Lady Liberty

About 10 years ago, I took my oldest son, Tyler, to see the Statue of Liberty.  It was an interesting trip, filled with wonder and a car accident!   But we did get several nice pics of the statue, one of which was used to make this paper sculpture.  The fireworks are digital, of course.  It's hard to see in this smaller format, but my three sons are looking out of the headpiece of the statue.

 Lady Liberty, January 2002

Animal Crackers

Most of my time is spent making cute animals out of clay.  Here are a few cute animals made out of paper and added to a distressed animal cracker box.  This box is made from double thick illustration board and the bars are painted wooden dowels.  The whole thing is almost 3 inches thick.

Animal Crackers, June 2002

Blues Legends

This is actually a background for a Rolling Stones caricature project called, "Waiting on a Friend".  It features blues legends that the Stones site as their influences.  From left to right, they are Robert Johnson, Son House and Muddy Waters.  It is digital art, created from stencils I cut from card stock and scanned.  As for the completed Stones piece, it's on the docket for sometime in July.

Blues Legends, May 2008

Julia Roberts & Lyle Lovett

This was one of my very first paper sculptures.  You can see how dated it is because Julia Roberts is still with Lyle Lovett!

Julia Roberts & Lyle Lovett, October 1994

Seahorses

I consider this my first real success doing digital effects.  The seahorses are made of paper, but all the rest is digital.  A textured glass effect was used for the background.  Then the background was seperated into 16 different areas in order to create the bubbles.  If you look closely at the bubbles, you can see distorted views of just that area of the art.

Seahorses, September 2004

Angelina Jolie marquetry

Here is another digital marquetry piece.  Real exotic woods are scanned into the computer.  Then, instead of being cut on a scroll saw, the wood is "cut" and assembled in Photoshop.  I hope this isn't too racey.

Faux Wood Lion

It took me three weeks to finish this lion. And there are things I still want to change about it. I won't say what those things are because it might riun it for the viewer. Maybe there is no such thing as the perfect piece of art. Maybe the imperfections are part of what makes art, art.

Sitting Bull marquetry

I had so much fun doing the Richie Ashburn marquetry, here's another one of the great chief, Sitting Bull.

Richie Ashburn marquetry

For the longest time, I've wanted to try marquetry.  Marquetry is the art and craft of applying pieces of wood veneer to form decorative patterns, designs or pictures.  I must confess, this one of former Phillies great, Richie Ashburn, was accomplished on the computer.  Exotic wood were scanned and positioned to form the Hall of Famer rounding third base.  In short, no sawdust was inhaled in execution of this piece.

  

Sam Kinison

This is one of my illustration board cutouts from many moons ago.  The fire was added much later as a digital file.  I sold the original cutout of Sam Kinison on Ebay.

Sam Kinison, July 1992

Nascar Frank

Several years ago, a friend of mine asked me to do a paper sculpture of her boyfriend, Frank.  Frank is a huge Nascar fan, so I decided to do a caricature of him in one of those coin-op kiddie cars.  Dale Earnhardt was his favorite driver, so Frank is sitting in his number 3 car.  This is all made of paper, except for the digital background, which was printed on paper.

Nascar Frank, July 2006

Tiny Animals

Some of the animals on the World of Animals piece are so small that you cannot see them unless I upload the original art.  The original is 9000 pixels high and there are many reasons why I wouldn't want a digital file that size on this blog.  Here is the next best thing; the originals of the tiny creatures that inhabit my World of Animals.

 Honey Bees

 Butterfly

 Mandarin Duck

 Moray Eel

 Squirrel Monkey

 Oxpecker

 Red-Eyed Tree Frog & Poison Frog

 Screech Owl

Horned Starfish

A World of Animals

A World of Animals was the most ambitious project I ever attempted.  It took over four months to complete and over 1000 layers in Photoshop.  My original Animal World was a paper sculpture.  When the decision was made to do a digital version, I decided to add more animals.  The monkey, owl, duck, ostrich, ibex, black bear, bees, rabbit, fawn, butterfly, frog, starfish, eel, piranha, crab, shark, and octopus were all additions.  Almost twenty new brushes in Photoshop were created to imitate animal hair, leaves, and skin textures.  What do you think?

A World of Animals, March 2008

Osama bin Laden

We finally got that scurvy dog, Osama bin Laden!  While I don't have any art of that idiot, here is a very happy Barack Obama.

Barack Obama caricature, December 2008

Kritter Kids "Dominoes"

I am attempting to colorize all my old comic strips.  But it's more than just adding color.  The old lettering is wiped out with new text added.  Also, little blemishes are removed.  In the case of this strip, "Dominoes", the little frog in the background was pretty rough, so I drew a new frog over the old one.  The sky is a photo I took of a sunset.  The colors in the sunset were muted and blurred so not to overpower the artwork.  I made my own brush in Photoshop to lay down all that grass.  I saved the brush as "KidsGrass" so it can be used for all my Kritter Kids comic strips.

Kritter Kids "Dominoes", December 1990