For some reason the only thing I could think of this week was a very lame superhero who magnifies things. That’s all he does. He just makes things look bigger. Hopefully Disney does a better job with Marvel than I would.
8×10 acrylic on cavas
My latest painting is quick one I did of a house near one of the large sound barriers around freeways. I wanted to make this one a little moody and drab. The Detail work is not the best but I like the composition. I may try a more abstract version in the future.
This weeks entry for Illustration Friday. I’m not sure what this means but I liked the visual.
Ok, I may not know exactly what this image means, but I do know my creative process that brought me to it. When I saw the word this week was “Caution” I could only think of caution signs. Sings such as “Caution: falling rock”, “Caution: This sign has sharp corners”. But I didn’t want to draw a sign. That seemed boring.
So I tried to think of an image that could replace a caution sign. But I didn’t want a vector image of a slippery road or a falling rock. Those seemed too easy. So I thought about what a caution sign was. It essentially means that something is out of the ordinary. You’re off doing your normal thing, not really thinking and all the sudden there is a Caution sign. It is meant to get you out of your happy slumber and pay attention.
I then tried to think of how to represent this with architectural imagery. In order to show something out of the ordinary I decided to contrast it with some ordinary. I picked just ordinary little row houses all in a line. Then I left a gap. And the first thing I thought of to fill the gap was a giant. I’m not sure why. Perhaps it was because I needed something large to make the houses seem smaller and more ordinary. I also made him crouching down like he was ready to spring. This is similar to a caution sign because it says something is about to happen.
I think I think too much.
Here is my latest painting. I tried to go a little more painterly on this one and I really like the results. I’m going to have to try this again. 8×10 acrylic on canvas
This is my latest painting. Its 16×20 acrylic on canvas.
I would like to go back and tone down the color on the house, lighten up the sky and tone down the building in the background. But I need to stop and move on. perhaps I will do it later. Oh, I also want to remove the two rocks in the front. When I’m done it should look like this photoshopped version. Its a subtle difference but I think it would look better.
Here is my latest freelance job. The job was to create a poster similar to the famous Jaws poster.
Wrapped up in that little bubble wrap package is 3 years of my life. My hard drive crashed a few weeks ago and I lost everything. I just found out a few days ago that even the engineers at Ontrack Data Recovery were unable to recover any data. 250 Gigs and 3 years of family photos and 3 years of art work are gone. Possibly forever. I say possibly because I still have the hard drive. And who knows, maybe in about 5 years technology will have advanced enough for somebody to be able to assemble the data.
So, to anybody who reads this, back up your stuff. Do it now. I didn’t and now its all gone. The birth of my daughter, my son’s first bike ride, his 3, 4, and 5th birthday. Everything except a few random photos placed in e-mails and blogs.
And to anybody who knows me, could you please look through your old photos for pictures of my wife and kids and I. We would be grateful for a copy of anything you have.
My hard drive crashed and everything that I’ve done on my computer for the past 3 years is potentially lost. Family photos, artwork, side jobs, etc. everything is frozen up in a little metal box. I say potentially lost because there is one company that should be able to recover the data. Only problem is, it will cost over $1000.
I know I should have backed everything up. I was in the process of researching a back up drive. But I never got around to it. Its a horrible way to learn a lesson but I think it will work.
So, to anybody out there who reads this, I know you’ve heard it before but,
Back up your stuff. Its cheap, its easy, and its stupid not to.