Some sketches and....

the niftiest music video I've ever seen. I'm sad that Google doesn't have enough photos of my childhood home, but the rest of you might be luckier. My brother recently played the new Arcade Fire album for me, specifically the song "Rococo", which he correctly assumed I'd like. It reminds me uncannily of my high school Art History class.

I've been culling drawings from some of my more recent sketchbooks so as to have some filler for in between posts of finished pieces. I've been dividing them up by media, and black and white verses color, but the years are all mixed in, although unless I grab my older sketchbooks from my parents' house, none of these will be from earlier than 2008.

Dangerous Trails

Here's a new piece, the first illustration in a new method of working for me. I've always wanted to work on top of photos, but for whatever reasons had never gotten around to actually doing it. This, and another illustration that I will be posting soon, are my test runs of the actual process, although they are purely digital painting and photography, later on I'll be working in traditional media as well.

The photo was taken on a little day hike in my hometown, Middleton, MA. This particular hike had several children in the group and they proved to be great fodder for my impulsive picture taking. The idea for this image actually came from the teenagers that came along for the hike, however. Several of them wandered off mid-hike (they had come on the hike for a school assignment and, naturally, when they felt they had fulfilled their academic obligation they left.) Even in Middleton it's not the best idea to go off on your own in the woods when you aren't familiar with the area. I thought that, rather than just becoming lost, wouldn't it be fantastic if something really unexpected happened to those wily teens? So, when I looked through my photos and saw this boy stepping aimlessly off camera, I knew he had to be stepping somewhere dangerous.