Solo Show at the Pony Club!

Its been a little while since my last post here (mainly because I'm moving away from Blogger and posting more on my Instagram and Tumblr) but here's a quick preview of some illustrations from my upcoming solo show at the Pony Club Gallery this First Thursday (Aug. 4th) 6-9pm. If you are downtown, stop by and check out the arts, have some libations, and say hi! More info here!

"Knights of the North"

No title on this one yet...I'm thinking about it :)

"Bare Necessities (Rae's Girl)"

"I'll Remember You"

Originals for sale!!!

I've been doing some spring cleaning and come to the realization that I just don't have room for all my originals anymore. I hate parting with my babies but I'd love to find good homes for these paintings, and seeing as how they'll otherwise be doomed to a dark storage closet to collect dust, I'm willing to make super deals on anything I still have! If you've ever wanted my stuff hanging on your walls, this is probably the cheapest I'll ever be willing to part with it.

Below are some quick photos of some of the paintings I still have available, and if you are interested in any of them, feel free to shoot me an e-mail to ask for more info, better pics or make an offer. I also have more that aren't pictured, so if there is something you've seen on my website or in the gallery before and you want to inquire, go for it!

The Pony Club Sideshow

I haven't been using this blog too much lately, but I recently curated my first group show at The Pony Club gallery in downtown pdx and I thought i'd share some of my work for it and some photos from the show. The show was called "The Pony Club Sideshow" and all the participants were asked to create a show poster or portrait for their favorite real or imagined sideshow act:

The two pieces above are both in gouache and are a continuation of my new children's book style. I'm really excited with how this style is progressing and I'm excited to make more stuff like it in the future, but I also had to sneak in another piece in my more realistic oil painting style:

This is isn't color corrected yet but you get the idea.
Check out my Instagram if you want to see the ridiculous frame I got for it. 

 Anyway the show was a huge success and so much fun. I got to meet and work with a ton of new artists while curating the show and I'm looking forward to doing more shows like it in the future. On that note, I'll leave you with a few shots from the opening:

You can see more online at The Pony Clubs Facebook page.

Valentine's Day Show at The Pony Club!

This is just another reminder that I will have a couple of paintings at The Pony Club's Valentine's/Anti-Valentine's Day show this coming First Thursday (2/5). If you read my previous post you saw the first painting, but then I decided I wanted to offer something smaller and more on the cutesy side as well, so I busted my ass and churned out this little guy:

get a room.

Various terrible punny titles were tried out ("Screw it", "Nuts for you" Etc.) but I settled on "Pipe Dreams" proving that I will make an excellent dad someday based solely on my ability to make bad dad jokes. Anyway, there will also be some prints of this little guy available at the show and later via my store if you can't make it out that night. Hope to see you there!

The Black Valentine

Hello all! Holidays are over, stress levels have returned to normal, manageable levels and I have a new piece to share! This coming First Thursday (2/5) I will be part of a Valentine/Anti-Valentine's Day group show at The Pony Club in downtown PDX. When they asked me to join in, I thought it would be the perfect opportunity to do a fake detective novel cover, which I've wanted to do forever. I'm a huge fan of old pulp covers, and while there isn't a huge market for that style of work, painting grizzled detectives and femme fatales all day is still my not-so-secret dream job. The first thing I had to do was come up with a title, and because of the show's theme, "The Black Valentine" seemed to fit pretty nicely.

Generally speaking, when I do stuff like this I try to change how the models look, so my characters aren't specifically attached to any real person, but Erin looked so badass in the reference photos, she is now officially the Black Valentine:

If you've seen any of my recent posts, you'll know I've been experimenting with gouache a lot lately. While the Robot piece a few posts back was technically my first complete painting (background and everything) using the new medium, this one is my first full size illustration using it. The original painting is 11"x16.5" and while gouache certainly speeds the process on those small paintings (as compared to my usual medium, oils), I found it took pretty much the same amount of time when scaled up. There are a lot of benefits to working in gouache over oils — less toxicity, quicker drying times — but there are also quite a few drawbacks. I found it more difficult to get smooth transitions, and much like acrylics (which I hate), colors tend to dry a significantly different color than when applied, making color mixing a challenge. All that being said, I'm pretty happy with how this came out and am excited for the show. I'll leave you with the FINAL final version with some extra campy text applied digitally.

MURDER!!!! (Lobo is named for our friend's dog)

Geek the Halls!

If you follow me on Twitter or Instagram,  you've probably noticed a flurry of small paintings popping up and wondered what the heck I was up to. Well nosy, I've been preparing for Geek the Halls this coming Sunday (12/14) at the Double Tree Hotel near the Convention Center in PDX! Geek the Halls, for those not in the know, is a holiday craft fair/bazaar with a focus on all things geeky, nerdy and SUPER COOL!!! This will be my first time participating in the event, so I'm not sure exactly what to expect, but it should be awesome and a great opportunity to pick up some unique gifts for the geek in your life. For my part, I'll be showcasing a ton of new prints, original gouache and oil paintings, buttons and maybe even a few surprises, depending on how productive I am over the next week. To further entice you, I'll also be selling my prints at special event prices, with most $5 less than anywhere else!

A sampling of what I'll have available.

I'll post some better versions of some of my newest pieces and prints as the week goes on, so check back and hopefully I'll see you Sunday!

The Rocky Horror Show!

The Pioneer Theater Company in SLC, Utah contacted me earlier this month to produce a playbill for their upcoming concert version of The Rocky Horror Show! I've been teasing this one on my Instagram for a while so I'm excited to present the final:

This was a really fun project but presented some interesting challenges. Because the actors hadn't been selected yet, we needed a composition that didn't focus too much on their faces, and because the image was going to be used not only as a playbill, but in ads and promotional material, we needed something that could be cropped in several different ways. After going through some sketches, we settled on this one with Frank's leg as the main character. I also painted the type separately, so each word could be resized and moved depending on the theater's needs. In the end I was really excited to delve back into my love of retro camp and produce a playbill that looks pretty rad! 

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

The Portrait Show: Feb. 7th

Hello all! Just a quick update on the portrait show I mentioned in my last post. The opening will be at the Pony Club (625 NW Everett St. # 105) on this upcoming First Thursday (Feb. 7th). Here's my Portrait of Ian Seniff:

Hope to see you there!

Surprise Show!

Like a ninja grabbing a doughnut, I managed to sneak myself into the cross gallery "Rivals" show at Benjamin Benjamin and Gigantic! The idea of the show is that both galleries hang one side of an epic rivalry, and the owners were cool enough to include a few of my paintings that just happened to fit the theme. Here they are:

"The Saint" and "The Sinner"

I was really excited about this show because I've had these paintings for a while, but they never got the gallery treatment I thought they deserved. "The Sinner" was originally created for the "Satan-folio", a calendar featuring lighthearted paintings of the devil that never made it to print. "The Saint" was created as a companion piece for a show at a bar in the wastelands of Queens,NY. I don't necessarily work in these styles anymore, but to see them finally hung in a real gallery was pretty gratifying. There is a ton of great work in this show, like Neil M. Perry's "Mario" and Erin Nations "Socs" vs "Greasers", so check it out and support your favorite struggling artists for X-mas!

Also, Myah and Scott, the super cool owners of Benjamin Benjamin, are moving to Colorado. In Honor of their awesomeness, lift your frosty mugs and toast to their grand legacy and safe travels! I, and the Portland art scene, will miss them dearly! Prost!

All Hail Lucci!

"Victory", 11x14, oil on illustration board

So I finally finished my entry for the Benjamin Benjamin tribute show to Susan Lucci and here it is! This was a funny project for me for a few reasons. For one, I was invited to do the show kinda last minute, meaning I had to come up with an idea pretty quick. Also, I really didn't know too much about the fabulous Miss Lucci. I mean I had heard of her, but as my Grandma puts it, "All My Children was never one of my stories". She did seem like a damn classy lady though, so I resolved to give it my best.

Though I'd never really seen her in action, the one thing I did know was that she had the longest running streak of nominations (18 times) for the daytime Emmys without an actual win until 1999. Since that's what I knew her best for, I decided to do a piece celebrating her moment of victory, by making her an Emmys version of the actual goddess Victory. Yup. That's what I did alright. I'll be the first to admit I'm not the best with "likenesses" and there is nothing more difficult than drawing a pretty person (if you cartoon them at all, they look like ever other pretty person) so that was tough. That being said, I think it worked out.

Close up

This one is definitely leaning more towards illustration over fine art, but I think it will be a funny addition to the show. I also found a great (read: tacky) gold metal frame from the 60s or 70s with plenty of flourish to add to the fabulousness. Come down this Thursday (the 15th) and celebrate all that is Lucci with us!

Framed and ready to go!

Adaptation Show

Ahh yes, summer has arrived. And just in time for the to-be super awesome Benjamin Benjamin "Adaptation" show this first Thursday, where all us creative monkeys took some time to make art inspired by authors. To all of you who care not of the long and boring story of how difficult getting ready for this show was, I'll get the important tidbits out first and then you can peruse down this post if you are so inclined. As the flier says, the show opens Thursday the 7th at 5 and goes till 8. I'll be there showing off the three paintings I managed to complete from my Murakami's Women series. If you've read any Murakami, you know that he loves writing these strange women who almost always make the narrators' lives just a bit more insane than it was otherwise. I took a few that spoke to me and here they be:

This one is called "Tuesdays Girl". She is inspired by the short story version of The Wind-up Bird Chronicles called The Wind Up Bird and Tuesdays Women. The story centers around a guy who is out of work, and just having a really weird day. He meets this girl while looking for his cat Noburo Watanabe.



Probably my favorite Murakami Novel is Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World because its just SOOO bizarre. In this book there are unicorns, dream readers, evil underground kappa-like monsters who can be held at bay with paperclips and two entirely separate but intertwined worlds. This painting ("Granddaughter") however, is based off of the opening scene of the book and the narrators lengthy mental wrangling while walking behind this "..young beautiful woman who is, shall we say, plump..". Even with all that other crazy stuff , this is still one of the funniest and most surreal moments in the entire book. Just some guy trying to figure out his own emotions when confronted with what he sees as a fundamental contradiction in his libido.


Finally we have "Sumire" from Sputnik Sweetheart. I couldn't get a good scan of this one but you get the idea. Sumire is the narrators best friend, secret love interest, and eventually the catalyst for a mystery involving an island in Greece. I love this description of her: "Sumire wanted to be like a character in a Kerouac novel—wild, cool, dissolute. She’d stand around, hands shoved deep in her coat pockets, her hair an uncombed mess, staring vacantly at the sky through her black plastic-framed Dizzy Gillespie glasses, which she wore despite her 20/20 vision. She was invariably decked out in an oversized herringbone coat from asecond-hand shop and a pair of rough work boots. If she’d been able to grow a beard, I’m sure she would have."

UPDATE: You can buy prints here: http://johnnyacurso.storenvy.com/ 

Wow this a a long post. Good for you for sticking with it. Or maybe sad for you because you have nothing better to do than read my blog. But anyway, now you can be rewarded (?) with a picture of three other paintings that were worked on during these last two months but for some reason (not finished, ruined and abandoned) will not be appearing in the show. The one in the middle will probably be finished at some point this month, but the other two are dead for good. Just about everything that could go wrong with paintings went wrong this time. I think I just tried to do too much, got distracted, and forgot how to paint. Luckily the series survived, so that's something. Hooray...


Anyway, I hope to see you at the show, but my stuff will be up all month if you want can't make it Thursday. The end.

Face Off!

Guess what! Its almost First Thursday! And Guess What! This First Thursday I'll have a painting in the Benjamin Benjamin "Face Off" show! (Oh my gosh, four exclamatory sentences in a row?! How exciting!!!!) The premise of the show is pretty cool. B&B took a bunch of artists and paired them off to do portraits of each other. My victim was illustrator phenom Dustin Hostetler, better known as UPSO. This was a really fun project and it was great to work with such a well known artist. Here are the results:

Dustin's Portrait of ME:And my portrait of him:

I made a few edits to the painting after I scanned this one, but you get the idea. And speaking of ideas, I had close to a billion for this project, so here is a drawing that may or may not ever get painted (but definitely not in time for the opening):

If you know UPSO's work, you'll get the diamonds reference. Anyway, I hope you like and I hope to see you at Benjamin Benjamin this coming Thursday (5/5) for the fun. Stone Brewing and Canvas Art Bar will be there, so its gonna be a straight up PAR-TAY.

Figure paint'n

Every so often I get some down time in between projects and I've started doing some figure painting to keep the ol' paint'n skills sharp and steady. Here are a couple of the most recent, done from poses taken from the Art Models book series.

The first was an attempt at using a very limited color palette (burnt umber, burnt sienna, a tiny bit of Naples yellow Italian, white and I think gold orche) with a more traditional pose, and the second was with anything color I felt like and a more pin up style pose. Both were done on a 14x20 Aqvarelle Arches water color block (cold pressed) after a light gesso and wash. I limited the time I could spend on them to around 1-2 hours, to keep them loose and more spontaneous. Minimal computer color correction. Hope you like!

Mermazing...

This one is a bit late in going up. I did it as a Christmas present for my aunt who is a big time surfer and loves mermaids, hence the, um, mermaid. I'm not sure if it'll make it to the site, but I was thinking of popping on some sweet retro lettering and making it look like an old time-y surf ad. That's kinda what I was going for when I was painting it...

A funny note: I put that graphic on the board just thinking it'd look neato, but it turns out it is actually pretty close to a real board company's logo. Coincidence or the result of an insidious surfboard makers subliminal marketing? You be the Judge!!!!!

FREAK'N TIME!

Ok, so I know I posted the color comp a month ago but this really didn't take me that long...actually, besides some unexpected material mishaps (who knew unseen artist tape residue+ oil paint=NEVER DRYING), this didn't take nearly as long as I expected. This is the first pass at the color correction, but I wanted to get the final up ASAP. There is also a bit more at top that was cropped (about a 1/4in) in this version, but like I said, I wanted to get this up on the site before I was distracted by something shiny again. Enjoy!



UPDATE: posted the slightly better version without missing top part.

Look at that S Car Go!

Worst pun joke ever. Also, LOOK! A new painting! Still needs some more color correcting, but I wanted to get it up before another month comes around and makes me feel bad for not posting. I'll upload better versions and maybe some process shots when I get the time.

Bubblegum Punk

Here is another quick painting that was to be used as a CD cover for light hearted/poppy punk. Just experimenting with type and the like, trying to bring up memories of Blow Pops and Bazooka Joe. There may be some more versions to come.

Camel-time!

Just a little image I did to play around with some extra board. Took me about 5-6 hours total to paint it (which if you know me is nothing). Could use some edge touch-ups, but it was more an experiment/study than anything else, so for now its done.

Erin has named him Sherman. That is all.