Slapdash Art Blog

Last weekend

2011-10-25T11:46:00.000-07:00

Here's a quick impressionist background that no one will ever see. One of five I did last weekend. It's going to be an underlay jiggling around under very dark/near opaque tinted glass in a kidnap van, so you'll be able to see maybe 10% right at the center.

Fun.

I get to draw and paint with big brushes!

2011-10-09T09:35:00.000-07:00

For the last few months, I've had the great privilege to work on the third season of the Ricky Gervais show. Frequently working straight from storyboard roughs, I've been drawing and painting on the fly. The style has been a lot of fun, varying from cartoon 50's high style to painterly impressionism, Tex Avery to Spanish Baroque, whatever sells the gag.

Background for Columbus selling the idea of exploring.

I've had a lot of fun. Thanks to Richard Lee and Dan Fraga for sympathetic eyes, encouragement, freedom and constructive criticism. Thanks also to Ricky Gervais and Karl and Stephen for having such wide-ranging and whack conversations.

Trafalgar square

Here are some recent backgrounds. Some of these images are crops from very large pans. Click on the pic for larger image so you can see how loose they are.

Hotel

Kuwait GW1, somewhat realistic parody sequence.

Karl's Kitchen.

Karl's sadly vacant fridge.

Desert Isle crop.

Desert isle shoreline

Karl's garden with space for lettuce munchin' slug

Birth control centuries ago. Citrus fruit for diaphragms.

Rough board of Karl in imaginary catacombs under the surface of Pluto.

Light flowing into imaginary underground catacombs under surface of Pluto.

London mashup.

Italy mashup, syncs to earlier London mashup.

Mentalist's house

Nasty pub urinals.

Nasty pub urinals, reverse angle.

Park in London

Rain rolls into park.

Rough board I worked from for my trench warfare BG.

Trench Warfare

Huge multi-plane trench warfare pan, increasingly snowy.

Ibiza safe and gloomy

Cropped in on an island I imagined off the coast of Ibiza.

It's a lot of fun to see these with the animation on top of them.

Trying to get back into painting.

2011-06-02T14:03:00.000-07:00

I've been making a living painting dramatic buildings and landscapes and evil villainous lairs out of my head for the last fifteen years.

But I've never really painted outdoors. (I've done some pastels & watercolors, but never oils.) I've prepped a bunch of boards and I'm going to try to get fluid. Here's the first one. Figured I'd add yet another Arroyo Suicide Bridge painting to the thousands that have already been painted.

There's so much information in the real world! Overabundance. The problem goes from trying to make stuff up, create color scapes from scratch, textures, tones, to editing it all out... I'm busy removing texture, smashing together tones, composing by elimination of visual noise. The creative problem is almost diametrically opposed to what I've been doing for all this time though the subjects are the same.

I'll see if I can find a villain's lair to paint during a storm. Reference makes all the difference.

Tonight...

2010-12-20T23:40:00.000-08:00

We're trying to put the baby to sleep. Reading cozy Christmas stuff about gingerbread cookies and flying reindeer and evergreen trees. Suddenly we hear scratching noises coming from the hallway. I figure it's her poor dog going senile and trying to bury her dog biscuit again.

"What's that dog doing?"

"That's not my dog. It's your damned cats again."

We pinpoint the sound in the hallway. Christine's ear is next to the vent, diagnosing. It's coming from the main air intake duct for the heating system. Christine looks up, eyes like watery saucers.

"It's a SKUNK!!!"

I'm thinking "now how in the hell does she know that from the skritchy skritchy sounds coming from the duct? Probably a possum again." Then it hits me. The first wave of the atomic stench. It's kind of thick and oily, like the smoke from green wood.

The damn thing deployed underneath the house, maybe INSIDE the ductwork to the A/C system. Won't know until we remove the duct tape and trash bag sealing off the vent. Not that it helped much.

So now we're camped out in the living room with a fire in the fireplace, all the windows wide open while it rains in successive waves outside.

Merry Skunkmas to All, and to all a good night.

...

Googling..."A skunk went off underneath my house".

A few recent sketches

2009-02-05T07:44:00.001-08:00

The workshop at Fox tends to have short poses. Typically two to five minutes.

Next plein air sketch

2008-02-04T15:53:00.001-08:00

I should probably add some detail to the foreground.

Plein Air sketches

2008-02-04T08:06:00.000-08:00

Here's the second of (hopefully) a number of quick plein air sketches:

This one is actually the first of the attempts:

Demo Reel

2008-02-03T11:18:00.000-08:00

Here's a demo reel with some of the backgrounds & color boards I've done for various films/shows:

My demo reel.

(Link rather than actual file. It's 138 Mb, so you probably won't want to download it more than once.)

If anyone lurking knows of a show that needs a BGpainter, Vis Dev artist or Art Director, please let me know. :-)

And now for something completely different...

2007-12-03T12:15:00.000-08:00

Not getting out much these days, so...I'm going to work from some of the reference material I've taken over the last few years.

Here's a sketch of a red volcanic neck near the valley of the gods (I think):

I'm just getting back into watercolors, here are a bunch of quick thumbnails:

I'm going to try to do tons of these. I figure eventually the fluidity will return and I'll do something good. In the mean time I'll have fun playing. I'd almost forgotten how much I love using a real brush...and I love the way the textures magically appear on the rough watercolor paper.

I think my favorite one of these may be the purple monochrome.

Friday October 5, 2007

2007-10-07T15:37:00.000-07:00

A bunch of very fast loose color sketches. Most pages composed of ~1-2 minute gesture drawings.

So...I'm pretty behind on posting any sketches.

2007-09-04T23:57:00.000-07:00

Sorry. It was pretty crazy for a while there on the Simpsons Movie, and then preparing for the baby...

Enough of that. Let's work through the backlog. These are the last of my sketches from the downtown workshop:

Here are a few sketches from the new Thursday workshop:

...and drawings from Bill Stout's Sunday Workshop.

The baby is due in 3 days. May be a while before I have any more sketches to post. :-)

The latest on bees-

2007-05-01T16:56:00.000-07:00

http://www.gnn.tv/articles/3063/Please_Lord_not_the_bees

Hmmm. Lots of different theories on what's happening to the honeybees.

All I know is that mine have returned and seem to be doing fine.

http://homepage.mac.com/ashby/PhotoAlbum44.html

They sure like the rotted out old walnut tree.

Tuesday Sketch catch up post

2007-04-19T13:08:00.000-07:00

A few sketches from the 3rd, 10th and 17th of April.

Some look kind of dark on this monitor. Maybe I should redo those pics.

More Downtown Tuesday sketches-

2007-03-28T11:22:00.000-07:00

Last night's workshop:

From two weeks ago:

Tuesday March 6th 2007

2007-03-07T09:39:00.000-08:00

As usual, not completely happy with the sketches, but there are more and more tiny passages that I really like.

For instance, I really like the whole loose positive/negative thing going on with Sara's legs and boots:

That's actually getting somewhere.

I feel like I'm walking an exceedingly long road and every once in a long while I get a tiny peek over a hill to further down the road.

Tuesday Workshop- Voodoo!

2007-02-21T10:03:00.000-08:00

This week's theme was Voodoo. The drawings are all Jen, the last one channeling Jen as a Mayan Priestess, complete with lovely speckled chicken.

Click on the last image for a full res close up. As usual, there are things I like and dislike about it, but the color and texture is kind of fun.

The chicken must have been someone's pet. It was quite comfortable posing in front of a large crowd of chattering people with loud background music.

Wish I'd remembered to bring more than one sheet of black paper. :-(

Art Conservation

2007-02-15T10:35:00.000-08:00

Here's an interesting New York Times article on the problems of art conservation.

Workshop Tuesday Feb 13

2007-02-15T08:54:00.000-08:00

Workshop Tuesday Feb 5

2007-02-09T14:15:00.000-08:00

Tuesday January 30

2007-01-31T09:38:00.000-08:00

Done with the sudden rush of freelance. Able to go to workshops again.

Tuesday December 11th Workshop

2006-12-13T09:55:00.000-08:00

Workshop, Tuesday December 05

2006-12-06T10:11:00.000-08:00

Arrived late. Only got a couple I liked. The last one (Heather and Sara) turned out pretty well.

Halloween 2006

2006-11-01T22:10:00.000-08:00

I wandered through a sketchy part of LA's warehouse district at midnight dressed in a giant white bunny suit to bring you this week's sketches.

(Oh, and use Safari to view these pictures. Firefox/Mozilla doesn't handle color profiles properly. Very apparent on dark pictures like these.)

...and a couple from the previous week's workshop:

OK, behind in posting sketches. Here are a bunch of new ones-

2006-10-20T12:32:00.000-07:00

I really like the textures around Sara's head in this drawing. Warning- large linked pic:

http://homepage.mac.com/ashby/.Pictures/Color%20Studies/IMGP5262.jpg

Workshop Tuesday September 19th

2006-09-23T14:29:00.000-07:00

More quick sketches. Just playing with color, soft and hard edges, loose studies. Sometimes find a nice line, not worrying so much if the structure is a bit wonky.

Tuesday September 12th Workshop

2006-09-13T10:10:00.000-07:00

Funny how Firefox doesn't display the colors correctly. Anyway, here are the latest:

I like this next one, but I'm going to have to go in an fix it. Negative space too large, makes the leg look too skinny.

Tuesday September 5th workshop

2006-09-11T00:27:00.000-07:00

Tuesday's Workshop, August 15

2006-08-16T11:11:00.000-07:00

More rough color studies:

Wish I'd had more time on these-

I liked the energy on this one:

I think this last one is interesting. The color masses structure out nicely.

These things are hard to photograph well.

Workshop, Tuesday August 8th

2006-08-09T11:42:00.000-07:00

Here are a couple of drawings from this week's workshop. The first one got overworked, but I figure I'll need to overwork about a thousand before I begin to know where to stop. I do think I'm finally getting somewhere.

This last one is a quick sketch of Toni. I'm happy with the way it turned out.

A few drawings from the last couple of workshops

2006-08-04T18:42:00.000-07:00

Last Tuesday, adam and eve. I was sitting over in the Eve section.

This Tuesday, dressed as dolls.

Some pics from my drive around the Southwest/Midwest

2006-08-04T17:10:00.000-07:00

As always, click for larger images. This post is a work in progress and will grow over the next few days.
---

I ran through a nasty thunderstorm on the way to Oklahoma City. When I hit a rest area, I stopped to take pictures:

In the next shot, you can see tiny funnels spiraling down toward the earth just above the light.

I didn't see any of them make it, but I was driving in tornado alley so...

...I got back in my car and kept in front of the storm.

When night fell, it caught up to me again and I could see literally HUNDREDS of lightning strikes. There were so many, I broke out the camera and had time to take a lot of shots, some of which were interesting.

Well, interesting if you like blurry night photography, which I do.

I did manage to catch some lightning.

That would have been a great shot if it was in focus. :-(

The camera kept trying to focus on the windshield wipers and taking forever to get the shot. Had to set it to manual focus while driving and being buffeted by the winds. Then leave it on for about 5 second exposure and hope it got something.

I could hear that last one even at 50 MPH in the storm.

Finally it got so bad I had to stop taking pictures.

Ironically, about 45 minutes later my car got pummelled by bricks floating out of a flat bed truck. They looked like styrofoam coming out of a bag, but when they hit my car they made a tremendous smashing sound. Big gouges in the hood and windshield.

The Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma has some great paintings. Remington, Nicolai Fechin, etc.. Sadly, I forgot to take my camera. I didn't make that mistake when I went to the Museum at the

From a random field in Kansas:

Completed Birdhouse, off to charity.

2006-05-30T21:24:00.000-07:00

Here's a couple of shots of the porch. Notice the addition of the lovely chair and windchimes. Nice finishing touches.

I'm actually a little sad to see it go. :-(

Ahmah's Birdhouse, about done-

2006-05-30T09:13:00.000-07:00

I guess this would qualify as having a cat laying around the house.

Pimp My Birdhouse & sleeping kittens

2006-05-27T12:22:00.000-07:00

The kittens commune and recouperate after a long day. They visited the vet because they all had a cold- sneezing and congested coughing. The vet assures C. this is nothing terrible, gave her some food supplements, and recommends she not give any kittens away prior to their full recovery, preferably to houses where any other cats are up to date with their vaccinations.

We were all relieved to hear that.

Prior to a full check up, we had all been worried.

The kittens weren't worried. They were just chasing feathers and sneezing. Now they're napping and we all look forward to their final clean bill of health.

~Change of subject~

A few days ago I had a project politely dumped in my lap.

Each of the show crews at C.N. is working on a birdhouse. A simple little birdhouse is to be decorated and donated to a local school where it will be auctioned off with proceeds going to the school. Artists being artists, the charity project became somewhat competitive between crews. The birdhouses became more and more elaborate with extensive show related decorations.

When my car was finally running again (defective steering computer chip), I zipped down to Ken's house where he risked fingers and toes extensively pimpin' my birdhouse. As we started work on the basic birdhouse, we had noticed that the roof line was the same as Ahmah's house in my show:

Sadly, I didn't have this piece for reference, so we had to go by memory for some of the design. We also simplified & exaggerated many of the design elements. After all, it is a charity birdhouse based on a cartoon.

Several hours later, the birdhouse pimping was largely completed. I spent the next day gluing a couple of pieces on and roughing in the paint. Still have a ways to go, but here it is so far:

As you can see, I've propped the birdhouse up on my wallet to approximate the angle of the show painting. Seems doubly appropriate since a birdhouse is about all the California real estate I can afford.

I'm looking forward to seeing this finished. I'll try to get pics of the other crew's birdhouses. I've seen the ones from "Squirrel Boy" and "My Gym Partner's a Monkey", and they're pretty cool. Hopefully our show's will turn out as well...

I'm breaking show style a bit with my painting. The flat graphic style isn't visually as interesting on a real object. The colors are also a bit off at this stage. :shrug: Hopefully Alan won't mind the cheats. ;-)

More kitties.

2006-05-21T15:54:00.000-07:00

Getting close to release date.

Hot cat on cat action pics...

2006-05-11T15:31:00.000-07:00

OK, so... cat on dresser.

And cat on cat box.

and cat sayin' "What you got there in your hand?"

And cat attacking pant leg.

Relaxing on the dresser.

Feather is spotted.

If you rub them together they become briefly uncertain how to proceed.

When you leave the room, you can hear them gallop around like tiny little horses with velcro hooves.

They climb anything, and hang upside down, suspended by two back toes while attacking a sibling.

Sometimes it's fun to get puffy and hiss at the dog for no reason.

The dog is dying to herd them.

Apparently feet are excellent to chew on.

As are other cats.

Humans are primarily useful as Jungle Gym and obstacle course.

Strings now make perfect sense, and absolute focus is maintained.

Some Tuesday night workshop sketches

2006-05-04T10:08:00.000-07:00

A couple of fives. Large fast drawings, mostly working on overlap and quick structure, not very accurate.

...and a few longer poses.

The head is about two inches high.

Finally, Active kitten Pictures.

2006-05-01T19:56:00.000-07:00

A glitch in the digital camera killed a roll of cute pics from a few days ago. To compensate, here are a whole bunch of photos.

(click images for large pics.)

Tuesday's Workshop

2006-04-26T03:06:00.000-07:00

A brief break in the Kitten blogging.

Here are a couple of pieces from Tuesday's workshop:

Sunday, suddenly walking and investigating.

2006-04-17T09:50:00.000-07:00

Three weeks old today. Mostly sleeping and eating, but when you open the door to their room, they all come piling out to see what's happening. Dramatic change from just the day before when they really weren't walking much.

Their eyes have all cleared up. (They had some crusties for a few days, but some mild drops seem to have cleared that up in short order.)

They're already becoming difficult to herd.

Beginning to sock each other. Only one has figured out how much fun this is, but the rest will catch on soon.

The ears are beginning to unroll and become pointy and catlike.

This guy is the most adventurous. Walked out of the box, cruised over and posititioned himself in lap.

The kitties are now cruising around but aren't authentically plaful yet. They're just beginning to bite each others ears on purpose, but still sit and stare dumbly at a twitching length of string.

"What's that for?"

Wednesday, Eyes Wide Open.

2006-04-13T01:45:00.000-07:00

Crawling all over.

Watching the world.

Look how big they're getting.

Holding him up next to the light so I can take a shot without the flash.

Now, that's a cute kitty.

-*-

I think Tiger's mysterious injury has been solved.

Tiger, one of the big local Toms, showed up with a bad gash in his neck a few months ago. Tonight as I'm walking to my car, a 40 lb. Raccoon (and smaller companion) slipped over the ivy covered fence next door and sauntered along the sidewalk just a few feet in front of me. A raccoon that size could do some real damage to a housecat.

Eyes Can Open, though apparently everything is too bright.

2006-04-09T16:08:00.000-07:00

Currently they haltingly stagger around. They'll crawl out of their cubbyhole, looking for mom. But most of their time is spent passed out cold, belly full of milk.

The kittens are relentless eating machines. They are becoming huge. Well, huge relative to their previous tiny size. Or grasshoppers or something. Bigger anyway.

Falling asleep while nursing, gradually falling off his favorite nipple:

Just wait 'til their eyes are wide open...

They're going to be so cute.

(Click for full size image.)

At one point, two kitties were staring at me all saucer eyed. W0uld have been a great pic, but it's just too dark. Soon though, soon you will all be exposed to the terrible majesty of cuteness.

Eyes almost open.

2006-04-06T23:49:00.000-07:00

Due to all the complaints I've received, we now return to your regularly scheduled kitten thread.

These kittens are getting some big heads.

If you look closely, the eyes are just starting to open up.

Mom is a little worked up at all the attention to the kittens:

...and a flash photo. Lots and lots of fur.

Ken's Coral Reef tank

2006-04-03T21:30:00.000-07:00

...complete with blurry Yellow Tang.

They've doubled in size.

2006-04-01T18:58:00.000-08:00

There appear to be three males and one female.

Sweaters are good for nipple hunting.

Mom comes to see what's going on:

OK, so I finally took a flash photo in the box.

Their eyes appear to almost be opening. They crawl toward the light when they hear people outside the box. They haven't been picked up much (mostly so Mom won't get weirded and hide them in some crevice) but they adjust quickly the few times they've been handled. They'll be well acclimated to people by the time they can see. :-)

Today the dog sniffed them very gingerly. She's been terribly curious, but she was only allowed in sniffing range. If the kittens could see, it would have looked like this:

I wonder if they remind her of her puppies? Odds are she'll be herding them like the rest of the cats in a few weeks.

Milk Drunk Love

2006-03-30T08:56:00.000-08:00

Wednesday Evening, the kittens all have a belly full of milk, stagger blindly around, mash each other in the head, crawl against the sides of their home & sleep in a tangled kitteny ball.

They're all plumping like ball park franks. Legs still skinny and shaky, but gaining strength.

Just to make a record of the time it took for birth (in case anyone else is about to go through this)-
5:45 PM her water broke.
7:00 PM was the first of the large voluntary contractions.
The book says 30-90 minutes for the first kitten from that point. Well, things didn't work out that way. Sabina took a good 105 minutes to send the first one out the chute, so don't panic if it takes a bit longer than expected.
8:45 PM first birth for the new mother.
Kittens two and three were spaced about 45 minutes apart, with the fourth showing up sometime during the night.

Shortly after birth, the second kitten was having trouble breathing, then lay completely still. Pulled it out and the face was still encased in the membrane. Pulled off the membrane and rubbed the kitten until it began breathing. Sabina was still distracted with cleaning and fluffing the first kitten. Put the second kitten right in front of her face so she'd begin cleaning and stimulating it. All was fine after that.

-

Hopefully we'll get some pictures with more light. The flashlight just doesn't produce enough light for good pictures. Next week will be better, as their eyes will open and they'll be more active. Currently they spend most of their time in a milk stupor.

Monday Night Kitten fest.

2006-03-29T19:55:00.000-08:00

Saturday's pregnant cat photoshoot:

One of Christine's adopted strays turned out to be preggers. Very
preggers.

We weren't sure who the father was, so many options- There's "Big
Yellow Headed Kitty", there's the mostly white with black spots cat
from next door, there's Tiger (Sabina's father, ew.) and there's
Tomás, all of whom are in the running.

Christine's solid black cat Spamy put in
the effort a few times, but he's out of the running because he's been
fixed. What can I say? Sabina's a friendly cat.

Tomás in his swanky waterproof bachelor pad:

Notice his white markings.

When the first kitten emerged, it was clearly from Tomás. So were the
others in turn.

Mom resting comfortably after hours of labor. Three (?) Kittens?
Eating eating eating:

Señor Tomás brings a celebratory offering.

I suppose this is a cat's version of a cigar and a martini.

Once it had been duly admired, and he had been praised, and he
confirmed that I wasn't interested in partaking, Tomás finished the
rest of the crunchy yummy.

(Tomás is a brutally efficient hunter. Catch, kill & eat. I'm hoping nobody writes in to tell me this is some sort of rare Echo Park Riparian Desert Rat.)

In the morning, the kittens (now 4) are plump and sleeping like tiny
logs.

Once they dried out and fluffed up, it became apparent that they
weren't black and white like Tomás, they were tiger striped like mom,
but with Tomás's white markings.

Sabina comes out for some quality time, and spends it grooming
Christine.

More sleeping kitties:

It's hard to see just how small they are without reference. Here's my
hand for scale:

Early morning Christine and the happy father:

Sadie watches all:

Señor Tomás aka T-bone aka Mr. T lives on the porch when it's
raining. The rest of the time he's out ratting or surveying his kingdom.

Great cat. I'm happy they're his. Looks like Sallie's going to take one.

Late breaking news is that "The Milk Brothers" are also in the running for possible paternity, but since their white tips are significantly smaller than Tomás's, our money is still on Tomás. Plus, he brought the "gift" on the night of delivery, doesn't that make him the official dad? This is all so confusing. Apparently this section of Echo Park is some sort of cat vortex with billions of fertile males. I can't imagine why that is. Couldn't have anything to do with the catfood on the porch... ;)

March 14th Workshop - Theme... Jailbait.

2006-03-15T03:23:00.000-08:00

The theme for the Tuesday workshop is jailbait. Only one drawing this week- Jen. I think it turned out OK. Conte pastels on black paper.

The Next Quilt

2006-03-14T10:16:00.000-08:00

As of last night, a new quilt is being composed:

(As usual, click for large image.)

I like the colors, especially that subtle blue. Close up it's a loud crackle batik, but from a distance it becomes a third read.

It'll be fun seeing how this composition turns out.

Ben & Jennifer's workshop- 3-9-06

2006-03-10T08:45:00.000-08:00

Here are a couple more from last night's workshop. If I keep at it regularly for another year, I feel like something may come together. Some nice color passages. The drawings still aren't rock solid, but that will come with mileage & getting back in practice.

Shirley held some cool poses for the short drawings, but I'm still too slow to get those right. Maybe next time.

The Photos don't capture how rich the greens are. If I have time I'll reshoot them/see if I can correct the color.

Fat Tuesday's Drawings, Feb 28

2006-03-05T12:50:00.000-08:00

I struggled with this drawing of Jennifer for a while. Don't think it ever really worked out, but there are bits that show some promise.

Ultimately the piece became unworkably loaded with pastel & completely lost it's freshness

Makes me want to break out the oils again.

The drawing of Monica worked pretty well. A good start.

Experimenting with color and tone for mass.
I want to work on my edge vocabulary without losing any of the freshness. Not easy in very short sittings. Need to be more disciplined in my work, even when trying to keep the extremely loose feel.

-

Currently reading Harold Speed's book on Drawing

Excellent reference work. Amusing reading about radical new draftsmen like Cezanne.

Tuesday's Drawings

2006-02-24T19:21:00.000-08:00

Four pastels from the underground drawing club. Curious to see how this blogging software works.

I'm trying to draw and paint more regularly. Hopefully something good will come of this.

I swear I'm going to do a Black Velvet series. Yeah. Devil chicks in high heels on black velvet...Classy. :-) Pastel on black canson paper will do for now.

(The theme of the workshop was devil chicks. Probably in response to last week's angelic Valentine's Day theme.)

Valentine's Day sketches

2006-02-24T12:32:00.000-08:00

Well, it had to happen sooner or later. Let the Art Blogging begin! Hopefully the sketches will get better as I get back into practice. I figure every once in a while I'll get a good one.

Here are some sketches from the Valentine's day workshop:

Cassandra

Sara & Christine

Sara & Christine

Click images for larger pics.

I'm primarily focusing on color and getting back into the swing of drawing. At this point, not worrying much about whether the drawings are particularly accurate.

Textured paper and dry pastels.