Painting from life: Out the front window

Updated: Huggo the Hippo

Here is the final Huggo painting (pending any minor tweaks) as his eyes look a little too intense. While painting I've fallen in love with the idea of giving him two tone irises. My biggest challenge in this revision was to make him more crisp and readable as well as to make the lighting feel more real and make more sense.

WIP: Huggo

SNORE. DROOL. GRUNT.

Portfolio Piece.

Artifice Sketch

Firehole Lake

This painting is my present to Dad for Father's Day. He has always preferred artwork and I'm happy to make it for him. This is a memory of one of our happiest places on earth. Photoshop CS&7. 4-5 hours.

Animation 101

Dog landing: Create a short animation of a dog entering screen from the right, landing, sliding and stretching/squashing. Create key poses w/ follow through on the ears and tail.

Badgers: Lip sync assignment. Create original character and key poses from provided soundclip. Lip sync from 5 different basic mouth shapes.

Beat Assignment: This is the final project in my Animation 19A class. The project was that we had to pick a song with a strong beat and then create two different animation cycles that sync with the beat. I used this as an oppurtunity to do a little development on an idea i had for a music video for my favorite White Stripes song "Prickly Thorn but Sweetly Worn". I plan to keep impoving the animation on my own time and adding to it.

FILM: Why i got back into photography

Film is still the best when it comes to absolute image quality. Film more closely recreates the way our eye and brain 'sees' a bright area that is glowing with light (highlight areas) and can still capture a wider contrast range at a far lower cost and do it in a way that is more pleasing to the eye than with digital cameras as they function now. I believe that digital cameras will eventually change and come up with their equivalent look and functionality but as for right now the way digital sensors currently operate and the way their software is currently designed to function doesn't recreate this look of a broad range of natural looking graduations and deep colors without having both ultra bleeding edge, incredibly complex and expensive (and often fragile) technology and construction.

>If you like taking photos of places/landscapes or people in natural, widely varying lighting situations and high quality is more important than high quantity, then film is your best bet. Another advantage isn't really the film itself as much as how the process of taking a picture is changed when you can't get instant feedback. This change of workflow forces you to preconceive the image and when trying to become both a competent photographer and artist, being able to conceive of and plan your work in your imagination is possibly the most valuable skill you can have. A perfect example of this is Dale Chihuly the glass sculptor. He cannot work the glass himself anymore due to his shoulder injuries but because he can conceive the sculptures and work with assistants to create them.

>If fast paced, high quantity, controlled lighting, commercial photography is your business, then a move to digital makes sense where you have to turn around work ultra fast, you can control the environment and the client can influence the overall look of your work (and you're getting paid enough to play 'keep-up' with technology).

Even if you are a commercial photographer and fall into the latter category I think it's best to keep film in the picture by using it in your personal work at least to experiment if nothing else.

These are my photographs that I create for fun and to serve as documents of aspects of my life. I don't claim them to be great works of art and certainly I don't think of my photography to be a serious pursuit such as my drawing and sculpting but they serve as creative source of fun and to further my other artistic skills (allowing me to practice, framing/cinematography, helping to hone my painting and sculpting eye). This type of photography never was satisfying for me until I rediscovered film.

If you give a TamanVark a cookie...

...it will ask to eat your brains....

WIP - Tunnel Mouth

This is an original creature that has sat on the shelf since finishing Jordu Schell's class in Fall 08. I really need to finish it.

Wrapped

Here is one of my newest sculptures. It's a mini-bust that is sort of in eternal WIP. I really like it though so i should finish it.

Inspirational poster

My inspirational poster for "dinosaurs f'ing robots" was featured in Gizmodo.com!!!!

Look!!!: http://i.gizmodo.com/5155968/what-the-internet-hath-wrought-dinosaursfkingrobotscom

"Soaked" mini-bust

This is a sculpture that started out as the long nose head study and became this rain-soaked character huddling under plastic. This bust is approx 7 in tall and made of victory wax, some short lengths of steel plumbers piping and a plastic bag. He is meant to look as if his hair is wet and he has sculpted water drops collecting under his right ear lobe, his nose and his chin although they are hard to see in the photos. I got the idea for the plastic bag after setting him down on a leftover bag that my film came in from the photolab. It matched the wax perfectly! There is also a major overhaul (hard to see in the pictures) to the proportions of his head. the Original head (seen in the long nose w/ scar photos below) was too short and too thin around the temples. His head is now lengthed and widened appropriately. He still is one of those people that appears to be 'all face'. I feel like there is a strange similarity to Napoleon Bonaparte actually (just with less fat and a massive scar).

Mini-bust of man with long nose and scarred face

The title says it all. Done in microcrystallin wax. About 3 1/2 to 4 inch tall. Hard to photograph.

Character art for B&B

Hey Joe and Luke, here is the 98 percent finished main character body art.

First Latex mask/life sized WED sculpture

This is the first project from Jordu Schell's class. I'm very happy with the results considering it was my first WED sculpture, first life size sculpture and first latex mask.

Torso-Anatomy study

This is a loose surface style anatomy study of a male torso in a particular kind of pose. About 14in high. Supported by plumbers piping and armature wire. Chavant NSP medium clay.

Colors! sketch: Tunnel Mouth

This is a quick and distorted sketch of on of my newest sculpture characters. This is really a color and value study.

Mouth Study-first mold/casting

While working on the below head maquette I was running into some problems getting the correct shape of the mouth and lips and so I made a small study sculpture in pro-clay. I then decided it would be a perfect and simple sculpture to experiment with mold making on. I made a one piece tin-silicone mold (using smooth on OOMOO 30) and cast in Activa Permastone which is both durable and cheap :). Original on the left, casting on the right.

Dynamic Head

I'm currently taking advanced sculpture w/ John Brown at Gnomon and our first project is to create a dynamic head with very sharp and defined features so that we learn more about the planes of the face and how to create good old fashioned depth.

This is my unrefined but essentially finished head maquette.