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)

The Great Gouache Experiment

As mentioned in my previous post, I've been working in gouache quite a bit lately, and so far I've liked the results. For the most part I've just been doing little spots and sketches, but the upcoming Geek the Halls event gave me a good excuse to try doing some slightly larger pieces. Here's some of the stuff I've been working on, and some of the stuff that will be for sale this weekend at the show:

A couple of mythical creatures from Japan. The Kappa on the left is a water monster meant to scare children away from lakes and the Tanuki is basically a symbol of hedonism and good times! 

This was my first "full" painting in gouache. I'm still just playing around at this point, but this was really fun to work on. 

My favorite gouache piece so far, but I'm a sucker for a girl with a ray gun. 

All of these were quick 1-3 day experiments, but I think I'm gonna like this gouache stuff. If you like these, you gotta come to Geek the Halls this weekend!!! I have prints of the larger two, and all four originals will be for sale. See you there!

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!

Small Business Saturday!!!

Today is Small Business Saturday, and it just so happens that artists are some of the smallest businesses out there! While most artists make their income from gallery shows or commercial commissions, sales of prints make a huge difference and help us ride the line in the leaner times. And even better, prints make awesome gifts (after all, you might only wear a shirt or sweater for a few months, but art can last a lifetime). Now I'd love you to shop at my own online store (http://johnnyacurso.storenvy.com/) but if my stuff isn't your cup of tea, here are some links to some other awesome artists and galleries I know and love:

https://www.etsy.com/shop/ChrisRahnArt - High Fantasy art (Tolkien, MTG ETC.)
http://www.inprnt.com/gallery/becka/ - Portraits and whimsical surrealism
http://www.inprnt.com/gallery/kmcmorris/ - Young adult style fantasy and fairy tale
http://sallycentigrade.storenvy.com/ - Lowbrow and Illustrative art. Formerly Benjamin Benjamin
http://www.ponyclubpdx.com/ - PDX shop with a focus on illustrators, cartoonists, and printmakers
http://www.screamingskygallery.com/ - Toy and print shop on Portland's Alberta Street
http://www.antlerpdx.com/ - Fine art gallery often featured in Hi-Frutose and Juxtapose

These are just a few of the people and places out there that help make our world a little more colorful, so support your local small businesses and buy some art!

Seattle Weekly and Sexy Bezos ::UPDATED 11/9::

If you happen to be up in Seattle this week, and you happen to see a Seattle Weekly, I apologize for the pure sexyness you will be exposed to, for BEHOLD, in all his glory: SEXY JEFF BEZOS, CEO and resident stud muffin of Amazon!!!! ::Cue Hallelujahs::

I've been hinting at this painting a lot over the past week, because it has to be the most ridiculously hilarious thing I've ever painted. When Samantha, the AD at Seattle Weekly, approached me with the idea I was super excited. It was just so funny, and so random, that I pretty much fell in love (I mean who wouldn't right? Look at those abs!). After some initial research and roughs to refine the idea, I moved on to the reference photos...

Between the Rocky Horror piece a few months ago, Atlas and now this, a disturbing trend requiring me to take photos of myself in various stages of undress has emerged that I'm not really sure what to think about. But besides some slight humiliation (who am I kidding — I love it) this piece came together surprisingly easy. The deadline was short, exactly one week, which only left me 4 days to actually paint it, but I entered "beast mode" (to steal a phrase from Erin) and managed to get it finished a tiny bit early. That allowed more time to play around with it digitally and give Samantha a few more options. In the end they decided to go with the black and white rose on the Kindle, but the original was actually in color. Here he is in all his glory without text: 

ENJOY!

::UPDATE:: Check out my interview about the cover at the Melville House blog!

Atlas and the Storyteller

It's been a little while since I last posted, but I'm excited to finally show this one. A few months ago I was approached by a friend, who, after serendipitously stumbling across my work in someone else's house, decided she wanted to commission a painting. As a journalist, she was particularly interested in the story of the Native American character of the Storyteller approaching Atlas and asking him to lend her the world so she could tell its story. I immediately loved the idea, especially the mixing of myths, so I started jotting down ideas and gathering reference.

After playing around with a few different ideas of how we actually wanted the painting to look, we decided to let the piece have a bit of a "fantasy" flair to it, which was pretty exciting. I grew up loving fantasy and sci-fi art, and while my professional career has taken me in a slightly different direction, it was super fun to get back to my roots. There were some challenges, especially because it needed to work as a real painting, not just an illustration delivered digitally, but in the end I'm really happy with how the piece came out. Anyway, that's it for now, but I had so much fun with this one that I might just have to do a few more fantasy pieces...Till next time, thanks for dropping by!