peter pan

This is my piece for the Peter Pan themed show at Susanita's Little Gallery.  The gallery is completely online, so you only need a computer and internets to snap this one up when it goes live.  

Another cool thing about Susanita's: they donate 20% of their profit from each sale to a children's charity.  You can support me AND an adorable child in need AND you get a pretty cool painting of an androgynous elfish boy to treasure forever.

I had fun with this!  I wanted to get away from the Disney version of Peter Pan (even though I like that version...those green tights are very strange, if you think about it).   I have read the books and Peter is described as having a tunic of skeleton leaves or something, so lots fancy leaves were in order.

Composition sketches before I thought of doing it in an oval.  I like the oval format.  Sean thinks it's stupid, but I like it!

I looked at a lot of leaves.  

OH yeah and Tinkerbell!  I love that she is unapologetically bitchy. I wanted her to be topless.  Tiny little fairy boobies are funny, don't you think?  In the actual painting she's so small that you can barely see her face, so I just skipped the boobies and hiked up her dress a bit more.  I'm tempted to do a second piece with her in it, but I've got other stuffs to work on!

rose red + snow white + 2

Yeah!  Finally!  This took me forever to finish.

I couldn't decide which idea I liked better: the girls meeting the bear, or the girls riding on his back.  So I did both.  I didn't want them to have the same color scheme though, mostly cuz I think I'd get bored painting (basically) the same thing twice.  I loved this color pallet, even though it's nonsensical.  Who cares!  It feels right, that's what matters.

This painting will be on display this July at the Wonderful World of Animation, in a fairy tale themed show.  Yay!  I love fairy tales, I can't wait to see the rest of the work.  (Their website is...well, just look at it for yourself, huh?)

I think I'm going to give both paintings a glossy finish, which I usually don't do but it seems kinda appropriate for these.  Plus I understand that it enhances the color to a degree...cool!  Make those reds really pop.  

that book...

Remember that book I illustrated, and how I had to do it really fast and I didn't update my blog for like a month because of it? Well here's proof that it exists!

Right HERE!

I can't tell you how crazy it feels to search my own name on amazon and actually have something come up! By the way, I'm not responsible for the cover...that's just a screen shot from the film (weird). It's not actually available until August, but I was excited about it regardless.

AND my gallery opening was last night and it was great, if I do say so myself. So many people showed up to be supportive and check out the work and that was super awesome, and my friend Jenny + pals played some great music, and my bff Matthias made vegan cupcakes which was so sweet of him. Pictures coming soon! In the meantime, here are some little paintings from the show that were very spontaneous and fun to do...

rainy day

Way back last January (which feels like just about another lifetime compared to the present) I got an idea to do a painting of a girl walking around in the rain with an umbrella. One BAZILLION years later I finally got around to doing it.



It totally changed from the originally intended version. The only similarities are the girl, the umbrella, and the vertically inclined composition. I didn't get started on this image way back when because in part it really bothered me that I couldn't figure out what was going on with the girl. I didn't know what she was all about, or what the image was supposed to be about for that matter. I had to change it around this much to make it feel right. It's kind of an intangible thing and it looks pretty hokey in writing, but oh well. Sometimes making art is a hokey business.

In other news, Unique LA is this coming weekend and I have sooooo much stuff to do still to get ready for it! So I'm gonna go do that stuff!