Sunday, June 24, 2007

Sushi



I think what prompted this one was probably a couple of things. First, I recently discovered an amazing, authentic sushi place in Berkeley that's all vegetarian. Second, I visited Monterey, CA recently where they have a huge aquarium. There are really some amazing and beautiful creatures there to see. The curious thing, however, was in the bookstore where I was surprised to find a vast array of seafood cookbooks. It's almost as if the aquarium was saying: "Now that you've seen all of these beautiful creatures, here's how to cook 'em up for dinner." Most meat-eaters don't agree with me, but that's just how I see it from my perspective.

The most fun I had with this one was painting the tongue. There are about 5 layers in there. The dark red under-painting, a layer of bumpy highlights and shadows, a layer of veiny textures, the reflections and finally the bright white highlights. In combination, the tongue looks really disgusting... hopefully more-so than the unidentified tentacled creature.

Monday, June 11, 2007

Washington's Little Secret



For Illustration Friday: Here are a few suits.

Thursday, June 07, 2007

Higher Self



This is an extremely old piece that dates back to a college art show in... 1994 perhaps? It was originally done in colored pencil with an india ink background. Anyway, I still like it, so I've refurbished it and updated it with a new background color. The original idea came from just a doodle in my sketch book that I thought looked cool, but when I finished the piece, I thought it probably said something about religion or spirituality or something. I'm probably telling too much. I should just let the viewer decide what it says.