Punk Rock Festivus

Just a little Festivus post to round out the year. This piece is 8"x16" and was one of the first sketches on canvas I did 4 years ago. It sat unpainted in my closet that whole time until I chose to clean out the closet and stumbled across it. I had fun painting it. Cheers to all, I hope you all have a wonderful and prosperous 2013. ~M

Francis the Baby Naming Robot

Let me explain... Isabella was going to a Baby Shower and she asked me what was going to happen at the party. Seeing that my wife was out of the room I took the opportunity to regale her with the 'fact' that the star of a Baby Shower is often a 'baby naming' robot that gets to select the name of the baby. I went on to describe the local baby naming robot is named Francis, and due to some glitch in his programming he names all babies 'Francis'. This, of course, explains why there are so many people in our town named Francis... both boys and girls. This story was quickly recognized by Isabella as goofy fiction, but we both continued to run with it for a few weeks.

At one point I returned from a business trip to find that Isabella had crafted a 3 foot tall cardboard Francis robot for me. He now resides in the studio.

After Isabella made this awesome robot for me I decided I would have to paint Francis as well.

Pimp strutting with a cane while blowing binary smoke rings is pretty bad-ass but Isabella made an actual cardboard robot so she wins this round in my opinion.

Development Painting

This piece was a development painting I did for the project that I'm currently working on. We went in a very different direction in terms of the art style, but I really liked how this turned out. I was going for a 'children's book' look, a water colour washed feel that recalled older Saturday morning cartoons (like 'Fables of the Green Forest' Opening Intro ).

Something classic and timeless that doesn't really push at any new boundaries, nor does it really run the risk of offending anyone's sensibilities. Maybe a little boring, and that's probably one of the reasons the client ultimately passed on this approach. I liked it, and it's different than the other stuff I've been posting so I just wanted to toss it up here to break the monotony of my regular stuff. This piece is digital paint in Photoshop and I tried to really make it look warm and sunny like 11am on a hot Saturday morning in a really fun tree house... I may have overcooked the sunlight FX, as it looks like it could be Chernobyl outside.

Spot

I tried to make the painting of my daughter's second favorite stuffed animal less creepy, and I think I succeeded. This is 'Spot', and Bella specifically requested he be in a pink suit and about 2/3rds of the way through the painting she suggested the hat with a feather in it as well. She was very happy with the final result, and I was happy with that. The photo is a little blurry but you get the general idea. Like the previous Kitty painting, this canvas is 8X10".

Kitty

So I decided to get back into it with a little painting of my daughter's favorite stuffed animal. I rendered him as a more disturbing, suit wearing, kinda creepy looking guy. She loved it for some reason and has requested a painting of her second favorite stuffed animal in a pink suit. I will try to make that one look less creepy.

Smoking Macaque

The newest entry is yet another monkey, and this one was created for my brother on his 40th birthday. I got an actual frame for it and it turned out pretty sharp. This is the first painting of 2012 and so far the only painting as I've yet to even pick up a brush since I completed this. I hope to paint some more soon. ~M

Croc Baby

This is a piece I did over the course of the whole year... maybe even longer as I picked away and picked away at it, but I finally gave it a good solid 2 month push in October and November as I tried to finish it in time for Christmas for my parents.


I like the fact that it's very odd and large, mostly because it forces my parents to have this weird curiosity up in their house taking up space and not matching any of the furniture. Of course I'm assuming they will find a place for it to hang as it's a gift from their second favorite son, maybe they will just pull it out whenever I head over there.


Like all my stuff, it doesn't symbolize anything, just a doodle. The difference is this piece is very large, my largest by far at 5.5 feet x 3 feet. As you can see from this size relation with my lovely daughter, it's quite big.

I've included a few details in this post and due to the sheer size of the piece it was difficult to photograph. The glare reflects from the oil paint black outline and sort of makes it look white flecked or inconsistent in tone. The line work is pure black, but shiny and reflective. I hope my folks enjoy this piece, it was hundreds and hundreds of hours of work, but according to my Mom so was her labour with me, so I guess we're even???