Good news, everyone!

I've posted about this a few other places, and I was going to wait to do it on here until I had finished the cover for the second print run, buuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuut I just couldn't wait.

So, here we have the lineart for the front of it (look at all that delightful blue that I haven't cleaned up yet. mmhmm mmhmmm)

The Adventures of Dirk Turbine: Attack of the Air Squid was written by Leslie Anderson (find her on the internet at either her blog or her webcomic) and is a finalist for the 2011 SPACE prize in the minicomics section. I may have done happy arm waving laps around the house last night. (It is worthy of note that our professor, Ryan Claytor, is also a finalist in the minicomics section. Dun dunnnnnnnnnnnnnnn drama)

In not minicomics news, though, if you go to the webcomics section, you will find Double Clicked Comics, a thing worthy of your attention (though I am biased. Ryan Tackett was in Ryan's first ever comics class at MSU with Leslie and me.)

Boy, that's a lot of links. Moving on. 

Aaaaaand because I have a new scanner, I'm also going to share the final cover of one of my older works. I realized I had never posted the finished version of it and the file doesn't seem to have made it over to the new computer. (it must be on a flash drive somewhere, but I have no idea where)

I also didn't have any versions that weren't, y'know, books, so lovely crease down the middle of it. Even though I'm not the happiest with this particular book (it was my first complete story that wasn't a 24 hr comic and the third book I made) I am really happy with the cover. 

Updated website

Guys! It looks so much better! I got rid of a lot of stuff that I wasn't terribly happy with and added tons of new content from the previous semester.

Go to there! Check it oooooout: Solid State Studios

There are a few things to tweak that are on my list: the welcome text on the main page; I want to add my cv to the contacts page; I do want there to be a comics section, but realistically it couldn't operate in the same way as the other pages so I need to figure that out; I need to remember to either give the digital analog project its own section or link to it in a couple of places; I'm thinking also of working with this here blog to make it match the look of the website.

Anyway, I'm going back to Michigan tomorrow to take care of a few things so this'll have to wait for at least a week. If anyone has any input or finds a big glaring mistake please let me know. Especially in browsers other than chrome--I realize as I write this that I didn't test it in firefox and ie the way I normally do.

Some photos of paintings with bad lightning

I know I've bemoaned the lightning in my current space before but keep in mind that when I was taking these photos I thought that the light was pretty good and would show the colors pretty accurately.

 

 

 

 

So anyway guess who was amazingly wrong? That's right, it was me. The only one that looks remotely close is the last one, mostly because I took pictures of it throughout the day to test.

Just in Case

If I can't get in to any of the schools I'm applying to this year, next year I'm going to start my letters of intent this way (and continue on from there):

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that an artist in possession of an undergraduate degree, must be in want of a Master's.

Or possibly this way:

In a studio in a basement there lived a painter. Not a nasty, dirty, wet studio, filled with the ends of brushes and a turpy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, dusty studio with nothing in it to sit down on or to paint: it was a painter's-studio, and that means comfort.

....I hadn't planned on doing this, but I may just grab more books from around the house and do this to them. More later, need to work on some stuff so that I can maybe quiet my brain and grab some sleep.

choices are hard

adkghl;kasdfj;glhasl;dkfj portfolio stuff. I'm considering replacing this painting:

with something else. Not sure what, though, is the problem. I did about 50 paintings this last semester, and this one represents an interesting cul-de-sac, but I'm worried that it reads as too amateurish. It's definitely not the direction my work is currently going, but I did use it to discover some really interesting things about the ways I could get paint to behave, so it's important to me in that way. I also somehow can't manage to get a really really good picture of it. There's a lot more variation in the figure and somehow it all gets washed out in a photo. 

On the other hand, I do have this:

It's not the most complex painting, but it is fairly compelling and is also in line with where I can feel my work wanting to go. It does not, however, necessarily match the rest of my portfolio as it currently stands. 

I'm also thinking of replacing this one:

Again for photo issue. It doesn't read too well not in person. At six foot tall, it's just too big. 

blaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh 

mah roooooooom

I've turned my room at my parents' house into my studio.

It looks like this:

I get two hours of super functional light through the window, my lamps can't seem to work together, and my walls are bright green. HOW DO COLORS WORK?

Four from the semester

Thanks to that etching post, I've once again got a front page full of things that are not paintings. Let's fix that, shall we? Here are some of the last few paintings from last semester.

One day this place | 30x40 | Oil on Board

Untitled | 6'x~3' | oil on unstretched canvas

Influence and Inevitability | 30x40 | Oil on Board



Captcha | 30x40 | Oil on Board

The last two were done before my solo show and the first two after it. For a couple of schools that I'm applying to, I'm being asked to put them in the order that I did them (or reverse order, whichever) and the more I think about it, the more I just don't know. I tend to work on at least three at a time and will sometimes start and finish four or more in the time it takes me to do one other one. Bah, time. I think I've got it mostly sorted, though, so that's good.