ever notice your 'days off' are busyier then your normal days?
yeah me to. i spent most of it drawing tattoos that will behappening in the next few days. hopefully they turn out as rad as the drawings did.
here's one for a sugar skull coming up this saturday.
the rest im going to wait till ive at least got the line work done so i can show some progress/process.
but what i can show you is my finished painting of shawn i started last week.
its sorta lose but i like it. and it officaly caps my self set quota of paintings to have finished before having my own show. so now planing for that begins! hopefully i can figure something out and have a show the first friday of november in lincoln nebraska down town. i just have to find a space big enough for my stuff.
oddly enough most of what ive painted the last bunch of months has end up preety obviously paired. totaly not intentional either. i guess i just paint in twos? haha.
you can see the last two sitting together here.
i actualy built that little 'scaffold' to hold more paintings and my studio space is over flowing and ive run out of room to put things.
this photo of the hall way exiting my studio space shows example of that. guess thats a tell sign to have a show.
these two are from a while back, they are actualy the only two that have 'titles' other then just the name of who i was painting. i like to call them vanity and smoldering
on non art related notes this is my cheeseburger for the week, $1.50 for a burger fries and soda at the grocery store. it was the special of the day :) typicaly on my days off i eat either a box of mac and cheese or a good burger. as we are still stove-less and i dont feel like boiling water on a grill its been burgers lately.
and not related to anything at all, this bitchen camaro showed up in blazing barbie pink the other night full of bleach blond sororiety girls at the shop and i couldnt help by chuckle and take a photo for ya'll.
been working on some cool tattoos this week, in pair with the great aaaaaaalmost fall weather it's put me in a fairly decent mood :)
nothing to eventfull but i suppose id rather it be a good mood non-event then a bad one.
anyhow...
heres an example of why i love living were i do. the sunsets are completly different every night, but almost always spectacular. different shapes, colors, rays. but always i nice sight driving home
this particular night i came home to some rice and yuckani <- no idea if thats spelt correctly. its an eastern dish that is one of many passed down threw my moms side of the family. im thinking this is basicly tomato, beef, green beans and spice more or less. tastey either way :)
and turns out its preety hard to make on a grill so here it is being made in a epicly cheep electric skillet thing. until $500 apear its going to be a grilling, microwave...electric skillet kind of kitchen.
add some bread and..
* see how i used a knife and did not remove any fingers sarah? take note *
walla :) tasty
i didnt eat it but sean and kelsey got a new kitty, they named her frenchy.
now for some tattoo stuff, i like taking progress photos so theres a bunch of that going on below this.
this is the 'prep' for a tattoo i started last night on brandon our shops piercing apprentance. its not finished yet so this is all you get. all i can say is armpits are alot easyer to tattoo then id expected. thankfully.
im preety awefull and taking 'before' shots of cover ups so i went all out on this one yesterday.
turns out jason reeder isnt the only one who gets to do fun tattoos on occasion ;)
and this morning i kept the ball rolling and started this big rib koi
her only other tattoo is a teeny little foot tattoo, and she sat like a champ!
now just counting down to my 'weekend' and some painting progress, and hopefully colder weather :)
shops a little slow today so i thought id try and catch up for the last few days. Its been a bit of a blur so im hoping by sorting threw the photos itll come more into focus for me. that was part of having this blog right? to remember things? haha
thankfully i take alot of random photos.
fresh back from my seattle trip ( see previous 3 posts ) i was realy looking forward to having my tuesday/wednesday off to paint and make some progress on some projects and as well as see some friends. youd think with them living a block or so away you would see a person more then once every few weeks. but we are in fact people with shit to do turns out.
after cutting up some new panels i took advantage and sprayed painted a few 'almost finishing' touches on a piece ive been playing with here and there. i still need to tweak some things and then its golden :)
while that was drying i threw in the green on my layering project.
and started on another study for the viking tattoo, the last idea didnt realy fit well. not wanting to compromise at all i decided to do a quick study using some things i picked up in the Gogue seminar from the previous weekend.
the start..
almost finished..
while i was waiting for the much to dry and finish it later on charles and i went fishing... ...ok he went fishing and i took pictures of him fishing while i enjoyed the wonderfull weather.
see, i told you i was there.
at some point durring that day i got this rad giant double cheese burger from the grocery store deli, WITH fries for something ridiculous like $3 haha :)
it was totaly worth that $3
..anyhow after fishing i finished the skull/viking/study of which i will post photos of later and threw another color on this girl.
wednesday i wasn't to terribly productive. i put a thick glaze on an older piece trying to see how glossy it would realy be and went into omaha to talk to a shop owner in my journey of finding a new place.
but today was fairly productive. a client stopped in to schedule there third appointment on this rad two headed eagle fighting a snake tattoo. the tattoo is in an odd position to see much of it at one time. but when its finished ill post some sort of wrap around shot. but for now check out this healed tattoo progress.
also, today my friend mike came in to have his sleeve worked on. most of the time he's on tour with his band 'For Today' all over the world, so we usualy try to get him in for a sitting or two when he's around. i think we are about 10 hours in on this arm so far. im happy with it so far, i dont do a lot of large black and grey so its a real treat to have this one going so well.
and yes that is an evil flaming cash spewing atm monster robot crushing a city on his ribs in progress. haha
well shit, I went to the Hanson show with my girlfriend and was pretty quickly found out. I've pretty much always liked Hanson. My massive knowledge of random information even includes random Hanson knowledge only a few select straight men would admit to knowing.
but you know what, i don't care. this new album is great and makes me want to dance around like a total loser. which i did along with a billion girls on Sunday lol.
you can only go to a concert and pretend you don't know all the words for so long.
anyhow, one of the songs on the new album has a video out right now that mirrors a pretty rad scene from a blues brothers movie so you should look at the link below and enjoy :) also, if you've never seen the blues brothers movies i have one question for you. how can you read this blog from under that massive rock?
and yeah, weird al playing a tambourine? pretty great.
we showed up before the doors opened and there were tonnnns of people waiting!
Sarah was pretty excited as well, only a few days after her surgery she was absolutely not missing Hanson. there were even people on crutches waiting in the endless line. it was so hot i felt like i was showering under my shirt lol.
they saying smiling is contagious, in that case i think terminal depression could be cured by a Hanson concert. i don't think I've ever been around so many epically happy people ever. and not in some obnoxious way either. it was just so much positiveness. i feel like a total loser for saying it, but its helping make life a bit easier with all that's been going on.
alright enough of that, haha.
.. ok one more, you should go vote for the video on vh1's webpage. And for people wondering why you don't hear them on the radio much, they refuse to license their music to any station that clearchannel owns for some ethical reasons? so there's that. don't for real this time. promise.
the day after the show i worked on finishing up mikes super rad owl tattoo. my phone was dead so i couldn't get a decent picture so you'll have to just trust me that this phone pic my friend took is a really crummy representation. we have one more sitting so ill post a better/finished pic then :)
the next day i relaxed a bit and started getting ready to fly to Seattle on Thursday morning. I also attempted to get some work done on some paintings.
this is the second layer on the layering experiment i started a few weeks ago. im just kinda picking at it now and then. im not very practiced in painting with watered down pigment on watercolor paper, so i tend to over saturate the paper and just make a mess being so used to painting with thick layers of acrylic on masonite panels.
i took a break to visit Charles at work to see how he was doing. with all the surgeries ~ Sarah and my dad in the span of 3 days~ and traveling i havnt been able to hang out with him for a while.
i also took a minute to tell him about these awesome "Q fries". think nachos and bbq had a beautiful baby. haha.
layer one: home made steak cut fries layer two: freshly smoked brisket meat layer three: melted cheddar all over that :) layer four: a tasty mix of honey and spicy bbq sauce.
soooooooo goood :)
lol i promise to post something that isn't meat heavy...someday :)
We decided to hang out after he was off work for the day, so with an hour or so to kill i started a drawing for a tattoo idea ive been bouncing around in my head. I've a client that's given me nearly a full lower arm with only the instructions of it being nordic, viking, norse. and "heavy" feeling. sometimes things look better in your mind so i started mapping some things out.
Charles made it over and we watched Garden State for like the trillionth time.
and i kept working on the bearded viking skull, nordic compass, roses, dot work idea.
it turned into a giant blob of paint but it looked good right here, ha. either way i wasn't really into the way that it was all starting to lay out for his arm. He's having Gunnar <- yeah that epically talented Gunnar tattoo his other lower arm so im really trying to make this tattoo over the top. waaaaaaay over the top. i want people to see both forearms and ask about my tattoo. haha, its a challenge for certain.
so with that i think we're caught up! im flying out tomorrow to Seattle Washington, via denver and spokane because i bought my super expensive tickets a little last minute :S, for the seattle tattoo expo. its always a great time and a great town.
i will try to post every night with my day, but after upgrading my os to the 4.0 my phones been a little finicky so hopefully all goes well and you can see what im up to :)
