Lady in Purple

After a month long fight with a nasty case of bronchitis (I'm better now-thanks for asking) I finally got a chance to sit down and finish this personal piece I had started a while ago. A big thanks go to my friend Michelle McCurdy for letting me steal one of her instagram selfies for the woman. It doesn't look too much like her anymore but it was a big inspiration for the piece. The limited color palette was a bit of an experiment, but I think it turned out pretty well. The odd thing with purples and magentas in oils is that they will shift dramatically in different lights (sometimes even going brown), so I wasn't really sure which direction to push the digital version. I decided on a bit more saturated version and I like it. This will most likely turn into a wrap around book cover, but that will come later. Hope you like!

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 They cost more than when he originally made the post ($40 each) but completely worth it.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