Value Vs. Color: Which Side Matters?

I usually paint on the 1st side of an album. There've been a few times, like with John Lennon's "Imagine", that I've chosen the 2nd side. In Lennon's case, "Imagine" has different labels, with a less distracting open apple half on the 2nd side.

This is the 2nd LP of the Dave Matthews Band's recent release. When I paint on the 2nd LP of a double album, I don't worry as much about which side. In this case, the other side is a much brighter green. The brighter the label, the harder it is to see the white paint, lessening the contrast, muddling the image a bit. The value is too high.

So the color doesn't matter. It's the value that matters.

Tell me art doesn't teach tolerance.

Peace.

SOLD - Dave Matthews 12/03/09

Led Zeppelin Vinyl Art Timelapse

"So what can I say? It's all about the 'Immigrant Song'." - Icky on "Sarsippius' Ark" by Infectious Grooves.

Peace.

Truth N' Time

Calling myself an artist was a big step. It was back in my mid-twenties when I kind of awoke to my Life.

For someone who'd tried to be invisible as much as possible, becoming an artist was a big swing in the other direction. But then I'm prone to big swings. Fortunately, this one's paid off in many ways. I feel so so SO lucky to be doing what I'm doing. I wish all artists could have the good fortune and feelings about being an artist as I do now.

It didn't happen overnight though, by any means. I'd done art since I was little, both in school and as an extra-curricular activity. And the teachers I had were encouraging, not critical as many experience. Or I was oblivious to their criticisms. In any event, I built my own internal foundation that in the last few months has ended up giving me my self-confidence.

I had a sculpture teacher who summed it up perfectly, and oftenly. He said that there will always be somebody better than you, and somebody worse than you. So why compare?

Pretty simple. Not easy, but simple. As an artist, it's my job to communicate my expression to you. It's an individual thing, completely subjective. Yes, accuracy is involved, but only as it applies. There are no absolutes in art.

So go make what you make or serve how you serve. Be an artist. And, yes, you can be an artist doing whatever it is that you do.

Peace.

Al Green 07/14/09

Take My Time

Though similar to the phrase titling my post this morning, this time it is about you. You take my time by buying or commissioning a piece of art from me. Buying an already completed piece, like Vicki did with this Michael Jackson from Etsy, takes from my past. Commissioning a new piece for yourself or as a gift takes from my future. The post this morning was about my present.

And it can be a present to you from me, if you take it.

Peace.

SOLD - Michael Jackson

One Man's Trash

I'm so excited I got to do this!

These records were beat, man. A couple had been shoved into the sleeves along with other Beatles records. This is why I love being able to do what I do. A friend had saved the other couple from the leftovers of a neighbor's garage sale, destined for the landfill. Beatles records. Nobody who didn't want to piss off their dads by playing crappy records on his fancy hi-fi would've played these, but they're Beatles records!

This is what I've been waiting to be able to do with my unframed pieces since I started clear-coating them. After painting and clear-coating these 4, I glued them together with Super Glue. I'm hoping I get to do other groups like Led Zeppelin this way, but I don't run across records without sleeves very often. The albums I get with sleeves, I'll normally do framed and won't throw the sleeves away just because. So I need your help. I need commissions of these.

Now, last week I said that the price for unframed single ones will go up to $150 at the end of the month, when my contest is over (which, by the way, only has 24 entries thus far). At that point I will begin offering pieces like this one of the Beatles for 10% less per portrait, plus shipping. So this one would be $540 instead of $600 individually. (I've got to find out what shipping will be, but it won't be too bad.)

I want to do them that much. I'm basically paying you to let me do a whole group and arrange the portraits myself. Plus, you'd only need 2 nails to hold up all 4 records :)!

Peace.

What Cost: Memory, Love?

I love these 3 images and this one of John. When I realized I had 4 Beatles records without sleeves from various sources, all with the rainbow Capitol label, I got excited to try something I've wanted to for awhile. I'll show you next week when I finish.

But first I need to tell you that I'm going to stop offering my pieces unframed for only $100 shipped. The price will be good on commissions requested before the end of this month, but then that's it. I've struggled with this decision since I started offering the pieces unframed at all, over a year ago.

Pricing in general is a tough one for me, not the fact that I make money from my art, but setting them so my work is accessible to even starving college students with the right priorities. I know my work has value, but what that value is eludes me. I started out selling framed pieces locally for $55 (the price of that Johnny Cash at auction currently) and raised them only when I realized that I needed to do so if I ever was going to be able to support our family eventually with my art. Even then, I've had people pay me more than I've asked at least twice and many people give me confounded looks when I tell them how much.

The thing is though, I feel comfortable with the $175 plus shipping price point for framed pieces. It feels good when anybody says "yes, I'll buy one". I don't want to raise that price unless I have so much work and I've already been able to hire my wife as my assistant, meaning when she can quit her job. I'll offer special things, like what I'm going to do with these unframed Beatles, that'll be at different, higher prices, but the standard piece, framed in front of the album sleeve will hopefully stay the same. When I do have that much work, I think I'll increase the price only when someone wants time priority placed on their piece.

But I don't feel good about the $100 shipped for the unframed. I feel a bit bad, like I'm going to be telling people not to buy my work by raising the price, but I don't want to hesitate when someone says they want it unframed instead of framed.

So, they're going up to $150. I feel like the quality and consistency of my work is worth that. Hopefully you'll feel your wall space, or someone else's, is worth that as well.

I don't know how else to value my connection to music, to art, to memory, to family & friends, to humanity. Do you?

Peace.

What's Not Painted, Played

If it were all notes and no air, it wouldn't be jazz.

Peace.

SOLD - Charlie Parker 06/09/09

The Reveal In Reverse

I've been doing my Twitpic real-time cell phone pictures for about a month. It looks like around 10-20 people check'em out each time and a few people have commented and shared the pics with their followers, adding a caption. Sweet.

Here're the final shots of the pieces I thought worked the best so far:

http://twitpic.com/5q548 - John Lennon
http://twitpic.com/5mtns - Isaac Hayes
http://twitpic.com/5kz9g - Bradley Nowell
http://twitpic.com/58524 - Billie Holiday
http://twitpic.com/548gw - Alice Cooper
http://twitpic.com/4shyl - Sammy Davis Jr.
http://twitpic.com/4nzun - Neil Young

You can go backwards from those to see the faces disappear.

Kinda cool.

Peace.

Bruce Springsteen 06/03/09

Tom Waits' One Red Eye

Like trying to lay down a track with a jackhammer outside, a loud record label usually distracts, detracts from a piece. It's hard to look away from a bright red dot in the middle of the sky.

So I put it in the middle of his eye.

Peace.

I've Gone Dotty!

Early on I realized that trying to paint normally as one would with a brush wouldn't work well on vinyl. It ended up looking blotchy or too thick. In the back of my head, my high school art teacher's favorite project helped me figure it out. Dots.

I've described my work kind of like a reverse newspaper photo, with the density of the dots of paint creating the illusion. What was this project Mrs. Kahn loved so much that gave me the idea? Using only dots to create drawings with a very fine point rapidograph pen. I was in her elective class 3 years and each year we'd do these things and have a book printed of the whole classes' work. They were insane.


The idea stuck in my head from such a repetitive action so much so that after high school I actually was planning on trying one with colored ink. Yeesh. But, the theory is really useful. With enough care, volume can be created with smooth surfaces, and edges can be defined without solid lines. Indeed, the best lesson for me from the whole thing was that using lines to create shapes truly flattens objects, breaking the illusion of real substance.

This, along with my lessons from sculpture, are why I start in the middle of shapes and shade outward, bringing the volume out of the dark into the light.

It's also why I have to paint to music with a beat to it to drive my wrist's repeated dabbing.

Peace.

The Sculptading of Paintrature

I realized I haven't shared very much of my artistic upbringing. I'd listed some artists who'd influenced my aesthetic growing up, but haven't shown much of what I did back in school.

This image of Roger Waters of Pink Floyd is one of the more sculptural ones I've painted. So I'll take this opportunity to show you a couple sculptures I did back at the Brentwood Art Center with Jonathan Bickart.

Like my portraits, which kind of emerge from the vinyl, I tended to create figures emerging from chunks of clay. The woman's general shape looked like a triangle from a certain angle, so I had her fade into the geometrical shape. The man's face was more of a study, so I just took the block of clay straight from the bag and sculpted him into the corner, adding back on removed clay for the nose and beard, so it sort of look embedded in the block and sort of like a mask.

This tendency might be attributed to a bit of laziness on my part. With my portraits on vinyl too, as I don't use any black paint. Just using white, and very little at that, makes my job easier on one hand. With painting, it's more difficult on the other hand because I can't screw up, I can't remove the paint. So if I get a part of a face too bright, it'll pop out too much, messing up the contour of the face.

I'm basically sculpting the painting, or shading the portraiture. After I've gotten the shapes of the face, I rely quite a bit on my sculpture training to understand the flow of the face and to brighten or raise the right places. Both painting and sculpture use light to create relief. Sculpture has the benefit of actually being raised, while I use paint density to create the illusion of relief on the vinyl. But I definitely think like a sculptor while painting.

Next, I'll show you how my high school art teacher got me hooked on dots, dabbing, and basically density.

Peace.

Live Painting Again

There, that worked better. Cool.

I think this is a pretty neat use of the integration of mobile technology with the web. What do you think?

Peace.

SOLD - Neil Young 05/06/09

Live Painting

Well, that was frustrating. Yesterday afternoon, I painted this piece, trying again sending "live" cell phone photos to Twitpic. Either my phone or the cell network weren't cooperating because after 2 shots, the rest failed to send. I had to resend them. Oh well. They're there.

I'm trying this to let you in to my process more. I'd done those timelapse YouTube videos quite awhile ago which were cool, but a lot of work. This way you, ideally, get to see the painting develop just about as it happens, or at least get a sense of how it happens. I think it's neat, anyways.

My phone won't let me put a caption so that Twitpic will recognize it, so it comes out as a list of unidentified picture links on Twitter, but I think that's ok. The point is the pictures, being worth a thousand words, right?

Peace.

Speed Painting

I got the record really fast for this commission. That's always nice.

And speaking of speed, I received an email today that made me realize how fast I actually get these done. This fellow does pointillistic portraits on "At-A-Glance" desktop calendars of various famous subjects using fine-tipped markers. I did several drawings in high school using a rapidograph pen. Insane. They took forever. This guy says he puts upwards of 300 hours into each piece! Wow.

Yesterday, doing the cell phone shots of my painting as I painted it, I showed you all that it takes 1-2 hours for me to paint a piece. I don't do it fast intentionally. That's just how it comes out. I'm also not saying this to show I'm better or worse, or my work is better or worse than anybody else's. Or that I take less care.

I actually don't really have a point. Sorry, my brain is a bit scattered this week.

Good thing I don't have to focus for too long on a painting!

Peace.

I Like The World, Not Words

I'm trying something new. I figured out how to send pictures from my cell phone to Twitpic, which then sends updates Twitter:

http://twitpic.com/4jzcb -18 minutes ago from TwitPic

http://twitpic.com/4jyii -30 minutes ago from TwitPic

http://twitpic.com/4jxw4 -40 minutes ago from TwitPic

http://twitpic.com/4jxb2 -about 1 hour ago from TwitPic

http://twitpic.com/4jwur -about 1 hour ago from TwitPic

http://twitpic.com/4jwhr -about 1 hour ago from TwitPic

http://twitpic.com/4jvva -about 1 hour ago from TwitPic

http://twitpic.com/4jvhh -about 1 hour ago from TwitPic

http://twitpic.com/4juyv -about 1 hour ago from TwitPic

http://twitpic.com/4julj -about 2 hours ago from TwitPic

Peace.

What Does The Artist Do On A Crappy Day?

Um, art. What else?

Peace.

Steven Tyler 04/20/09

Musical Artifact

This record might be the coolest I've painted on, as far as the record itself. "Rock The Casbah" by The Clash is a 12" 33 1/3 single. Just one song on a side. The way they pressed it is what makes it so cool.

Instead of spacing the grooves like they would on a whole album, they're spread out so the one song takes up the space that 4 or so normally do. What this does is make the grooves really visible.

You can see the music.

Peace.

Clearly Blue

It doth appear that a move to Austin isn't in the cards at the moment. Kinda sucks, but Life happens, you know? So I decided to do a special piece of Vinyl Art. I'd been saving this clear blue record and rediscovered it while tidying up my art room.

The above shot is backlit through a window. Below is a shot in my little tabletop photo booth.


Since the record is special, I'm making the price special. Well, higher. This is only the second piece I've done on clear colored vinyl. I'm not saying it'll be the last (I've got a purple Prince single somewhere), but it will be a rare occurrence, and it's harder to paint. And Elvis is cool, I think. I listened to Dire Strait's "Calling Elvis" earlier painting Knopfler.

So this piece is $250. Fair enough?

Peace.

SOLD - Elvis Presley 04/07/09

Getting Lost In The Dance

I was painting Miles Davis earlier today, listening to Prince's new album and realized that I really get lost in the painting, and in the music. The moment, in the moment.

It's no coincidence that what I listen to while painting is music that makes me move. When you're doing something you love, you dance. Don't you?

In your head, down to your toes, you're in the groove.

Peace.

SOLD - Mos Def 04/02/09

On The Move

You don't want to see what's below this photo and the rest of the room. Yet, anyway. I'm workin' on it. It's taken the last couple days to get this far, having had to unearth parts of the room not seen since 2005.

See, I tend to layer. That's my organization scheme. It can't be understood at all because it's simply chronologically stacked. I only know where things are because I put them there, not because they belong where they are. Drives my wife nuts.

Now, we're moving towards moving. I need to make my art room functional yet navigable. It has to look like someone might be able to get something accomplished in the space. So the shelves had to be consolidated, organized and nicely displayed. The desk on which my mini painting easel rests is almost bare too, which make me a bit nervous, but I think I'll be ok. The room echoes a bit too.

I also didn't have any of my paintings up on the wall until today. The albums visible on the shelves are all my painted pieces. I had the ones from this show still framed so I hung 12 of them. I've added Buy Now buttons on the previous blog posts featuring those paintings that are still available. PayPal lets me track inventory now so I can create individual buttons that will only let one purchase occur. It'll be easier and faster for people visiting this blog to buy ones they like.

Brian Clark bought 4 that had been in that dead rocker show and just received them today. He picked up Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin, and Kurt Cobain. I don't name people who buy my work often, but Brian's just been so cool. His site helped me early on with getting going on this blog and his sarcastic comments on this blog caught my attention. Now on Twitter he's been very supportive and has shown his awesome taste in music. He loves "Fight Club", Mitch Hedburg and a bunch of other bits of human creativity that rock as well.

I directly asked him for his marketing advice recently and his answer will be in the form of a post about me! He wanted to wait until he got his paintings. So I'm looking forward to learning publicly what he would say to a guy like me. Wait, I'm a guy like me! Hehe, cool. I'll link to it, rest assured.

Or don't rest. Keep moving! I gotta go work more on my artroom while maintaining my inner

peace.