The Naked Silo

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...

Self Portrait, October 2019 26" x 18", oil on wood panel, 2019

CEV Phase 2 A 14" x 11", oil on canvas, 2019 CEV Phase 2 B 14" x 11", oil on canvas, 2019 In my post about  Phase 1  I mentioned and linked to the trio of paintings I did in 2010 featuring wine in wine glasses with a few other items, but it was this painting below that specifically inspired this challenging new series... Full-bodied, A 18" x 14", oil on canvas, 2010

Restrained Fury 18" x 24", oil on wood panel, 2019 Pencils (with circle). I felt the composition needed something in the upper right, so I drew a circle there, but I don't think I'm going to keep it as a clearly-defined shape. Blocking-in shadows. Along with the shadows, I blocked-in the dark background and softened that circle in the upper right. I'm still not sure what to do with it... Close, but something's off... Blue highlights on right.  The right side of the head and neck weren't looking right until I realized I needed some definite blues (rather than trying to make it work with pale violets) and then it all came together. Now for some blue highlights in the coat... Close-up featuring ear.

Ted Maczka 17" x 14", ink on Bristol board, 2019, private collection. This was a commission done as a house-warming gift and was based on my oil painting of Ted Maczka  (below), Prince Edward County's famous Fish Lake Garlic Man. The commissioner was aware that the recipient knew Ted well and missed him (Ted died in 2013), so I was more than happy to paint this one. Ted Maczka 36" x 24", oil on canvas, 2011, collection of the County of Prince Edward Public Library and Archives

County Coyote: Explorers 18" x 24", oil on wood panel, 2019 I always enjoy participating in the shows put on by Peter and Alice Mennacher at their Blizzmax Gallery in South Bay, here in Prince Edward County, and when I got the invitation for this year's County Coyote group show I quickly began brainstorming ideas. The main concept is that participating artists take Peter's drawing of a coyote and do whatever we wish with it. I decided to take the plentiful coyotes out of PEC and sent them out into the final frontier, exploring strange new worlds. The main background of mountains and a ringed gas giant in the sky was borrowed from a Robert McCall painting, the rocket is based on Hergé's design from his Tintin comics, and the hoodoos are based on photos I took in Alberta more than a decade ago (I was going for a sort of Roger Dean -inspired landscape, and the surreal (and unlikely) tripled hoodoos lend themselves to this notion). Naturally, these c...

CEV Phase 1 A 14" x 11", oil on canvas, 2019 In the winter of 2017-18 I kept seeing the first painting in this "full-bodied"  group of paintings I did in 2010 and, because I really liked how the glass was rendered, with all the distortions and reflections, I came up with an idea for a larger group of paintings that would feature clear glassware as the main subject. CEV Phase 1 B 20" x 10", oil on canvas, 2019 I felt painting those distortions and reflections convincingly would be a fun challenge, so I collected a few interesting glass items and photographed them in various lighting conditions, emphasizing the fact that they were all empty (more on that later). CEV Phase 1 C 20" x 10", oil on canvas, 2019 This group was shot at night with extreme lighting mainly coming from above, with additional light sources causing many of those highlights and interesting reflections.  CEV Phase 1 D 20" x 10", oil ...

Minerva McCrimmon (study) 20" x 16", oil on wood panel, 2019, private collection. When Krista and I moved to Prince Edward County  in 2010, we were very interested in its history, feeling we could explore and celebrate it through our artwork in various ways. I won't get into all the historical work we've done, but I'll say that, over the years, we've gathered more than a few books to help educate us. One of these books is " The New Improved Legendary Guide to Prince Edward County " by Janet Kellough, and it was in this slim, spiral-bound text (that everybody seems to get upon arrival in PEC) that I first became aware of Minerva McCrimmon and her big heroic act in April 1880. There isn't much information on her actual life, but the story from well over a century ago is really all I needed for this project. I liked the story a lot –especially because she was so young– and I kept revisiting the tale to see if I could come up with a way to...

What follows (for a little bit) is largely the exact same content as my KITT post because it's the same base model kit and there's just so much crossover in the early build stages (and I don't assume everybody reads everything I write here).  Box art (front). Even after building KITT, I still have no idea (and still no significant interest in finding out) what a MechatroWeGo is or does (it looks like a robot helper/friend of small children), but that doesn't matter. I really like the design and, seeing as dozens of modelers around the world have made amazing customized versions of these things, I wanted to join in the fun (with my own twists, of course). Box art (sides). Like many recent Bandai kits, Hasegawa has designed these figures to be highly poseable and, I suppose, played with. My plan is to have this robot simply standing in a display case, maybe with some kind of reference to the Station 51 firehouse from the show to fill out the space (t...