From the Archives: Nightscape

A little Van Gogh tribute, but also a tribute to nighttime.    The moon has always been a powerful force in my life.  It does govern the tides...and we are made up of a good bit of water.  :-)  In the end, this is mostly just a sketch, but I feel it captures the FEELING of night, which was my goal.

This could be pushed much further, but other projects demand my attention right now.  Another for the "make this better later" pile.  This was done also around the time I discovered the paintbrush goodness in Photoshop. 

{created in Photoshop}

From the Archives: Green Man

Just in time for Summer!  Part of this is me exploring the paintbrush options in Photoshop.  However I've always been attracted to images of the Green Man, but have never explored them much in my own work.  I've always enjoyed the stylized pieces of leafy faces.  I just realized this looks a bit like Grizzly Adams as a Tree Spirit!  :-)

In my personal experiences of the Green man energy it seems as though there is a bit of a connection to the story of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.  Two opposing masculine forces that dominate opposing ends of the year.  Here is a previous piece I did involving that theme.  I have recently been studying that same relationship through the cycling between Geburah and Chesed in The Kabbalah.

The piece itself is okay, but I feel like it is more of a sketch than anything else.  I'll explore more of this theme / image later.  Perhaps a full figure piece and/or a landscape.
{Created in Photoshop}

From The Archives: Bliss

This is me having an ecstatic moment in my studio.  Sometimes art really does it for me.  Or it could have been that my blood sugar dropped too low...or too high...or something blood sugary.    :-P

This was actually a wonderful feeling of connection to an energy system outside myself.  It was like I had downloaded bliss by accident.  A feeling of boundless energy and happiness and hope.  Sounds pretty cheesy hunh?  It actually felt like flying while I was sitting still.  I have only repeated this feeling a couple of times, usually involving some type of sensory immersion or deprivation with the proper music.  If I could live in this state I would.  It was the best coffee drink I've ever had combined with an orgasm combined with a slight feeling of free fall.  Mind you, none of those things were occuring when this image was being created.

It hasn't happened in a while.  I've never tried to manufacture it...perhaps THERE is a project.  However, I am a little afraid of it because of HOW good it feels.  Hmmm.....note here: light passing through a prism creates rainbows.  I guess the message here would be to work on my clarity.  Mentally clean house.  I guess I'm on the right track then.  That is what I have been doing ALL YEAR.

{Digital images manipulated in Photoshop}

Interior Life From the Archives: The Well

Here is another piece from the Interior Life set.  At the time I drew this, there were several circumstances in my life that were endangering my emotional well being (no pun intended) and creative capacity.  A couple of other things inform this piece as well: 1) I have always had a fascination / fear of tornadoes and 2) rarely do line drawings of tornadoes embrace the chaos and ferocity of the event.  I tried to capture that here.  If I succeeded, I do not know.  That is decided by your eyes.

My goal with all of the Interior Life pieces was to try and capture the essences of my personal myths.  Moments, feelings, thoughts and their impact on me.  I hope that comes across , if not on the surface, then in the symbolic substructure of the pieces.

{Pen & Ink, Sharpie}

Interior Life From The Archives: The Old Blue Man

This is another from the Interior Life set.  I immediately saw this one bathed in blue.  Actually I kind of imagined him as the comet version of Ego the Living Planet from Marvel Comics.  A big blue head melting in the rays of the sun.  I'm going to have to color this one and update later.  I may recreate it using Photoshop because I need to SEE those blue flames / clouds.  My beard may be long enough soon to use as reference as well!

{Pen & Ink}

Update 012714:

Over at Zombie Bites, this piece was presented in Exhumed and reinvestigated with color in January of 2014.  Check out the Exhumed image here.

Interior Life From the Archives: Sunrise

This one is  part of a set of drawings I did where I was trying to turn parts of my interior life into very specific images.  I suppose it's all interior life art work, but these pieces were created specifically with that in mind.  Most were of a darker bent, but this this waxed very poetic.

{Pen & Ink}

From the Archives: Jenna The Ranger

This set of drawings were created while I worked at 3am Games, Inc.  This character was developed as part of a Dungeons and Dragons style adventuring party.  The party was being developed to be present in any drawings in 3am Games supplements.  If there was a scene involving an adventuring party, it was to be this group.  Jenna was the Ranger of the group. 

These drawings were created to act as character studies to be sent to other artists for reference.  There was also brief mention of using the characters in a comic book setting.  The common adventure party in each book was abandoned, but the drawings were done.  I've always had a soft spot for Jenna the Ranger.  Hope you like her too.

{Pen & Ink}

2003, Year of Sarcoidosis

2003 was a very difficult year for me. It was around this time I quit smoking and discovered I had a disease called Sarcoidosis affecting my lungs. {Prismacolour}

UPDATE:  Well, apparently if you update your tags now it updates your entire post.  yay.  This post was from long ago.  I wanted to add a tag and now it is today.  Sorry for the repeat.

The Blogger Blip

The maintenance issues earlier in the week caused several of my posts to become mixed or to not post at all.  My apologies for the confusion.  The Changing Course post ended up being reposted accidentally.  I was adding a tag and when I published, it republished with that May 17th Date.  The Changing Course post should have occurred on May 8th.  So technically it came before The Man in the Moon post and The Tiger Me post.  Thanks for your patience and understanding.  :-)

From the Archives: Rainbow Spirit Child

Here is something I found on the way to a mandala.  Some strange other dimensional rainbow child.  It's weird when you're working on something and look up at the screen and realize that it is looking back at you.  EEP!  However, it was more being startled than being afraid.  The feeling I get here is one of innocent interest and curiosity.  Around this time I did this piece a strange philosophy began to take over my Mandalas.  I began using the Mandala process as a way of viewing problematic situations in my life.   The repetition and changing angles began to become a way of looking at situations until there was a greater understanding, symmetry, and beauty.  When you start looking at situations from every angle possible, existence becomes a giant unfolding flower.  Who Knew?

{Digital images manipulated in Photoshop}

Changing Course

This year has brought a variety of changes to my life.   New ways of doing things, new goals to accomplish, new hopes and dreams.  Part of all the new emerging structure is the restructuring of my blogs.  Previously, I was content to simply let my blogs be, using them more as a digital catch all for my artwork.  However, the wave of change in my life this year is affecting me on all fronts.  Now each of my blogs will have its own focus.

Trail of Bread Crumbs started as a sketchbook blog; a place to put all my artwork that wasn't quite finished or or professional quality.  Over time the work in this blog began to take on a more spiritual and philosophical quality and many finished pieces began to find their way in.  As part of my restructuring, Trail of Bread Crumbs will now host only my artwork that is focused on the spiritual, the philosophical, the magickal.  Any pieces of a different quality that were posted previously will remain to avoid any complicated relinking.  From this point forward though, Zombie Bites will host all my work that is dark or focused on fear and EXP3 will host all of work focused specifically on graphic design.

Things are changing rapidly for me this year.  I can barely see a month ahead.  Every week seems to hold some new challenge to keep myself going, some new obstacle to my tomorrow.    I have no idea what my future holds at this point; I'm literally following a trail of bread crumbs.  The strange part is that despite the ups and downs of day to day I'm not worried about my long term.  I can't see ahead, but I know somewhere deep inside me that the path I am on leads to my happiness and success, that regardless of what I'm trudging through right now, in the end I'm going to be okay.  In my lifetime, that is a first.

From the Archives: Man in the Moon

Here is an older piece.  I think I may have posted this somewhere else, but for the life of me I cannot find the other post.  I think the other is in color also, but I prefer this version.  My friend Josh and I were discussing how this looks a bit like Alan Moore.  I'm okay with that.  :-)

I've been attracted to the crescent shaped Man in the Moon for some time.  I kind of chalk it up to my attraction to mythological masculine imagery.  The moon is many times assumed to be feminine in nature, but my personal belief is that these energies are beyond gender and express themselves in many ways.  Regardless, this is the image that speaks to my soul.

{Pen & Ink}

From the Archives: Tiger Me

The year I created this, the Tiger had begun appearing as totem for me.  In an attempt to understand this energy, I incorporated it into my artwork.  This is an example.

I had a strange dream at the time of a Tiger leaping and each of its leaps were a dramatic change in my life.  The last leap involved leaping into another man's yard where the Tiger turned into a tabby cat.  I had the impression that he was my lover.  Which was odd at the time as I was single.

The Tiger is generally a solitary animal and they hunt silently.  One of many totems telling me to keep my big mouth shut.  LOL.  The others are Owl and Leopard.  Also not the only totem to tell me to work in darkness.  I wasn't aware previously of their fondness for water....seeing them swimming is a strange and wonderful thing.

{Digital images manipulated in Photoshop}