Subtractive Composites

40" x 30", oil on canvas, 2013, private collection

On this day five years ago, I posted my first blog entry here, not knowing if I would enjoy blogging, how long I would continue, or what I would get out of it, if anything. It turns out I kind of do sort of enjoy blogging (kind of) –mostly concentrating on my own artwork, but I also like writing the occasional post about Small Pond Arts (where I gladly invite you to meet me at the silo). Since I have no plans to stop painting, I may as well keep blogging about it.

And what have I gotten out of it? I like sharing my work, my process, my struggles (it might be insightful or educational to someone); I feel I've become better at discussing (though, not necessarily explaining) my work in person after five years and more than 400 posts of trying to be clear and coherent online; and while I don't prefer to dwell on/in the past, I do like to reflect on past work, to reassess and be critical of it so that I may learn and get better...and blogging helps, whether I'm looking back on my first watercolour or my most recent oil painting (this one). So here's to five years!

Carrying on with my Tournament of Shadows series, I've combined here my cleaver-wielding friend Sandra with a sword-wielding statue from the Pallas Athene Fountain in front of the Austrian Parliament Building in Vienna (which I photographed on a trip there with Krista in 2007). The lion tattoo is a larger version of the one Ashley has in The Lady and the Lions from earlier in this series (which also features a statue).

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Axel Foley's Chevy Nova (1/25 scale model)

Multiple tributes, here. I remember first seeing Beverly Hills Cop on video at my friend Chris K's house, 'cause his family had a VCR and we'd watch tons of movies (and record music videos) together. The summer of 1984 was a special time for us (having created a strong bond in school since Grade 6 a few years before), going on biking adventures around the 'burbs and into the city, etc., and home video played an important role from then until I moved to the opposite end of Scarborough just before we started high school. We liked the movie a lot, both of us fans of Eddie Murphy from his Saturday Night Live days. I don't think I'd seen the movie since then (it would have been 1985, probably summer, since the movie came out in late 1984) and I became curious to see if it still held up. It did. It does. I found Murphy as charming as ever and the comedy (and even the action) holds up very well and its very re-watchable and very entertaining. Beverly Hi...

Time Travel Helmet

The theme for this year's Firelight Lantern Festival is The Time Machine , and Krista and I were going to put together steampunk-inspired costumes for ourselves (which is why the helmet's painted in hammered bronze), but, after shooting the announcement video (second video at the bottom of this post) I decided I'd look better with a lab coat, bow tie, and goggles for a generic 20th Century scientist look. I'd previously built a jetpack as sci-fi costume accessory for stiltwalking purposes back in 2015, so if I were to combine this helmet, the jetpack, and my refurbished blaster and I'd have a pretty good, mostly homemade, sci-fi costume for...something...down the line... Creature! It sorta looks like a weird electronic sea cucumber or sea anemone from the top. More dieselpunk than steampunk; I like it. They were originally crystal clear plastic, but I sanded the insides and outsides to better disperse the light from the LEDs (which I bought, pre-wired...

YT-1300 Freighter w/Cargo Carriage (scale model), Part 1

For a couple of decades, now, I'd been curious about two things concerning the Millennium Falcon: what it looked like as a brand new, unmodified ship ...and how exactly did it work as a "freighter," anyway? That other build takes care of my curiosity about the ship, this one takes care of my curiosity about the freighter question... Hail, Bandai. Bandai Star Wars kits are amazing. Their larger models are super detailed, but even these tiny kits (the Falcon here is about 1/350 scale) are superior to many previous and current Star Wars kits by MPC, AMT, or Revell. Mini sprue tour. Interestingly, this version of the Falcon is the one from Star Wars , having only three landing gear boxes (two more were added to the front for Empire ), but the larger version I built as factory stock had five because it was the version from The Force Awakens . My only (very minor) complaint is that these smaller kits only have stickers instead of decals (the larger kits...

The Naked Silo

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