Memento Mori series

"Memento Mori" is a latin phrase that, translated, is a reminder of mortality... "You will die." The phrase has a tradition in art that dates back to antiquity, largely popularized in medieval art. In art history studies, "memento mori" often refers to the presence of a skull in an artwork as a reminder of every man's looming fatality. Although these warnings are present in art, these artworks themselves nearly immortalize those figures who are subjects of these works. The paintings remain centuries after the actual deaths of these people. I can't help but revel in this irony. I am setting out to do portraits of iconic historic and pop cultural figures as the memento mori. These are skull portraits with the identities of their owners portrayed by iconic hair styles and head gear. Here are some of the preliminary drawings...




George Washington



Cleopatra



Marie Antoinette




Julius Caesar



Buddha



Bob Marley



Elvis Presley



Frida Kahlo... for the artists in the audience.



More to come! Including Marilyn Monroe, Charlie Chaplin, Andy Warhol, Vlad the Impaler, and Queen Elizabeth I

The Little Mer-Zombie

The theme at Drink n Draw at Mellow Mushroom was zombie Disney characters.
The sketch turned into a painting very quickly!

French Onion Soup

A simple line drawing of some sexy french onion soup. It's not just martinis that a girl can lounge around in!!

Brain Split process

I've tried a gouache resist on raw wood. I neglected to take a picture of just the white gouache filling in the image. You can she the gouache looking a little gray beneath the black ink that is covering the image here in this first picture.



Then the ink is washed off and the gouache has resisted it, leaving the wood unsaturated.



I tried watercolor, to see how the wood would soak it up. It also made it bleed. I tried to control it best I could, but I don't mind the bled-out parts that happened. I think my Brain Split looks great! Good enough to eat maybe.

Mega Sketch Telephone Time

This is a favorite game among some of my friends. It's like the telephone game in which you whisper a phrase around from person to person and the last person says aloud something different and it's all funny... but with sentences and drawings only. You can see these examples that 10 friends did at my friend Chelsea's birthday partay!

"Prancing Posies and Sad Goldfish" is the original sentence. This one changes quite a bit but in the end, there is still a dead goldfish. You can click the image to zoom in.



"Socrates fell out of Hell into somethig worse, much worse!" In this one, it's almost eerie how the first image translated the original sentence to the next one. It's also eerie how similar the last two drawings are!



"Where did you get that?" This one is so open, but after the first drawing, a chicken somehow really stuck through it even as it changed and the drugs disappeared.



"Peas and Cornbread are the Body of Christ" The interpretations here are very literal but still sooo funny. Good drawings, too! Again, the last two drawings are eerily similar!

Popeye Pumpkin

My roommate served 4 years in the navy... that and his own certain surly vivaciousness makes him feel a kindred bond with POPEYE the sailor man. So I designed a Popeye template for his pumpkin this Halloween.

Muppet Mythology Before & After

A bad, sloppy sketch became an alright painting.

Telephone Sketch

Nope, it's not a sketch of a telephone at all. In fact, ceci n'est pas un téléphone!
This is from a game... remember playing "telephone" at all as a kid? Everyone would sit in a circle and whisper something one to another and then whatever the last person heard was not what was originally said and usually really funny. Well, you do this with paper. One person writes a sentence and then the next person draws their interpretation and the person after that writes a sentence based on the picture... and so it goes that way until the circle is completed. Here is my sentence and what I ended up with. No drawings my me!

Snoop dog ends up as... trippin' Jesus somehow. Maybe he is.

Psycho-delic Live Painting Collaboration

Prying Eye Process

The Virgin Raptor and Culture Shock

Sketch for Cabrones posters. Ryan was a fan of the Kermit fetus of The Creation as Muppet Mythology... and I guess he had dinosaurs on the brain because he wanted a "T-Rex in a chicken egg" and just go from there. So that inspiration led me here somehow. Then when I was looking for some reference on dinos, I ran into this lil hidden nugget of internet culture. So the scene became more than a raptor breast feeding a bird, illustrating the evidence of birds' evolution from dinosaurs. I added the bleeding heart and halo symbols and evolution became a pseudo-religious mythology.
Perhaps I should I fill in those spots on her? We'll see.






Sketch for Culture Shock... working on the lettering.







Sketch for Culture Shock promo T. Maybe too trendy.

ART LIFE's Hood Rat Promo Logos

The ART LIFE 'zine is due to be out in late September in time for our monthly arty party, consisting of the $5 art table (funding the organization) with goods from members, galleria of member work, music, drinks, and more. I sketched up a couple logos for some self advertising in the 'zine in which I'll also be writing an article!




I was inspired by Mai's neighborhood on King's Highway in Murfreesboro. It's what I would call a redneck hood. So here we have a nice grill and belly tat giving props to Tupac's "Thug Life". We are artists in the hood instead of thugs.

Maybe I'll call him Jeffrey

I think the concept might be obvious enough. The inspiration was Legba. The babies are Marasa.

From One to Another?

All Too Literal

I found this from a few months back. The song "Cactus" by the Pixies. All too literal. No puns here! And that is my dress. Now I see its kinda like My Dress Hangs there, now that I think of it... a Frida painting, of course.

Another Self Portrait

Multi-cultural religious symbolism convergence self portrait.

Struggling Artist to Blossoming Muse?

We all know it, hear it, say it: "the economy is just bad right now". Even though there's word on the streets things are recovering, it's unseen to these eyes in the middle of Tennessee. When it's hard enough to find the shittiest of day jobs to get by, it's even harder to find success commercially or otherwise, as a young, fresh out of art school. My income as a crafter, experimenting with printed fabrics, has increased slightly... few and far between. But my income has increased much more as not a prop but contributer to other artists- photographers. Photography is medium I myself don't really succeed within, much less dabble in. Yet, I've been working as a model with slow yet ever increasing success lately. It's an odd yet rewarding feeling. The image of my face and body has been more profitable than the images I'm creating, yet I am inspired to continue with what I do by helping others do what they do. I'm trying, beginning, to translate struggling into blossoming. There is a triumph in the fight itself.



http://picasaweb.google.com/118136517522684484179/YesIAmAlsoAModel#

Vageyena

Best/worst pun ever? You decide.



Yes this is on a doctor's office disclaimer.

Woman of the World

I know I've been pushing the humor. I like to be all cheeky. Hell I may even moon you. But there's another side to me. I'm a Gemini if you subscribe to that kind of stuff, so if that's so, let it be an excuse.
I've been drawing more... emotional... "worldly" (if you will) subjects. And here is my woman of the world. Within her adornment is included details from the decoration of women from several different countries in different time periods. Spot them all! Treat it like it's Highlights.
Of course I was inspired by History of Sex on History International. Now that's educational television!

Some ideas and doodles.

Yeah go ahead and steal em. It wouldn't be the first or last. But I do have a lawyer now... that's another story, though!
So with life difficulties, including photoshop having seizures, I give the abyss of the world wide web a peak into my sketchbook. It won't be so long til next time ya'll! Some progress pictures of actual work in progress, with a more emotive edge than I've been selling, will come soon as well.

Gotta Love a Bad Joke

I love a good horrible joke... and corny puns are even better. So here are some recent sketches demonstrating some top notch unsophisticated humor!




ROCK LOBSTER is totally one of my favorite songs of all time. I drew this on the board while working at Mellow Mushroom on a slow day... and later re-sketched it. That's happened a lot lately. And the DUO CORN is another example... someone called a cow a duo corn because of its two horns. But I saw this:



In the words of my brother, "I ain't right."