Kids these days...

I continue to be amazed at how astonishingly easy it is now to find and acquire new music. I just discovered a new band on Pandora after hearing one of their songs for the first time, looked them up on iTunes, purchased and downloaded their album to my iPhone... all in less than five minutes. I realize I'm going off on a "back in my day" rant, but teenagers, do you have any idea how goddamn difficult it was to find new music ten years ago?

If you were lucky enough to be in range of a hip (i.e. college) radio station and they happened to be playing a song you liked, and you wanted to find out the name of the song/artist, you had to either call the radio station or wait until the end of the song for the DJ to come on and (hopefully) tell you what they just played. THEN you had to find a record store (remember those?) that was hip enough to carry that sort of music, which usually only existed in college towns or largely populated cities. Good luck if you lived in a small town in Iowa; you might never hear that song again. And hopefully the store hadn't already sold out of that album, or else you had to be content with them ordering it for you and MAYBE shipping it to your house if you were from out of town.

THIS IS FUCKING MAGIC!!!!

Mexican Sugar Skull

This is a design I made for my friend Stephanie who skates on the the Mid-Iowa Rollers derby team. Her number is 311 and her derby name, celebrating her Mexican heritage, is Mex-Rated. I've always liked Mexican Sugar Skull designs and I thought this would be a fun side project.

Shards #3

Another abstract piece finished today! I'm really digging this style. I like the repeating patterns, texture, depth, and the fact that I'm not trying to tightly render a particular form. It's a very cathartic exercise for me to help me loosen up a bit.

Shards #2

I knocked this one out on Sunday evening right after finishing Shards #1. It's inspired by the work of Piet Mondrian, but I tried to make it a style of my own. Photoshop CS5.

Shards #1 Finished

I "finished" my latest abstract piece. I love the angled brushes I created to help give this one some life and energy! I'm very happy with it. I'll try printing it out tonight.

Abstract: Shards #1, WIP 1

This is a new digital abstract piece I just started in Photoshop. I was fooling around with a base of warm colors and created a new textured triangular shaped brush. I've spent about 15 minutes on it so far. I think it's a good base from which to start.

Fight the Giant - Finished!

After spending way too long on this one, I'm finally done. I moved the giant up and shrunk the warrior down a little bit to add some space between the two. It looked like the two figures were standing way too close to each other.

I added some grime and wounds to the warrior, and a broken sword on the ground. I also opened up the sky a bit more so that the scene lighting made more sense. A few more background tweaks and I called it finished!