canvas which makes it more difficult for me to set the levels so it looks like the original. Still came out very nice considering everything. Won't find out until next month who the winners are, but I had fun doing it and that's always a win.

No previews to show at this time, but I am working on a couple of concepts that I made years ago. Five years I ago I redesigned the Ninja Turtles in my own way, but never finalized the concepts I had, mostly because I couldn't decide how I wanted to color them. After some experimentation I did finally find a way to color them the way that I think fits their designs. I also finished a commission last month that is one of my best works yet, but I can't show it or give any details on it until the person I gave it to gives to the person they had it made for. Hopefully soon, because I'm eager to share it with the world.

Thanks for viewing,

~Patrick

What's new?

Lately I've been doing a lot of pieces where I'm using media and techniques that were out of my comfortzone, but the benefits of them has really been great. Not only am I experiencing something new, but it also expands my perspective and I'm gaining new insights with each piece that help me with the next. What's even better is that it makes me even more excited to move on to my next piece.

For this posting I have a commission for a friend of mine who has his own wood working business. He and his wife wanted something for the front of their website when it's done and they wanted it to be rustic but also have a country feel to it.

To make this I stained the paper myself a number of times to get the result that I liked then inked out what you see above and added in some white highlights with a white pastel. What you see is their house in the country along with their workshop. Their wood working business is called WillowBrooke and when they get their online website finished I'll post a link back to it so you can see the great crafts that come from their shop.

For this postings preview of something else I'm working on, some of you may already be familiar with it because I posted prior previews of it before on my facebook.

I'm going a little old school out of my comfort zone and painting a mountain range with arcylic paints, but as I'm doing it I have thought of a few out of the box ways that I can help it look a little more dynamic. It's been a fun project and looking forward to finishing it.

~Patrick