Wednesday, March 19, 2014

Pope on a Rope

Just finished a new editorial piece about Pope Francis so I figured I'd pop it up on the ol' bloggy blog. Here ya go:


So the thing with Francis is that everyone loves the guy, except for maybe the people who elected him. He was a pretty conservative cardinal, but all of a sudden he's all like "Peace and love, follow what Jesus actually said instead of years of political corruption and Papal opulence, blah blah blah". It's funny to see the higher-ups try to tone down his statements after he's made them, but I don't think they can keep him in check much longer. That was pretty much my inspiration, so I decided to have him glowing like a saint, but with these cardinal (get it?) ropes trying to hold him back. 

The original is in oil so I had to photograph it which turned out to be a pain because of the dark colors. Usually I use the "hope for an overcast day" method of lighting, but it was just nice enough that I was getting tons of glare. Then I remembered Dave Palumbo's post over at Muddy Colors about lighting your stuff on the cheap with some Target tree lamps. I ran around town and finally found a store with two in stock, and I gotta say, they worked PERFECTLY. They cost more than when he originally made the post ($40 each) but completely worth it. I highly recommend.

Finally, the original oil has this little "asterisk" where the one string is breaking, but I decided it was unnecessary so I cloned it out. BUT I felt bad for it, getting left out while the rest of the painting got to see the world, so I made a gif for fun:


The End

Wednesday, March 12, 2014

Adventures in Freelance

Whew, it's been a long time since my last post. Sorry 'bout that. Big news though! After years of illustrating on a part-time basis, I finally took the plunge, quit my day job, and am officially a full-time freelancer! The first couple of weeks have been crazy but I figured I'd take a second to post some updates about what I've been working on.

The first bit of news is that I actually have a piece in this week's Willamette Week, one of Portland's two alt-weekly papers. You can find it above the Music Calendar, but if you are out of state (or lazy) here you go:



While I generally work in oils, the deadline was pretty short so the art director let me work it up digitally. Here's a look at it in the paper:



I'm also working on an oils piece of the Pope, and you can see a preview of that over at my instagram account (which you should totally follow yo). I'll do a full post about it once it's finished.

Anyway, its only been a week-and-a-half since taking the full-time plunge, but I've never been this excited, motivated, or happy about a choice in my entire life. I highly suggest following your dreams, it's a hell of a feeling!