Hi-Fructose

Hi-Fructose is a great site/ magazine to check out! So much great art and inspiration!


A little bit about Hi-Fructose:

Hi-Fructose is a quarterly art magazine, founded by artists, Attaboy and Annie Owens in 2005. Hi-Fructose focuses squarely on the art which transcends genre and trend, assuring readers thorough coverage and content that is relevant, informative and original. Hi-Fructose showcases an amalgamation of new contemporary, emerging as well distinguished artists, with a spotlight on awe inspiring spectacles from round the world all of which help to define the future of art in our culture.

I am happy to find a blog post about my army! Thanks everyone for the support!

Preparation

Preparation can take a while. Depending on what I am preparing for, it can take a full day or two. Stretching and gessoing multiple large canvasses, or researching anatomy, or taking photos can take time. If I take all the prep work into account, I would say the finish art pieces are the result of 50% research/prep and 50% painting/drawing/doing/making the actual art.

After being sick for a while, the last few days have been days of recovering and prep work! Canvasses, sketches, art supplies! Here are sketches of previous work... recognize which pieces they go with? On to the next sketch!

Changes are Interesting!

Because the galleries on my website have recently changed to a slideshow format, I have rearranged the order of my work to show the newest and latest painting as the opening image. This is only for the Concrete and Concept galleries. This way, you would not have to keep clicking to get to the latest piece, and also, you can check back and see any changes made right away! Changes are interesting!

New cityscapes and drawings just done and over with, and more to come.

Yes, changes are interesting. Once in a while I love to sketch in ballpoint pen. And I like to sketch wood grain.

City Streets

Come see the city this Sunday!

You should come, not just for the city of San Francisco itself, but for different views, visions, and expressions of it. Come check out City Streets!

The opening reception is at Studio Gallery and I am happy to be showing with many great artists! If you can't make the reception, at least stop by while the show is up. It will be up starting this Wednesday until September 4th. See below for more information

10 Annoying Things to Happen while Painting

I love painting. But sometimes things happen while I am working that really annoy me. Here is a list!

1. Nature's Call
I really really really have to go to the bathroom.
I hate to break my concentration. Cant. Stop. Painting.

2. Hair
Hair gets trapped on the painting. I don't know how it flew horizontally from my head to the canvas. I don't know how I did not notice it. Either I pick it out with a needle and tweezers or paint thicker over it and hope that it blends in with the brushstrokes.

3. Aliens
Foreign materials invade my palette. Like outer space aliens invading earth, dust particles, paint skins, bits of paper towel, food show up on my palette suddenly. I don't remember when they have landed, but they are there, and my brush picks them up and they mess up my strokes. The coating on my paint brushes also flake out everywhere. And again, my HAIR!!! It gets on my palette and I have long hair so it is annoying. I shed so much it is a wonder I am not bald!

4. Holes
I throw my palette knife into my paint box. I see the blade sticking out of a tube of cadmium red oil paint. Fuck.

5. Itches.
My hands are dirty and gross. My forehead itches. Cant. Stop. Painting.

6. Crashes
My computer crashes and I lose all reference material.

7. Materials
I run out of paint.
It is an important color, like white.

8. My decisions.
I change my mind. I change my mind about a color, I change my mind about where to place what subject, I change my mind about the size of something in the picture... whatever it is, I change my mind and there goes a few wasted hours of work :-/

9. Delusions
I am more than 50% through when I realize that the painting is stupid.
Whether it be the concept, or the color choices, or the execution, whatever it is, the painting was not worth starting in the first place. What was I thinking!?!?!

10. Magic
Paint on my ceiling. Paint on my t-shirt that was under my sweater. Paint under the floor mats. Paint can show up anywhere and there is no explanation. It is magic.

So that's it. If there is anything else that I may have missed, feel free to leave a comment below.

Lights!

One of the many things I find beautiful about cities are the lights. Suspended in the darkness, in various shapes and colors, they add excitement to the cold concrete everywhere!

I have made a new page showing the process of bring lights into your world. Click on "Illuminate Your World" in the menu above, or click here.

If you haven't already, be sure to check out the other pages in the menu above and have fun creating art.

Art on Walls and Online

Hey everyone!

The shows went great! Mischief at StudioGallery has lots of great art hung up and Opposites at WonderlandSF was a party!
I don't have any photos from the Mischief show, but got a few from the Opposites show:

I don't want to give away too much because you need to see the art in person! But the last pic is my piece. It was my first time doing installation work, and I love painting on the wall.

The shows are still up, so make time to check it out! They will be going on for about a month from the opening. See the Shows and Events page above for specific dates.

My website also just got a bit nicer for the galleries are re-structured! Thanks to my friend who helped me out with the galleries, you can now view all the artwork on one page instead of in separate tabs.

That's it for now. There will be a new addition to the menu of pages above! Illuminate Your World will be coming soon!