Reflecting on the year that is waning

WOW

How did I not know about Zdzislaw Beksinski before now? How?! HOW?!

http://www.beksinski.pl/


Extraordinary, horrific manifestations of the nightmarish and erotic. Reminiscent of H.R. Giger a bit, but in no way derivative.

Absolutely worth checking out!

Neat-O!

Just for fun, here are a few links to some of my recent favorite internet timesinks

http://waynebarlowe.wordpress.com/
Wayne D. Barlowe is one of my all-time favorite illustrators, having done Barlowe's Guide to Extraterrestrials. I remember finding a copy of that taxonomic list of aliens, beautifully rendered, as a little kid and getting totally immersed. Now he's written a book about hell, and done dozens of mind-blowing, soul-rending pictures of it. Outstanding!


http://www.fromoldbooks.org/
Big old collection of high-res images of illustrated arcana. Great resource for design and collage.


http://ridiculouslyinteresting.com/
The Museum of Ridiculously Interesting Things. Needs no introduction.


http://strandbeest.com/
Artist Theo Jansen creates fantastic animals out of plastic pipes, tubes and waterbottles. They are fully engineered to respond to the wind and "come alive." I feel this is something that you have to see in person to fully appreciate, but still, it's incredible.


http://onceuponasketch.com/
Really fun and useful blog for children's books illustration.


More later, when the mood strikes.

Wrestling with Demons

Been working on developing a character for a collaboration for which I have very high hopes. It's no small thing to try to bring a fully developed (pun intended?) human being to life on paper. This is the first painting I've done of her, which I think stands alone as its own work, even if the design isn't 100% yet. 

So, the posting below was me trying to figure out Photoshop. Turns out I have a LOT to learn to make everything not look so... Photoshoppy. Still, it's a start, so what the heck.

Living Life

Collage, digital. 2012

 

I used to have no love whatsoever for digital art. The act of creating art to me is very tactile - I thrive on the movement of my arm and the interaction of various media with each other. I love the feel of paper texture, of a pencil in my hand.

 

 

Plus I was intimidated of Adobe CS. It is not user-friendly by a long shot. But I started looking at online tutorials and doing lots of experimentation, and voila: not so intimidated anymore. Turns out Photoshop is a pretty cool program.

 



Love Letter to Paige

 

Mixed Media on toned paper, 2012

 

I made this mixed media piece for my cousin on her 30th birthday. I remember her best as a little girl, under 4 years old, dancing in her mother's kitchen to a song only she could hear, totally engrossed in her own magic. It's always how I've thought of her. 

Gilded Age

 

Peculiar as it was in that part of the world, Mrs. Carlisle accepted the elaborate system of trenches her children dug in her garden. "Human nature," she'd smile to herself.

 

Later,  she would remark inwardly how persistently blood sticks to everything as she attempted for hours to pick the loam from her hands.

Lilly-White Skin, Eyes Like Ashes

Ink on toned paper, colored in Photoshop

Nightmares of Ecstasy

Gouache and Ink on colored paper

What the Angel Saw

Mixed media on toned paper

Finished this. Don't have a scanner big enough to take in the whole painting, but you get the idea.

And Since I was So Uptight...

I sketched this to chill out.

Looks a lot like the other craggy faced, depressed men I've painted in the past. Seems I return to a certain, navel gazing theme. Who knows? Maybe this face will become something in the future. A character in a painted graphic novel, perhaps?

In any case, I sketched this with absolutely no pre-planning, no "idea" in mind. I just sat down with a blank piece of paper and my paint, and went at it. I find this is the best way to work. Starting from an "idea" seems to choke me up, especially if that idea is something along the lines of "paint like Wyeth. Go ahead. How come yours doesn't look like his?!".

Can't imagine why I choke. 

Stubbing My Toe on Wyeth

I was feeling uptight tonight.

Watched a video on Andrew Wyeth, who is my absolute favorite painter. Ever. Sweet leaping Jesus, if that man didn't paint in exactly the palette of my soul...

But the thing is, for some reason I get SUPER uptight when I watch/read/view the work of my idols. I go to my canvas and all I'm thinking about is them. Their work. How THEY did things. As inspiring as I find Wyeth, David Mack, Dave McKean and many others, something about my love for their work stands in my way.

Perhaps this is the lesson. Adore the work of others, let it work its magic on you. But fight it out of your heart and mind with everything you've got as soon as you pick up a brush. That canvas is yours.

Loss Cycle

page 1

Page 2

Resolution here isn't so great. You can see up close and read the newsprint on my deviantArt page. Click here for page 2.

What the Angel Saw - Preview

Playing around with gouache on pink-toned paper. I'm thinking I'm going to go with dark lines in india ink next...

HOT BUTTERED TOAST!!! FOLKS ARE READING MY BLOG!!!!

You like me! You really like me!!!

(In point of fact, I think Sally Field, to whom I attribute the above quote, should be smeared with honey and fed to ants. Ask me why in the comments below and I'll tell you).

400+ views after only a month on the Interwebs! You readers and your awesomeness!


Seriously, thank you very much for looking at this blog. It is, to this point, one of the only avenues I have for getting my art looked at by the rest of the world.

Thanks a million. You sexy beast, you.

Nursing. Pencil on paper.

I need a better scanner. My current one washes the crap out of my drawings. LOTS of tones missing. Oh well.

I have a beautiful wife and daughter, by the way.

Another life drawing. I found that the less time I had to draw, the better things turned out. No time to overthink and overwork, I suppose.

Life Drawing at the Harwood Art Center, 9/11/12

Life drawing session at the Harwood Art Center

Here are some sites I have found inspirational, and which are worth your time.

1.
You've heard of Steampunk? Well, Dieselpunk is sort of the same deal, only glorifying the uh... gloriousness that is early 20th century modernism.

2.
You know what this is? It's the Google Art Project. And it's brilliant. Thousands of hi-resolution images of artwork from around the world, taking in hundreds of art collections. You can zoom WAY in close to works of art and see the very brush strokes of the masters. It is the best time-sink on the internet. Go there. Go there now.

3.
For years now, I've followed the good people at Lines and Colors. One of the best jumping off points to artwork out there.

4.
Retronaut. What are you waiting for? 

5.
I've got a wicked love of bleakness and nihilism. Here's a fun little site that scratches that itch: End of Being.
More to come later. Follow the links.

For some reason, I find it incredibly difficult to switch back and forth between modes of expression. For example, if I'm on a poetry-writing kick it's rare that I draw; if I'm working on a painting I'll seldom write poetry. It's not that I'm not always doing SOMETHING, but I can't seem to do more than one thing at a time.

I wonder why? 

Guerrilla Sketching

I'm in the habit of secretly sketching people in public places. I like the idea of catching people when they are acting completely naturally and are totally unposed. Creepy? Maybe. Instructive and fun? Absolutely.

Cherry Blossoms, Oil on Canvas, 2012

Camposanto

You are an old, brown photograph.
From the foot of your bed
I look down at you,
     we are silent and stare
into each others' eyes
  I see every part of you
and I remember

your black hair and the hats you wore
the flowers you stuck in them
in your Papa's fields those long summers

the white dress at your quinceniera
how they looked at you
the flowers in your hands
coy pride in your dark eyes
 Beautiful me, your eyes said and
looked down at your hands and
flowers, raised them to your chest
lowered your head to smell

Papa's guarded jita at school
the pencil in your hand
hard at your lessons

the Sisters make you speak and write only in English
  but they do not hear you in the yards
or at home, you thought with pride
the little furrow between your eyebrows
on unlined skin

your voice raised at play
with the other girls in the yard
or on the dusty road home
your Spanish songs wove through picket fences
and fell to the ground like ribbons

the cold air came and took your songs
and you took to rest in your bed of earth
where I see you now.
You should be a grandmother.

The good people at Mutant Root online gallery have some of my work up. Follow this link and be unsettled!

http://www.mutantroot.com/gallery-2/michael-ellis

A sketchbook with toned paper, you say?!

Sometimes you sell the painting, sometimes you don't.

I donated a painting to a local theatre company's silent auction fundraiser (Intimacy, the first post on the blog). No one bid on it.

It was well over twice the price of every other item on auction, many of which had starting bids between $10-$30. My starting bid was $140. I don't feel like I overcharged, but the price stood out in its company like a sore thumb. It was also the only painting there. The rest of the items were things like gift certificates for day spas and coffee and car repairs (notable exceptions include some really beautiful jewelry and, I'll be damned, some photo-realistic art done on Etch-A-Sketches. These sold, btw). Perhaps it was in the wrong company.

I'm less bummed about the lack of sale than I am feeling like I've had an instructive experience. Art's expensive, and a luxury commodity. Maybe this was not the proper venue for the art.

The thoughts I'm resisting are those which say the piece itself wasn't somehow 'good' enough, 'worthy'. I think it's worthy, and that's an important milestone as an artist. To think one's art is 'worthy', when every single social/economic message is screaming the contrary in our faces, is a big thing.

Don't know the fate of the work in question. It will remain with the company who may try to sell it, and if they can't, they'll return it to me. Thankfully, I learned the name of a local fine art print making outfit from the Etch-A-Sketch guy, so I'd LOVE to get it back and invest in some prints, besides the crappy photos I've been taking.

Sometimes you sell the painting, sometimes you don't.

My Father's Typewriter

My Father's Typewriter

I.

A Rabbi's son, he said,

pays attention and listens carefully.

I grew up and listened

to his staccato typewriter voice strike the air

and then recede

to leave me again in tension

and silence

II.

my father's typewriter,

a 1934 Remington.

Made in England, it had Hebrew keys

and a modified carriage so the type read from right to left.

Listen as the keys strike and recede

connect and release

Great claps,

abrupt, brutal like thunder

like my father's words

like the voice of the Almighty to Moses

little heart attacks

III.

the typewriter is him

distilled to a steel box

speckled gray paint

letters in Hebrew

IV.

Of all things I kept this.

The typewriter rests on a shelf in my apartment

profound and watchful,

a machine to bolt and wire letters together into meaning

V.

It meant nothing to me,

the nonsense keys and

my father's nonsense books

ancient, incomprehensible language

a puzzle, an uncracked code

defiantly unknown and secretive

like adults who whisper things

of great importance around children

I was told those lines said who we are

and who we are to God

my mind was on DiMaggio

VI.

The Rabbi's lessons briefly filled my head

then receded in tenuous silence like a spasm of pounded

    keys,

then repose.

But I did not listen.

No inspired bushes burned in me

                           I am a white page

                           no context for ancient letters

VII.

My truth is the sweaty grip of a baseball bat.

It is that moment, two steps off second, the wound body

       of the pitcher

It is anticipation of test scores and scholarships,

post-graduation job offers

a train ticket

my own apartment in Houston

VIII.

Pay attention and listen carefully

keys strike and recede

connect and release

strike and recede

connect and release

IX.

the typewriter stopped and sat idle, there, in my father's

     study.

Silent and heavy as truth it sat

its corners filled with dust until we went through his things

and of all things I kept this.

Feel its weight

              its rounded corners,

              its bumpy gray paint on your palm.

              Circle your finger round its keys suspended

              by steel rods that disappear into its great belly,

              make no sense of its letters,

              wipe dust from the chrome Remington emblem.

I cradled its profound weight to the back seat of my car.

How absurd it looked, how out of place framed in those

     post-modern curves of my car

It stared at me like an old man wrecked by a stroke,

      saying nothing.

X.

I was five.

Unheard in the doorway, I watched my father

sit at his desk

a mountain in a white shirt,

his yarmulke like the moon.

He paused, rubbed his tired eyes, stretched,

It was then that he noticed me.

He called me to him,

lifted my tiny body onto his lap facing the keys

I could not read yet.

He placed my little hands on the backs of his own

as he positioned them above the keyboard and began to type.

How something so big could move so quickly.

Arms wriggling with his movements, I laughed

at the dance of his giant hands.

Flying by the Seat of Your Pants

I'm discovering that the artwork I make that seems to resonate the most is the stuff that took the least planning, the stuff that has the most 'happy accidents' (Bob Ross, you sexy beast you). Maybe it's a question of mindset - if I'm relaxed and not overthinking, not worried about the end product, then my hands and the material does what it's supposed to. Hrm. Here's to flying by the seat of our pants.

Ink on paper, 2012

Some of the best stuff starts as doodles. I started making concentric circles in my sketchbook, which ended up looking like a heart, which ended up looking 'feminine', which I decided to turn into a sexy Wing Chun Kung Fu assassin. Go figure.

Hunter, Acrylic on paper, 2012

Started doodling in acrylics and this is what came of it. Limited palette, only cadmium red, cadmium yellow and ultramarine.

Butterfly Swords, Gouache on paper, 2012

A fun exercise in using gouache. I wasn't explicitly TRYING to make him copy Bruce Lee's haircut and style, but it came out that way.

Thai Marionette, Oil on canvas, 2007

This is the first oil painting I ever did. It was an old marionette puppet that had been repainted and embellished. The painting's got it's share of issues, but I like it.

Untitled, Acrylic on paper, 2012

Experiment in paint handling.

Blood Tree, Acrylic and ink on panel, 2011

I originally dripped blue and red acrylic all over this panel with the idea of having a textured, toned background, but the paint ran together in an interesting way that reminded me of a tree. So I added some sepia ink lines and there you have it.

Blue Tree, Oil on canvas, 2011

Cottonwoods in New Mexico are so incredible. They're withered and gnarled, like they've fought for every inch out of the desert.

Do Not Duplicate, Mixed Media on Panel, 2011

Done for the Metallo Gallery Miniature Show. Visit them here: metallogallery.com/

Intimacy, Oil on canvas, 2012

Did this as a donation to the Duke City Repertory Theatre's annual fundraiser, the Twilight Gypsy Bazaar (visit their website here: http://www.dukecityrep.com )

PORN!!!!


just kidding.


Now that I've got your attention: This blog is where I intend to document my explorations in art and poetry. I've drawn since childhood and written poetry since college. When I don't do these things, I become a miserable bastard.


I hope you enjoy!

Still Life with Rose and Welding Goggles, 2010