Been a long long time

Hey, internet!  So I know it's been a while since I last posted anything, but I promise there are very valid reasons for that to be the case.  In the couple of months since the Boneyard show, I have (a) bought a house, (b) moved into that house, (c) started a new job, and best of all, (d) done a bunch of art!

As a reward for your patience, here's the newest crop of papercraft and drawings/paintings:

 One of the first things to get done after getting settled into the new house?  CELTIC WHITEBOARD WALL!  I have been wanted a giant whiteboard in my office ever since I first learned this was possible a few years ago, and I finally have one!  The paint I used (Rustoleum) was total crap and doesn't look great, so that's too bad.  But it's got a Celtic theme!  How cool is that!

 A commission I'm still working on, but have almost finished.  A friend from California wanted a set of eight pendant-necklaces to give out as Christmas gifts.  As you might guess, her family people are the Irish Cooneys and Connollys, so I'm putting together matching pendants with Ogham script versions of the older Irish pronunciations, complete with fancy little info cards.  Because I'm a classy, professional artist.

 A fun project.  There's this guy on DeviantART, Knotty Inks, who does absolutely incredible Nordic and Celtic tattoo designs in black and white, with all this amazing 3-D texture stuff, and it was just too cool not to try and emulate.  My own design kind of pales in comparison, but I still think it was a good exercise, and I look forward to doing more stuff like this in the future.

 I also entered this contest on DeviantART, for the Celtic Art group, the theme of which is the Irish fairy goddess, Cliodhna.  I'm allowed to submit up to two pieces, so this first one will be a collaboration with my sister (whose own awesome art can be found at Plum and Leather) - I've done the basic line-art, and she's going to paint it.  It's going to be awesome, and nice to work with her again.

 My second submission for the Cliodhna contest was a solo thing, and much more abstract.  I took some of the iconic imagery from her associated legends - birds, tree, water/waves - and combined them with the Ogham "Cliodhna" floating on the waves.  In most of her stories, the goddess is either killed at sea, or washed back to the land of the fairy by the crashing waves, so it seemed appropriate.

 Just a couple of doodles, but fun ones.  A shoulder tattoo of Odin, and a general Celtic dog tattoo.  The Odin design is actually my first time designing a tattoo specifically fitted to a particular body part, so this was a good step in a potentially lucrative direction.

 My most recent projects - a couple of bookmarks to flesh out my Etsy shop (CeltShop.Etsy.com).  The one on the left is all lines and stippling with a technical pen, and the one on the right is all metallic acrylics, so it's super shiny and pretty.

 And, finally, a commission for a coworker who wanted a personalized stamp for herself.  Depicted here, her name in Ogham script in the middle, and a fun knot design around the edges.  She said she thought the grainier look sounded cool, which is why it looks textured and aged like that.

That's all for today, folks.  Hopefully it'll tide you over for a bit, but I'm doing a really ridiculous amount of art nowadays, so I wouldn't be surprised to find another post in the next week.  As always, drop me a line if you're interested in anything you see here, or if you'd like me to design something different for you.  Or even if you just have questions/comments!  See you soon!

The Boneyard Arts Festival (and aftermath)!

As previously mentioned, the Boneyard Arts Festival took place from 4/19-4/22, and I had my first ever professional art display, including a few of my paintings and drawings, as well as some samples of my jewelry.

Me working my adorably tiny display.  I had a couple of hours on my hands, so I decided to bring my supplies with me and do some live-painting while I was there.

It went pretty well.  Not a ton of people, but I really can't complain too much.  My display was up at the Museum of the Grand Prairie in Mahomet, which is tucked kind of out of the way, and my display was down the hall from the main part of the museum, and on the opposite end from the live music.  Nevertheless, the people I did talk to seemed to like my work, and I did my best to accept compliments graciously (a task at which I am ridiculously inept).  One guy even asked if I was sure I wasn't an illuminator-monk in a past life, to which I had to respond, "no, I'm not sure of that at all."

"Songs of the Hunt" (left), and "Veritas ab Candidas" (right).  I was particularly proud of these.

"The Blank Page triptych"

The newest addition to my collection of art I'd like to sell or otherwise give away - "Religion"  (I really liked how panels 2-4 turned out, but hated panel 1 so much I dropped my intended price by $100 in the hopes that someone would buy it and I wouldn't have to look at it anymore.  No such luck.)

All the varied jewelry (minus the one piece that I sold)

I was sad to end the day saying that I'd only been able to sell one piece of jewelry, but I have to put that in perspective - by this time a year, I had barely ever sold any art, much less had an official display anywhere.

There were other artists there as well, considerably more professional than I:

A pottery guy.  I liked his stuff a lot, but had no money to buy anything.  (Also I never saw him at the event, so...you know.  Moot point.)

The woman who ran this booth (not pictured) offered to sell my art if I ever started using recycled/repurposed materials to make it!  Exciting networking opportunity!

They had a craft thing going on that I didn't participate in, but it looked popular.

This woman paints Christian-themed watercolors.  Not my cup of tea, but she did have some very pretty stuff on display.

There were also a photographer and a painter not pictured here, as well as a live musician who sounded exactly like James Taylor.  So that was pretty cool.

All in all, as with all things, it could have been better but it could have been a whole lot worse.  A valuable experience to have.

Boneyard Arts Festival display!!!

I'm in the middle of a totally insane period right now, involving my own final papers/projects as well as helping herd my chimpanzees toward their own final exam and term paper assignment, so I don't have much time to post, but I thought I'd mention this:

My first ever art display is currently up at the Museum of the Grand Prairie, and will be there through the weekend.  I will be at the Museum for their Boneyard Arts Festival event on Sunday, 4/22, from 1-5PM.  (I may not be able to make it to the first hour or so, as I'll hopefully be out buying a house.)  I have three painted/mixed-media pieces, and one drawing, as well as a handful of necklaces and earrings and a binder with photos of some of my digital work.  Go check it out if you're in the neighborhood!

I'll probably make another post after the show to talk about how it went, things I learned, etc.  Though it may have to wait until finals are over.

2012: Year of the Commission

In 2011, I did three commissions. In the whole year. In the first two weeks of 2012, I've done four. I get the feeling this year is going to have quite a bit more steam.
(Forgive me, these aren't all Celtic work. I take the commissions as they come.)

This first thing was a character sketch commission that a friend asked me to do for another friend of his as a gift. The guy's Witchblade character. A paladin for a something-or-other god.
This second is a tattoo design for an old high school teacher of mine, combining three of his things: Metallica, WWII, and Batman. (My high school teacher is a dork, but a very cool one.)
This was a bookmark that a friend from college wanted to give as a gift to her boyfriend, another old friend. The Ogham writing in the middle reads "DRH" for David's initials. He actually requested the bookmark, which is pretty exciting. I've never had that happen before. It's acrylics and metallic acrylics on parchment, and laminated.
And finally, a revision of the personal logo for Jared (aka "Sablehawk") including the shield with the tree that he's using for his website. My impression is that he'll be using this as his avatar on a gaming site he's setting up.

Metallic Acrylic Psychotic

Over the course of the past few days, I've been working like a fiend to complete this piece:
It was a lot of work. A lot of work. The tools included three synthetic sable brushes of varying size and shape, though all tiny; a set of 12 regular acrylics; a set of 6 metallic acrylics; and finally, an ink design on standard sketchbook paper from about 9 months ago. Not a complicated set of tools, but a big job nonetheless. The design measures about 5.5"x8.5".
It went pretty well, over all. At the end of the process, my hand still isn't as steady as I'd like it to be, but it's much steadier than it was, and I've come to understand better how the bristles on my brushes react to pressure, movement, wet paint, drying paint, etc.
I learned some very useful lessons from this process. Probably the most important was to keep a clean brush, and always keep an eye out for the paint drying on the palette (in my case a piece of cardboard covered in packaging tape). When the paint gets dry enough, it starts clumping - it will still transfer from the brush to the page, but not when or how you want it to. In short, it becomes exceptionally difficult to control. Since acrylic dries so fast, using just a little at a time on the palette seem to be the best way to go.
Also very useful to note, in regards to this style of work: in the design phase, do not make lines, make cells. A line is just what is sounds like: a segment of solid-color ink. Lines are problematic, because it's difficult to paint over them (while maintaining the line) and it's more work to paint around them. A "cell" is better. A cell is a space with lines on either side that you can fill with color(s). Since I'm not used to painting, this has never been an issue, but I will need to get in the habit of doing cells rather than lines from now on. (You can see in the image below where I ran into this problem in the "S".)
Another beginner lesson that I learned the hard way: just because red goes with yellow, and yellow goes with blue, and white goes with anything, doesn't mean all these things should be combined in the same painting. It all looks pretty good, but I do wish I'd used less white, and I feel like the red and the blue are competing for space, when originally it was supposed to be all red and yellow with some blue bars for a kind of color-kick.
This was a maddening piece to do. It involved an incredible amount of patience, a virtue of which I've never possessed much. Toward the end, I was really starting to lose it.
However, it gave me an interesting perspective on the insular manuscripts that were the inspiration for this piece. The Christian monks who produced the Celtic insular manuscripts believed that the written word was the highest form of prayer, since every word written on the page was the direct word of God. They believed that because written words (and their accompanying illuminations) were the most holy of relics, the holiest act for a scribe would be to fit as much writing and illumination on each page as possible.
Whole monasteries would work together to produce the amazing manuscripts we know today, devoting year after long year to creating these incredibly complicated and beautiful pieces of art. When I was working on this piece, sequestered as I was in my office, I started trying to put myself in the mindset of these 7th-9th century monk-scribes, and there are some remarkable parallels between doing this kind of art and living the "good" Christian life. For each, the actor has to be extremely careful, move slowly and have patience, lest a hasty mistake is made. It's certainly possible for one to speed up, to take more risks, and maybe it will still turn out fine in the end, but each tiny mistake - insignificant though it may seem by itself - detracts from the delicate interconnection and beauty of the finished work.
Also interestingly, from my more agnostic and social scientific perspective, it's a great illustration for how I see religion in general - creating something incredibly complicated in service of a silent and unknown deity while latently stumbling onto some fundamentally secular truths about how to live life is a pretty appropriate metaphor.

Now that's all done. On to the next monster.

Swaggitude

The holiday season, for me, extends more or less from my birthday on October 30 through Christmas and its surrounding celebrations. This year, considering my constant focus on improving my art, people were not at a loss for what to get me. (Nor was I at a loss to get myself. I bought a few of these things, much to the chagrin of people shopping for me.)
My art supplies:

Additions to my collection include:
-3 new Bristol pads of varying size
-A big sheet of parchment
-A pound of scrap vellum (goat, sheep, deer, and calf, for comparison)
-A book on the Book of Kells, a book on the Lindisfarne Gospels, and a Celtic art instructional book
-Five tiny little synthetic sable brushes with differently shaped tips
-An imitation gold leaf starter kit
-A gold leaf kit
-Wood carving tools (chisels, sanding sponges)
-Jewelry-making tools (bezels, epoxy, exacto-knife, a smoother/flattener thing, tape for laminating)
-Metallic paints in a variety of colors
-Refillable calligraphy brush
-calligraphy quill pen set
-Extra ink refills for my technical pen

I've gotten so much swag this year, I feel compelled to find a big pirate treasure-chest to keep it in. Maybe I'll ask for that next year. Thank you Mom, Katie, Caitlin, Cheryl, Joe, Jake, Marcess, and Self. Your contributions will not be wasted.

Songs of the Hunt (line-art)

I've been away from the blog for a while, and this is why. About a month ago, I drew the following template/outline:

I wanted to start putting together an insular-style piece using the kind of columnar layout that can be found in the Book of Kells, the Lindisfarne Gospels, and a few other insular manuscripts. I like the look of that layout, and though I still don't know what the words will be, I've thought that it's a really nice design for framing a small amount of text in a larger illumination.

So, school ended and I went to work.

As is my habit, I went through my process of filling in each space, first designing and redesigning the animal-patterns that were to form the bulk of the image with a pencil, and then going over the final pencil designs with a technical pen (my wonderful Signo bit 0.18).

In the columns, and the circles above, you can see dogs and birds, as well as traditional Celtic spiral patters and basic interlace. The people at the bottom, with their flutes and their books, represent the scribes and bards relating the glory, the madness, and the humor of the hunt, with the spirals representing their music and the clearer images of the dogs and birds representing the tales. I don't usually go for themes or particular motifs in my work, but when you're doing traditional Celtic illumination, dogs, birds, and people tend to be most of what you have to work with and the theme kind of emerges on its own.
At the top, you can see more animal patterns (including the big oafish head of my own St. Bernard, Darwin). Also, at the bottom of the image above, you can see in the little circles a different kind of Celtic patterning called "steps," which were common in insular art, though completely new to me. Actually, along the sides of the outer columns, I used a so-called "fret" pattern, which is also traditional, but a novel thing in my art. I was full of experimentation with this thing.
The chest (so-called because I think it looks like a big traveling case) at the bottom of the design was...mixed. I wasn't terribly happy with how the three sections at the top came out, but the derivations from the Lindisfarne Gospels on the left and right came out really well, and the circular area in the middle is something I'm really pretty pleased about, mostly because it's simultaneously very different and also very me.
So the line-work is finished. All in all, I have no idea how many hours it took me. Not more than 70, but not less than 50, I should think. And it's not over yet. Once I feel ready, this will be painted, which will take...god, I don't even want to think about how long. A long time. But if it goes well, it'll be worth it.
Here's a scanned copy of the design, with much higher resolution. If you do a right-click and say "View image," you should get a (very) large view of the line-work, which makes it a bit easier to see the details.

(p.s., Because I have no life and am a dork, I counted: including the 6 humans, this thing contains 169 animals. Pretty remarkable when you consider that the whole thing is 5.5"x10.5")

More jewelry practice

Greetings, subjects of Earth. I've returned from my working hiatus, and have more goodies to post.
I've been practicing with the jewelry equipment my sister bought me, and I've actually put together a couple of new pieces that I've been pleased with. The first is a pendant for my lovely wife, Caitlin, complete with her first initial and some Gerber Daisies (which she quite enjoys):
My inspiration for this piece came from this amazing tutorial: Illuminated 'P' by ~somk. Obviously I've got a lot of work to do before I can produce work of that quality, but I've taken a few baby-steps on that road, beginning with buying myself a wonderful set of tiny itty-bitty brushes, and receiving a bunch of varied Celtic art supplies for Christmas (which I'll probably be posting about on Friday).

The second and more recent attempt was this pair of earrings for my sister, for Christmas and also to thank her for sending me down this jewelry-infested avenue:
They came out pretty well, I think. Quite simple, but pretty and very homemade gift-looking.

I've learned a couple of lessons from these projects that might be useful to any of you looking to try this at home:
1) Make sure to laminate both sides of your image, otherwise the epoxy seeps into the paper and dulls the colors.
2) If you mix the epoxy more slowly and gently, you end up with fewer bubbles and better visibility. As the inimitable Katie Cragoe put it, you're not making a souffle.
3) Make sure to mix the epoxy thoroughly. If it's not fully mixed, it won't dry all the way, and you'll have to apply another layer on top which takes an extra day of drying, and sometimes doesn't work if your bezel is already too full.

That's it on jewelry. More to come on the recent illumination project.

I would walk 500 miles

Just, so you know I'm not completely slacking off, this is what's happening around here:

Yeah...I'm not a prolific artist, but it's not for lack of trying. It just takes me forever and ever to finish these bigger pieces.