2015 in review

2015: what a year! THANK YOU so much everyone, for all your support over this past year! Here is 2015 in review via paintings completed. Looking forward to an exciting and productive 2016!

Creating A Monster - block-in

The block-in for the new painting 'Creating A Monster'. One of the new pieces being created for The Artist Project happening in Toronto, Feb. 18-21, 2016.

The Grinch: horror movie trailer

Hey, this is pretty cool. Back in 2013, I created a painting called 'The Whoville Massacre' which reimagined Dr. Seuss' famous book 'How the Grinch Stole Christmas' as a horror movie. It would appear others have since had the same brainstorm, a few of which have gone as far as making a fake movie trailer. My favorite among them is this one by Dane Keil.

The version I did (above)

Happy Holidays, everyone!

Timing Charts - drawings

Here is the final rough and line drawing for the painting 'Timing Charts'. One of the new paintings to be exhibited in The Artist Project Toronto February 2016. ‪

Tight rough drawing.

Clean drawing. This is what I will scan and blow up the size of the painting surface I will work on, and then print out. The purpose of the cleanup is so the lines are decisive - I don't have to guess which is the lines I want to keep.

Creating a monster...

This is the drawing for the painting on the round wood panel I'm creating for The Artist Project Toronto called 'Creating a Monster'. It was inspired by Gumby, playing with Play-Doh as a child, monsters, special effects animation, and the movie 'The Thing' (even though I've never seen the movie).

Gesso? I guess so.

One of the new painting I'm creating for The Artist Project Toronto will be painted on a 16" round wood panel! (I've always worked in squares/rectangles before previously. It's one of the new paintings I'm looking forward to the most.) Was a on a gessoing kick last night, priming a bunch of new surfaces.
 

(FYI: My favorite place to buy wood panels in Montreal is the UQAM art store: https://www.coopuqam.com/5-Boutique-des-arts-succursale.html)

The Artist Project 2016 - listing of artists

 A listing of all the artists exhibiting in the upcoming The Artist Project Toronto in Feb. 2016 can now be seen on the official website here: http://www.theartistproject.com/artist-gallery/
Feel rather privileged to be exhibiting along so much talent!

A word about Aspect Ratio

Knowing what size you are going to make your paintings before you begin is tremendously helpful. By knowing this, you can now be exact with your composition. 

There is something called Aspect Ratio most commonly used to determine screen dimensions in broadcast media (TV, cinema films, YouTube...).  Aspect Ratio is that notice you used to see on VHS tapes stating 'this film has been formatted to fit your screen'.

The aspect ratio of the drawing for the painting above (inside the grey rectangle) is 20:16 = 20"x16" (Examples of aspect ratios of different dimensions, but the same proportions would be 5:4, 10:8, and 1:0.8)

 

By knowing this, you can create a shape in those dimensions and account for all the space used in your composition. The advantage is: when you blow up the drawing (via photocopier to transfer it to your painting surface) you won't have negative space in your painting surface that you did not account for. (see below)

I like scanning the drawing, bringing it into a digital coloring program and placing a shape over it in the dimensions of the final painting. You can always move around that shape and angle it so the drawing fits in the most interesting way. 

Then, print out that image at a manageable size to tighten up the drawing (above). Although the shape is less than the final dimensions, you know that when you scale it up, it will be EXACTLY the size you want.  There are many  print places where you can do large format printing (anything beyond 12"x18"). You can get your image printed out at the scale you want (in this case, 20"x16").