How it will all end is a fun question to daydream about.  Why it would end at all is an intriguing question for so many good reasons.  Yet the one we collectively seem to focus on is When will it end.  I think this is because it turns this moderately terrible, overwhelmingly profound event into a practical matter of scheduling and time management.  How would our lives change, how would our whole world change, if THE END really were scheduled for December 12th, 2012, reservation confirmed for 7.1 billion?  If we knew for absolute certain there was no hope of any single person dodging this ultimate and sudden conclusion to all things, how drastically and dramatically would we abandon all of our routines, responsibilities and commitments?  What would suddenly become truly important to each of us, and to all of us as a single race facing total extinction all at once?  Wait, what would the Dinosaurs do?

Naturally many might turn to the romantic notion of the old Bucket List.  Time to get to work on that collection of unlikely adventures before there isn’t a planet left to have them on.  Apparently people who find out they, for certain, only have a short time left to live go in for this sort of thing and why not?  However, there is a little problem with this concept in this particular scenario.

Say on your to do list is to take a scenic airplane ride over the Swiss Alps.  Problem is, all of the pilots who’ve been taking annoying tourists on those plane rides for decades have their own list, and they want to go on a submarine ride deep into the Atlantic ocean.  Do you think those sailors really want to spend their last days cruising around in a boat with no windows filled stale smelling air while some commercial swiss pilot asks what this button does?  You start to see the problem, we would mostly come up with ideas that would rely on other people to be doing their jobs in some fashion, even if for basic needs such as continuing to make and deliver fuel for the airplanes, submarines, buses and taxi cabs.  If you’ve kept your bucket list modest, say all you want to do is successfully Tazer the neighborhood kid who once keyed your car, well then things might all work out for you.  If you want to climb Mt. Everest you have to get there and find someone who knows the way up who actually feels like doing it again instead of finding their way to a nice beach in the Bahamas where they can drink rum and smoke pot instead of putting up with your desire to get yourself killed ahead of schedule.

The world wouldn’t shut down exactly, but it certainly wouldn’t just keep rolling along as it does now either.  It would undoubtedly be the absolute best time in human history to be a teenager.  I think it would also be the perfect time to be 80+ as you could then head into the end knowing you’re not going to miss out on anything.  If debris from a Russian satellite were to fall on my head tomorrow one thing I would really lament is never knowing if humanity ever figures out a way to get off this planet and explore the galaxy.  Whether or not we will ever make contact with intelligent life from another planet.  Just think about everything I would not have known we were capable of, or understood about the world and the universe around us if I had died in the 17th century.  I would check out wondering  what amazing developments the coming centuries will bring that I won’t get to see because my face provided a nice soft landing spot for some failed piece of Soviet space garbage.  But, if I already knew this world was scheduled to go out of business later this year I could go a bit more peacefully into oblivion because I would know the answers to those questions.  Will we ever travel through space and time to explore the farthest reaches of the cosmos?  Nope.  Will we meet cool aliens and hang out in their space pub that orbits a black hole?  Sadly, no.

Overall, what sort of new yet temporary world would we trend towards?  Chaos and violence and destruction?  Or calm through acceptance of the inevitable, and of the realization that there is nothing left to gain that is worth gaining when it will all be gone so very soon?  What do you pursue, embrace and throw yourself into when you know whatever you learn, gain or experience will not last, stay with you or outlive you?  What happens when those most dire consequences of breaking society’s laws become a considerably less effective deterrent?  Put me in jail?  Why would the guards spend their last days guarding me?  Execute me?  If I’ve already pulled off whatever it was I had some unholy desire to do then what do I care if I perish a few months before the judge, jury and executioner?  Would it all crumble and fall apart, break down and savagely tear itself apart?

We’ll never know I guess because, fortunately or unfortunately, our calendars are still clear of any appointments with Armageddon.  Oh sure the Mayans might yet have been on to something.  Give me some of what their elders were smoking and I might buy it too.  But until a huge meteor is bearing down on us or the Sun goes out like a cheap Bic lighter we’re not all going to believe the end is near all at once, altogether now, the great last call is here and tell the lovely lady with the bodacious curves to warm up her sweet singing voice.  But it is fun to think about.

-Josh

Finished (99% anyway).

And so another journey through oil paint and turpentine yields a questionably memorable illustration.  As you may not recall, when I started this painting I did not, for once, plan out each trivial detail before I started slapping paint all over the place.  I tried to just let the painting develop as the ideas came floating in, inspired by whatever it was that was going on that day, evening or weekend.  That is definitely the advantage of this approach.  Planning it out in the beginning pretty well locks the painting into whatever ideas I had at that specific time.

Of course taking this approach has its disadvantages, as I cannot simply keep painting layer over layer without impacting the quality of the painting itself.  Between this version and the one posted here previously the guy on the bench was sporting the vague shape of a rather unfashionable hat, but now is going lidless.  Though it cannot be seen in the photo here, there is a sort of ridge that outlines where that hat was as a texture in what should be a flat sky background.  There shouldn’t be any shadows or textures that clash with the image being presented, but it is a small blemish and something that would probably go unnoticed by everyone but someone with entirely too much time to sit and stare at every brush stroke on a particular piece of art.

Detail of the roses on the bench "bleeding out".

The real risk is that each time a new element is added in it means there is a little less freedom available to change what the painting is going to be.

In the beginning there was a tree.  There could be anything under that tree so it made a good start.  Then I indicated it was on a hill, which was the near side of a small valley.  The idea that occurred to me then was to have the valley filled up with broken, old-fashioned television sets.  The death of old media?  I ended up abandoning that idea because while it was interesting, I couldn’t really say what it meant, and I couldn’t think of how to make a complete picture out of it.  I did however start blocking out a pile of Something in the valley, so that is where the rocks ended up coming into the painting.  Not exactly planned, but luckily worked out well enough, and so it goes.

Then there was the Bench and the Dude.  What was he doing there?  Was this to be some kind of medieval bus stop?  It did make sense that he was waiting for something, or someone.  I had painted his arm up on the back of the bench without really even thinking about it, but had never really had any intention of placing another person into the scene.  Longing for companionship?  Lamenting the loss of a friend, lover, or squash partner?  Just relaxing on a bench out in some park does not make for a very interesting painting, so I was in need of something strange, unique or odd to provide something that would draw the viewer’s attention and intrigue them enough to keep studying the image.  Nothing like spilling a little blood to raise the interest of a casual observer, though in this case it was an idea to spill rose petals that turn into rose red rivulets to signify something meaningful slowly draining away that clicked into place.

From there the additional elements of a letter with ink running off the page, a clock with the numbers sequenced backwards and a sidewalk that seems to come from somewhere and then abruptly end at this spot tied together an image that ends up feeling rather sad, though not entirely depressing.  As though it is ultimately a case of an opportunity lost, but not necessarily the end of all things.

And it all began with a tree.  Actually it began with some boredom and access to paint and brushes, but you get the idea.  I just need to trust my abilities a little more and just let it happen…

-Josh

Basement Laboratory

“The Room 740 Studio” – Digital Illustration created in Photoshop CS3

This is what I want for Christmas.  Every single year.  A place worthy of every mad thought of world domination that routinely occupies the forefront of my thoughts.  Not that I have a solid plan for how I would go about such a monumental conquest.  It’s a tricky business, developing and executing malevolent plans to disrupt and destory modern society.  That’s why I need a place like this to work on it.  Its ok, I’m sure I can be trusted to use such an awesomely powerful lair for what could generally be regarded as family friendly activities, or at least be counted on to fail miserably in my goal forcibly take control of the world.  I am just an artist after all.  The extent of my ability to attack anyone is basically limited to painting unflattering portraits of them…

Fresh from the Who Gives a Crap Department (WGCD):

The above illustration is actually version 2.0, as the painting shown below is the original.  Same basic concept, though in this version the centerpiece is a large uncontrolled spark generating machine, which naturally every serious programmer or graphic designer needs.  This one truly feels like a classic SciFi set in that it cannot possibly serve any functional or useful purpose.  Aside from perhaps posing serious threat to local power grid and the people in the apartment above his.

Room 740 Studios

And…no.  Never happens.  So where does it all go wrong?  Allow me to explain as I present to you:

The Seven Phases of the Golf Swing

1. Optimism

Address the ball with a sense of confidence and the expectation that this time something not entirely awful and embarrassing might happen.

For this scenario we will look at a shot that has landed in that mythical promised land known only as the Fair-Way.  The ball is approximately 125 yards from the center of the green and is even conveniently located near the cart path.  This last bit is always a particularly nice bonus as it means one is never far from one’s beer.  This is an essential strategy to master early in one’s golfing career if you plan to play more than ten times without succumbing to the urge to drive your cart off a cliff.

Now, the first phase of the swing is the setup, or how you address the ball.

Seasoned veterans generally get ahead of the game here and just start swearing or muttering straight away.

Younger, inexperienced players on the other hand still have hope, still believe in the improbable and the hopelessly unlikely.  They stare down at the ball and straighten their spine and dream of the ball landing softly twelve feet in front of the hole before it bounces twice and rolls into the cup.

Morons just respectfully address their ball as Harold and ask it what it thinks about the weather.  Yes, it takes all types.  You’ll end up with one in your foursome eventually.  I think it may actually be a coping mechanism – go insane or go on a bloody murderous rampage.  Perhaps its for the best if you just let the nutcase name his balls whatever he likes.

Each of these golfers have a different approach to starting the swing but all three do have one thing in common – they all have absolutely no clue what is about to happen next…

Side Note:  Another aspect of successful golfing that is often overlooked is the selection of an awesomely cool looking hat.  Anything that distracts onlookers from your flailing arms and tortured expression of rage and disappointment can only help matters.

2. Determination

Stay calm. We're not to the scary part yet.

You’re already screwed.

Pull the club back along the target line.  Keep your right elbow tucked to your right side.  You may hear voices at this point but ignore them, they are not providing you with helpful information.  It’s probably just your “buddy” pointing out that you are in fact lined up at the houses on the right instead of the green.

If you were already muttering, mutter louder.  If you were swearing, time to start escalating the level of filth spewing from your mouth.

Shift your weight onto your right foot.  If you are left handed, you shouldn’t be playing golf.

Keep your head down.  Remember you’re a golfer, there is no reason for you to hold your head high.  In fact, slump your shoulders too.

But above all else just keep going.  What has been done can never be undone.

3. Doubt

Right about now is when the smart ones close their eyes.

“Wait, did I grab my nine iron or my six?”

A confident golfer is a golfer who is cheating.  The lesson here is, CHEAT.

“My shoulder smells funny.”

With respect to the top of the swing, the idea is to stop the club once it has reached a point where it is parallel with the ground and pointing towards the target.  In this case you should now be perfectly lined up at the big blue house on the right with the huge and expensive looking picture window.

If at this stage you feel balanced and comfortable with your swing you are doing it wrong.

Just keep twisting until you feel an intensely painful piercing sensation in your lower back.  Generally speaking pain is a good indication that a swing is unfolding correctly assuming you don’t hear anything snap.  Remember, golf and pain always go together.

4. Rage

Oh yes ladies, now the show is about to begin.

At this point the PGA certified instructor who taught you how you are supposed to swing is about to throw up.

“Hey I can see my back.”

If your club isn’t smacking you in the back of the head you are doing it wrong.

Loosen your grip on the club.  When you finish your swing there is a pretty good chance you will not have made contact with the ball so at least give yourself a chance to launch something 20 yards down the fairway.

Start yelling.  Reach down deep and get some sort of guttural, unholy bellow going that once started will just come tearing out of you like a fountain of hot flaming nastiness certain to make every furry creature in a 10 mile radius instantly liquify everything in their bowels.

Focus on the ball.  Try to make it melt with your gaze alone.  Imagine the grass smoldering underneath it.  If the golf ball has not caught on fire by the time you hit it you are doing it wrong.

Swing harder.  I SAID HARDER DAMN IT!

AAAHHHH!  AH! AHH!  AAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!

5. Acceptance

It's okay to start crying now.

Face it, at this stage the club is swinging you.

Never try to visualize your shot.  Just empty your mind and cease any and all conscious thinking.  If you find this step to be really easy you should never be allowed to operate chainsaws and other dangerous equipment.

Untwist what you twisted and just hope that everything snaps back into the proper sockets and alignments as you go.  This is the part they don’t tell you about.  Getting yourself into a golf swing is the easy part.  Getting yourself back out of it requires practice and luck, or an exceptionally talented chiropractor.

Remember, swinging a golf club is a completely unnatural act that neither heaven nor hell ever intended a mortal being to attempt.  Successfully pulling it off means you will have proved them wrong.  You can do the math from here.

You should be shifting your weight onto your left foot while turning your hips, shoulders, love handles and butt cheeks.  The more jiggling fleshy parts you can get moving in the same direction the better.

Accept your lack of skill, embrace your mediocrity, acknowledge the absolutely irrefutable depths of your sucking-ness and then just start openly weeping.  Don’t worry you will not be alone in your misery for long, your buddies still have to putt.

6. The Fury, Unleashed

China here we come.

Theoretically, taking a divot should not alter the planet’s orbital path around the Sun.

It all comes down to this.  All that nonsense you had going on in your address, all that thought you put into your club selection and shot selection, your backswing, upswing, downswing, backwash, updraft and that tricky bit about actually hanging onto the club all add up to an open club face at impact and a swing plane that has pulled the club from outside the target line back in across your body.  Congratulations, you have just launched a small, hard, possibly deadly projectile off into the sky and no one short of the Almighty knows where the hell it might be going.

A battalion of uber-nerds from MIT, NASA and Comic-Con could not hope to predict the trajectory of the screaming white ball of death you have unleashed upon an unsuspecting and formerly peaceful subdivision.  The sound you now hear is all of the surrounding air being suddenly sucked into the terrified lungs of every homeowner within 30 miles of the launch site of your short-range ballistic Titleist warhead.

However, the outcome is not entirely unpredictable.  Curiously, there are a few well known outcomes that have been proven to be virtual mathematical certainties when applied to golf shots:

If there is a car worth more than $50,000 within 100 yards of where you hit your shot it is about to be worth considerably less.

If there is a humongous picture window, one that has a contiguous surface area that rivals the flight deck of an aircraft carrier, somewhere within 200 yards of the shot it will in fact be perfectly safe.  No golfer has ever managed to hit one of these, ever.  The little window that is a complete pain in the ass to get to and replace will get nailed every other Saturday afternoon but not the really big one.  No clue why this is true.  I didn’t say any of this was supposed to make sense you know.

And finally, if there is a kid in the surrounding neighborhood named Timmy, Little Tim, or Timothy the Tragically Unfortunate…Well…Poor Timmy.  He never does see it coming…

7. Formulate Alibi

Oh snap.

Golf carts make poor getaway vehicles.  I’m just saying.

The green, generally speaking, is not an area of the golf course you need to be preoccupied with any longer.  The angry owner of a car now worth only 20,000 dollars storming across the fairway with a shotgun and an unapologetic demeanor is now infinitely more worthy of your immediate attention.

First of all, be sure to tell him his teenage daughter is outrageously hot.

Second, repair your divot.  Don’t give me any crap about this mister, you walk up there and pick up that quarter acre of turf you mercilessly hacked off the surface of the Earth and put it back where it was.  There are two dozen foursomes behind you eager to savagely reshape the surrounding landscape and they didn’t pay 95 dollars for the privilege of playing out of your crater.

Third(ly), calmly walk back to the cart and place your club in its appropriate spot in your bag.  The key here, the most important piece of advice you will receive throughout this entire article is, do this CALMLY.  Be Smooth.  Gently brush the dirt off of your trousers, straighten your awesomely cool hat and adjust your glove.  Saunter up to the side of the golf cart and oh-so-casually lean up against the side.  Make eye contact with the murderous fiend with a shotgun descending on your position and then slowly, lazily, lift your arm and then stick out your index finger in the direction of the guy who was telling you your shot was lined up at the houses on the right.

“He did it.”

Play Golf America.

-Josh

New Painting version 3.4 alpha

Well the tree has a friend now, though some guy in a top hat is sitting on her.  Bit of a strange person too, who felt the need to get fully dressed including coat and top hat but figured no one would notice a complete lack of footwear.

But the painting is still coming along, and is even a little further along than this now.  I also seem to have a pretty firm idea of where this on is going now, though it is not entirely apparent from this image.  In fact I may only post one more “in progress” image before it is done so as not to ruin the incredible surprise that it all but certain to be.  Or not, but at least I don’t have to keep trying to think of semi-interesting things to say about an incomplete oil painting.

Continuing the lack of planning for this painting, trying to just trust what I paint directly instead of trying plan out everything in sketches first, I just started painting the guy on the bench with only a vague idea of what he might be up to.  Came out looking pretty well relaxed, though his right leg seems a little odd with his foot off the ground.  For some reason it makes it look like his right leg is shorter than his left.  But then he has a long way to go, as the lack of right hand and face would indicate.  Not sure what it is lately about not giving people faces in my half finished paintings.  Perhaps its something I could embrace as the signature element in all of my paintings.  Would make them easier to complete that’s for sure as I tend to be rather terrible at painting faces.

The missing right hand is due to a change of ideas half way through painting our laid back benchwarmer.  I was going to have him reading a book, with the pages floating up and away, but I didn’t like the idea within the relatively confined space under the tree.  That idea will likely be revisited some other time, in a painting that more of an open setting for the pages to fly up and swirl away.

As for what his right hand will actually be doing is still somewhat of a mystery, even though I said I do have a good idea as to what I want to do with this painting.  Well, 95% sure what I want to do.  Everything except for what he holds in his hand.

A related note, one that actually has something to do with actual traditional painting techniques (gasp! potentially useful artistic information??), is I wish I had painted this on an Ampersand Art Clayboard instead of a gessoboard.  I like painting on masonite panels over canvas as I definitely prefer as flat and as smooth a surface as possible, versus the tooth and texture of canvas.  Its not that I can’t paint on canvas, I just need to take the time to really lay down a layer or two of gesso and I rarely seem to be able to get that evenly applied and smooth.  And even then I feel as though I need to paint on a huge canvas to get the level of detail I am typically after without the texture interfering.  Gessoboard however has no give at all, no real absorption.  The paint just dries and becomes rigid and any layer that gets painted over shows through as a texture.  I suppose it would work well if I actually created a painting all in one go, not letting the paint dry between sessions, but that simply isn’t typically how I work.

Now Clayboard isn’t really intended for oil painting, but looking back at a couple of the paintings I did on those boards they turned out great.  It is like the clay absorbs the oil and leaves the pigment sitting on top, almost looking like a powdery effect and very smooth.  The drawback is it is a little harder to paint on it, as the paint doesn’t dry, but it loses its viscosity very quickly making it almost feel like a fast drying medium like acrylics.  Still, it doesn’t seem to bother me too much, especially since I tend to paint, let it dry, paint some more, and so on.  The next painting is on that board for certain, perhaps even the painting I worked on before this one but failed to finish.  So there you go, this months insight into how I fail to properly create artwork.

-Josh

Forgotten Door

 ”Forgotten Door” – Photo Collage / Digital Painting – Photoshop CS3

This is mostly a photo collage with some painting touch ups here and there.  Feels like it should be a book cover, or the opening scene of a movie.  Has a nice quiet mystery about it.  Some kids will probably come through there and leave a flaming bag of dog poo on the doorstep.  Damn kids.

Download

“Download”  - Digital Painting (Photoshop CS)

I always did like the colors on this one.  The concept doesn’t feel all that original, sort of a direct knowledge download station.  It would certainly make getting through college easier.  One hour “downloading” everything you need and then four years of keggers and hangovers.

There are probably some things I could have done better to help the presentation of the artwork, and I really have no idea if the prices I set were too high or even too low (as was actually suggested to me a on a couple of occasions).  I know I wish I had done more to promote myself and this site as part of the presentation, to at least start building up some kind of name recognition if I sent work repeatedly to the same convention each year.  I probably missed at least some opportunities by not giving people an easy way to look me up after the show to order prints if they later decided they really liked one of the paintings after all.  I was worried about trying to make quick sales instead of steadily building up a sort of brand name and recognizable style which might have eventually led to real sales.

So, why the long recap of my dismal convention art show sales history?  I’m thinking about giving it another run, though only thinking about it right now mind you.  The idea came to mind recently as I was undertaking a far more daunting project – cleaning up my “studio”.  Filled up a half dozen trash bags worth of useless junk and after several trips out to the dumpster I can now see the carpet again.  While digging through everything, separating the garbage from the essential, I ended up going through a couple of boxes of old paintings that included several that I sent to the aforementioned shows.  Some of them were a pleasant surprise to see again, as I felt like they had held up well, while others are now a little easier to understand why no one decided to make an offer for them.

Among those freed from the catacombs of the closet was this number, called “Myth of Dragons”, acrylics on masonite, completed in early 2003:

Myth of Dragons

Certainly not without its flaws, but overall it has more interesting little details stuffed into than most of my work.  Whimsical would be the word I suppose.  It’s hard to read in this capture but the book the young man has in his lap says “Dragons” on the side, the idea being he and his girlfriend climbed up somewhere to see these mythical creatures he read about in his book.  Unfortunately he’s fallen asleep as the wrong time and is missing the playful antics of one of the rarely spotted beasts.

I also found the sketch book with the original sketches, first of the two patient, and apparently easily bored, dragon watchers:

Myth of Dragons - Sketch 1

You know, another plausible explanation for this image is that the guy talked the girl into coming up there on this remote and secluded perch with an idea for putting some seriously charming moves on her – not actually believing any dragons would show up.  He is in fact glum because she is enjoying the dragon’s show a hell of a lot more than his.  Maybe that’s how the whole business of dragon slaying got started.

The other sketch was of the dragon himself, or herself, (not an expert on these things, not even sure where to look to figure it out) doing some kind of physics defying back flip move.  See, the thing is just asking for it, pulling stunts like that when the dude in the hat did all the work to convince a girl to come all the way up here on some incredibly dangerous ledge.

Myth of Dragons - Sketch #2

Look at that smile too, that scaly bugger knows exactly what its doing, breaking up any chance of this romantic rendezvous ending in a way her parents would not approve of…

so anyway, this is fairly typical of the way I’ve approached my paintings in the past, and perhaps I’ll write a separate post about that someday.  For now, for this post, I’ll just say that seeing this old work and the fact that I’ve recently been working on some non-digital paintings again lately seems to have rekindled the desire to get my artwork out there in front of more eyeballs.  I doubt I’ll try to get anything together for this year, instead I’ll probably look for a couple of conventions to try in the spring, and I’ll try to get into Dragon*Con next year, assuming the jury actually thinks my work is worthy.

-Josh

I wonder if anyone has created a Facebook-like application within Second Life, or better yet within World of Warcraft?  Where someone could create a profile of their elf warrior who likes cheesecake and pole axes, and is friends with Torvuud the Suave, a troll who likes human flesh burgers with lettuce and cheese and is an accomplished bocci ball player.  They could post photos of the last raid they went on, set their status as “Lost in some catacombs – if you get this message send food, gold and hot troll women” and leave comments on other party members’ profiles letting them know precisely how poor their dragon slaying, goblin bashing and wildebeest tipping skills are.

Should such an application exist the net logical step would be to create an item for game characters to use to update or check “their profile” while in the game:

“Torvuud!  Draw your sword! We’re in a serious battle here!”

“Hold on, my girlfriend just set her relationship status to ‘it’s complicated’ – what do you think that means?”

“She’s a half elf and your a troll…No idea pal, just slash something and you’ll feel better…”

I would probably quit WoWbook within three weeks.  Perhaps if there was a social network for hopelessly disconnected geeks who want to create profiles that are based on a particular element and can only form bonds (friends) with other elements that form a molecule which occurs naturally somewhere in the world.  Everyone would probably sign up and pick Hydrogen.  Not me, I would go with Radon or maybe Osmium.  I would have to find people whose profiles are set to Oxygen to form up into an Osmium Tetroxide Molecule.  I could set my status to Volatile and Toxic.  You could change your element if you want to, but would lose any bonds you made with elements that you are no longer chemically known to be compatible with. It would be just like a regular social networking site – all about the chemistry you have with others!  Except, literally.

So it isn’t me, it is simply that no one has created the right social network for someone like me.  Yes, that sounds better, it’s not me it’s the system.  The Internet just doesn’t understand me.

-Josh

One Tree Blob (that might be a hill, someday)

Not too bad.  Looks like a healthy tree, though I will stop short of calling it a happy tree.  I am not sure I know how it feels about its place in the world, its general outlook on life and the universe and whether or not it wishes it had been born a pine tree.  It probably has the same question I do at this point, what am I doing here in this hazy and unpredictable world?

Problem is I’m not sure where this one is going to go next.  Based on the way the tree seems to frame the middle of the image I suppose I need to put something else on the hill there.  My current idea is to place an old style park bench there, with one guy sitting on it, staring off into the distance.  Waiting for someone?  Reflecting on someone or something lost?  Just taking a break while out for a stroll?  Homeless?  Who knows, haven’t thought it through enough yet.  I cannot help but add in some surrealist angle into my work so I’m sure it won’t end up being that simple.

Still, the next step is probably a bench sort of like this one:

Benched

And so it goes, just feeling my way forward hoping I’ll figure it out as I go.  It seems to have promise for something that I wasn’t really expecting when I sat down to just “paint something”.

-Josh

Boundless Contemplation

“Boundless Contemplation”  Digital Painting created with Painter X

Because jeans and t-shirt slacker dudes who don’t comb their hair think about stuff too you know.  Deep stuff.  Like why sitting on a big rock for hours makes your butt numb.

But.  Recently I had a sudden and undeniable urge to paint something, with real paint.  I wanted to smell turpenoid fumes.  Now, that sounds like a borderline tragedy waiting to happen but I’m not that kind of artist, I just wanted to get back to an artform that has that level of tangible, sensory intimacy that the digital process can simply never replicate.  I can fire up Corel Painter and sure it does a pretty good job of simulating bristles spreading out to push paint around on a digital canvas, but after the painting session is all over I just click save and close the app.  This evening when I finished working on a section of a new painting I had to go into the bathroom to look for all the intriguingly bizarre places I managed to collect smudges of paint.

That is when the awesomeness of oil painting really returned home.  I had paint on the corner of my lip, on the side and tip of my nose, all over both hands (expected), all over my right forearm with my right elbow completely covered in a gorgeous mixture of Prussian Blue and Permanent Rose (not expected, but definitely the most attractive looking my elbow has ever been), on my forehead, inside my left ear and on the toe next to the big one on my left foot.  And to be honest, I’m not 100% sure I have found all of it yet.  I’m pretty sure there is still a smudge of Cadmium Yellow still unaccounted for…somewhere.

The other thing I’ve noticed from time to time is how quickly my digital paintings will lose momentum.  Basically that point when the excitement of coming up with and executing a new idea in the chosen medium starts to feel like an endless amount of time spent worrying over the exact details of 1/1000th bit of the image that no one but me will ever even notice.  When I was painting a short while ago I completely lost track of time.  4 hours.  Wait, it is still Monday right?  Once I’m rolling it just seems so easy to get pulled into the work, the toil, the blissfully peaceful escape of slapping paint around while sniffing paint thinner…Perhaps I should start putting a lid on that stuff.

Still, the problem is, regardless of medium, is I tend to abandon ideas if I don’t stay focused on them long enough to reach the all important three-quarters finished mark.  Beyond that point I just feel obligated to finish the thing, regardless of how bad it looks.  Otherwise I would never finish anything.  Many a promising idea falls short however, and never realizes its full potential.  To illustrate a recent addition to the not-meant-to-be pile, this was the painting based on the sketch included at the end of the previous post:

Unfinished Painting, A girl, A tree, and What Might Have Been

It had promise there for a while, but ultimately I didn’t like the way the girl was looking stiff and just didn’t feel like the idea was quite what I originally had in mind.  Obviously the upper half of the tree was never finished, and I never put the rest of the detail into the platform or the girl (her disturbing lack of Face being the most obvious lack of follow through).  I plan to try that general concept again at some point, when I have a little clearer mental image of what it is I’m really after, because somewhere in that failed attempt is a pretty good painting.  I think.

Meanwhile I just started another painting that is not well thought out at all.  I just started painting, basically, because I was bored and really want to smell some turpen- I just really wanted to paint anything.  So here it is, so far:

Beginning of a New Painting

Doesn’t look like much yet, but then it’s mostly just underpainting save for the upper right corner.  That and my mediocre photography skills aren’t helping its case.

Will it make it?  Who knows.  I don’t paint because I have any sort of future as a successful or particularly well respected artist, but because it passes the time in a more enjoyable fashion than most activities.  We’ll see.

-Josh

Dream Arch

Dream Arch – Digital Painting over Photo Collage

Imagine being the guy who has to wade out there and clean the crap off the base of that thing.  Although that water does look awfully clean.  Surprisingly free of oil spills, cigarette butts and Snickers bars.  Perhaps it isn’t such a bad job.  The guy who has to clean the bird crap off the top now that dude is hosed.

Broken Connection

“Broken Connection” – Oil on Masonite Panel

Now here is an example of an idea I really liked that was executed in the right medium to probably the highest level of quality I am capable of producing.  And yet, this did not become one of my favorite paintings until after I received some comments from some folks trying to figure out what it means.  Is it meant to convey a technology theme or a spiritual one?  That we use technology to connect to and understand our world, but that this approach is broken or flawed?

The original idea was an image of a Direct Phone Line to God, and that it was out of order.  Because the omnipotent being in question is out to lunch?  It is intended as a metaphor for how we “connect” to the world and its ultimate meaning, and thus the message is that something is out of sorts, but is it that the being on the other end isn’t answering, is it the idea of that being as something we can communicate with isn’t really feasible, or is it that our methods for making that connection are themselves  broken, flawed and in need of technical assistance?  Another thought was simply that technology has come between us and those beliefs, breaking the connection that we used to know how to make but have lost as our focus and fascination has shifted to more scientifically based methods of understanding our place in the universe.  Any of these thoughts could fit the image in one way or another, which is the part I find fascinating about the image itself and is something I wish I could accomplish in my work more often.

Anytime one of my images generates a discussion it is a successful piece of art.  It doesn’t really matter to me at all if that discussion goes off in an entirely unintended direction, it only matters if some strange and peculiar collection of symbols and colors that I pieced together was the catalyst for it.

We've Come for Your Hot Chicks!

“Take Us to Your Hotties” – Digital Painting created with Painter X

This is probably one of my favorite illustrations, even if it wasn’t executed as well as I would have hoped.  For one thing the perspective is off from the foreground characters to the background, her pose seems awkwardly stiff and I’m not sure her expression is quite what I wanted.  Still, it conveys the meaning that I had intended when the idea occurred to me.  The alien is a fair yet inspired representation of my own questionable charms and impeccable fashion sense, or a general representation of any and all would be geek cassanovas.  Except most of us do tend to wear shoes.  The odd thing is the idea actually started with the little robot dog, which of course then needed an owner.  Once I had the dog and the girl created I still did not feel I had a complete image and so in waltzed our interstellar anti-sex symbol to woo and repulse the trendy heroine.  The dog actually looks more interested in his advances than she does, or perhaps it just thinks the flower is bacon flavored…

Neel: I assure you I am perfectly capable of many varying degrees of seriousness.

Reg: No, I mean what you just said cannot be true.

Neel: I’m not sure I follow the logic of your counter argument.

Nutter: He was not trying to argue the point, he was simply pointing out it is, well, very unlikely what you said is in fact true.

Neel:  I’m not concerned with his criticism of my brilliant assessment of this situation, I am troubled by his disbelief in my ability to take my job seriously.

Reg: You spend your day sleeping in your chair, setting off a random sprinkler or two or trapping people in the elevators – your job is a joke.

Neel:  My job is essential to the continued profitability and efficiency of this company and I assure you that I take approximately 75% of it quite seriously.

Nutter: You guys control the elevators too?

Neel: Yes, to a degree, and that is a perfect example – it is no trivial task to override the elevator’s efficient personal transportation algorithms.  I can’t just kick back and ask the central control computer to lock down elevator 6E between floors 23 and 24 simply because it would be hilarious to watch the three people inside it slowly panic and freak out, oh no, I have to provide it with a sound and ethically justifiable reason to disrupt the normally safe and smooth operation of our internal inter-floor transportation system.  That reason has to appear to fit within the bounds of the ethical conduct and responsible building management guidelines set down by the MEH Corp central management department.  It has to be clever and smart and original, since they keep updating the computer’s request checking system each time I find a new way to trick it into setting off the fire alarms on a given floor for really no particularly good reason at all.  My job is excruciatingly difficult!  You really have no idea.

Reg: But how does ruining people’s day justify you position or inspire others to take you seriously as a productive and responsible co-worker?

Neel: It takes skill and concentration to perform such clever and original problem solving.  What’s the most difficult problem you have to solve on a regular basis?  As best I can I tell your greatest challenges revolve around daily wardrobe selection.

Reg: I solve fiendishly difficult end user issues and fix the vending machines.  I keep this place running pal.  If those machines didn’t have cookies and donuts for sale at 2:30pm every work day you wouldn’t have to make up a good reason to turn on the fire suppressant systems and call in the national guard.

Nutter: I was stuck in one of the elevators for eight and half hours last week…

Neel: You fix the vending machines?  What exactly do you fix?

Reg: I place the “Out of Order” sticker on them and shut off the power.  It’s wasteful to keep it running when it doesn’t work.  It doesn’t say to do that in the handbook, I thought of that one on my own.

Neel:  But there are items in those machines that require refrigeration, what happens to them when you shut the power off for weeks at a time?

Reg: Hmm, so that’s what that smell is.

Nutter: That wasn’t you was it Neel?  You didn’t lock me in an elevator all day right?  I mean, you guys need us roving technicians to perform important functions and tasks to keep this place running smoothly, so it wouldn’t make any sense that you would leave me stranded all day in one of those very small, very suffocating and cramp little elevators right?

Reg: You know, they really should update the vending machine troubleshooting handbook to say it shouldn’t be powered off because of potential spoilage and fungus and infestation.

Neel: Wait, if you followed the handbook in the first place you wouldn’t have powered off the machine, because it doesn’t say to power it off, but now you want the handbook to tell you not to power it off and then you will actually follow what the handbook says?

Reg: Well, yes.  What good is it otherwise?

Nutter: Because, you know, I was kind of starting to go insane in that elevator…I don’t want to think about what I would do to the person who was responsible for trapping me in there…

Neel: You’re saying the instructions need to be updated so that you can follow them even though the existing instructions, if actually followed, would already produce the result you are trying to achieve.  It’s pointless to update the book that you aren’t following in the first place when if you followed the book it wouldn’t need to be updated!

Reg: No, see, once again I don’t think that is true.  You cannot write instructions for something and assume the reader knows not to do something, they have to be told.  Such as “this drink is very hot do not pour contents onto your own face”.  Or, “This knife is very sharp do not use it to try and extract a spec of dirt from the surface of your eyeball”.  These are essential warnings that if omitted would certainly lead to all kinds of self-inflicted injury and widespread damage and chaos across our society.

Neel: Do they post instructions in the Men’s room?

Reg: Have you used the Men’s rooms around here?  Do you really think they shouldn’t?

Neel: Ok, bad example, but I would still maintain that approach is completely wrong-headed and would totally take this company down the wrong track.  You see, if the company ethics guidebook contained such straightforward and well defined rules for what not to do as well as what to do there would be virtually no wiggle room left for me to convince the computer to trap Nutter in an elevator for an entire Tuesday.

Nutter: What?!?!

Reg: Except that is precisely why it should have just such a rule in place!  It should clearly state, do not halt elevators between floors when there is no possible threat of danger to company employees or signs of pending malfunction of the lift itself.

Neel: Ah! But what constitutes a pending malfunction of the lift?  The lift does not actually have to be malfunctioning, it simply needs to be plausible that the lift could malfunction at some point and the only way to be sure it is in fact functioning properly in every conceivable way is to stop the elevator and run a full system check.  At least ten times, just to be sure.  The key is, pending – not imminent, not malfunction in progress, but a pending malfunction.

Reg: Ok, you cannot halt the elevators unless there is a definite malfunction actually taking place.

Nutter: I can’t believe you did that!  That’s it, I’m coming up to that control room right now to kick your ass!

Neel: But what if it is the emergency breaking system that is malfunctioning?  If I wait until they fail it could be too late.  At some point prior to that I must asses the possibility that the passengers might be in danger of plummeting to their untimely, though mercifully quick, demise.  I should take preventive actions to keep them from harm.  By halting the elevator and running a full check of course.  Or how can I assume signs of a malfunction in one component, say the air purification system, might not lead to a serious threat of death by asphyxiation if one of the other passengers lets loose with a blast of baked beans and asparagus enriched gas?

Reg: How are those plausible concerns?  How often can such corner cases actually arise in the day to day operation of the company?

Neel: Did you really just ask me how often people fart in the elevators?

Reg: No! I am asking why your juvenile abuses of the building’s maintenance and control systems should be allowed to continue.

Neel: A valid and insightful question but one I am not fully prepared to address at this junction.  Anyway, hold on a second – computer?

Central Computer: Yes Neel?

Neel: What is the current average rate of travel of elevator 8N?

Reg: Neel, what are you doing?

Computer: 2 floors per second Neel and steadily accelerating.

Neel: Calculate how many floors that elevator travels per day at that average rate of speed and then check when the last time a full diagnostic was performed on its mechanical components.  Search the manufacturer’s support site for historical data regarding component failures and find the shortest amount of time any of those components have failed.  If elevator 8N has travelled more floors since its last inspection than the shortest time to failure reported by the manufacturer then it should immediately be shut down and a full system check should be run.

Computer: The LED in the internal compartment down button was once reported to have failed in less than two weeks after install.  The current run for elevator 8N since its last full inspection exceeds that timeframe by approximately 3560%.  Shall I halt the elevator at the next floor?  It is currently carrying one passenger.

Neel:  Holy crap! Exceeded by 3560%?! Shut it down right now!

Computer: As you command, shutting down the elevator now.  It is currently located halfway between floors 73 and 74.

Neel:  Thank you computer.

Reg: That is just the sort of nonsense that should, in a sensible world, get you fired!  You’re a menace not an employee!

Neel: I undoubtedly saved the life of an MEH employee which is in fact a central responsibility of my job.

Reg: I doubt that passenger feels they were saved.

Neel: I wasn’t talking about their life, I was referring to my own.

Reg: What?

Neel: Nutter is in that elevator.

Reg: You cannot be serious.

Neel: I think we covered that one already.

Melancholy Valentine - Original Artwork by Josh West

Melancholy Valentine – Oil on Masonsite

As an artist I figure I should try to express deep and thought provoking images that provide a visual depiction of the hardships and struggles of everyday people in everyday life.  Or, perhaps represent abstract concepts through symbolism and metaphor, such as love and heartbreak and the merciless destruction of another person’s soul and sanity, or what is more commonly known as a relationship.  I should strive to reach this level of artistic quality and skill but alas, I tend to aim lower, strive for less and not climb quite as high.  It’s just that much longer of a fall back to the bottom.  Take this image, I could tell you that it is intended to be an intricately painful expression of loss and vulnerability, but it isn’t.  It was an excuse to paint a hot chick in her underwear.  And some really big thorns.  And some awesomely detailed and random looking stocking patterns.

Engine 500 - Original Railroad Artwork

“Engine 500″ – Original Digital Painting created in Painter X

I like trains.  This one operates in Chattanooga, TN as part of a historical center that has several old train engines sitting around on display.  At some point I’m sure I’ll be making another illustration based on those photographs as few things offer such a challenging collection of little details and textures while coming together in a perpetually interesting and complex design.  I mean it has everything, such as plenty of good solid geometric patterns with circles and squares and rectangles along with a good mix of shiny and reflective surfaces.  And its a Train.  Ask any 6 year old, trains are cool, and I certainly respect the insight and wisdom of all 6 year olds.

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Red Dragon

Red Dragon – Original Oil Painting on Masonite Board by Josh West

This piece is…very straightforward.  There really isn’t anything I can write down here that will add much, if anything, to your enjoyment of this small piece of art.  If you came here for this image you knew just what you were looking for, a Dragon, and on that front it delivers with a minimum frills and fuss.  It satisfies your need for scales, wings and horns in one solid crimson go.

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Aluminum Fairy

Aluminum Fairy – Digital Painting created in Photoshop CS3

This is the second illustration in what could have potentially been a whole series of metal and electronics versions of everyone’s favorite mythical beings and creatures.  In fact it presented the same difficulties as the mechanical Dragon illustration in that I had no idea what setting to place this particular design into.  Where do metal skinned, digitally-projected-winged fairies hang out?  What would be the natural habitat of something that has ir-retractable wings wider than a dump truck and needs an oil change every 3,000 light years?  The window was an easy idea, with a planet hanging around back there because after all, mechanical means SciFi, and SciFi means space, so there you go, starlight and purple planets.  Then I threw in some columns and a very clean looking floor and things really were pretty well set at that point since the focus of the illustration is the robot itself after all.

Then, I started doodling on the columns.  I don’t know what those symbols are for.  Perhaps they are warnings that simply read “please keep off the columns”, though such a warning at the top of the column seems a to render the warning a bit useless by that point.  Perhaps the ones at the top read “we warned you at the bottom, now you’re screwed and we are not responsible for what happens now”.