JFlah's Blunders

Here's Alex painting the model.  Alex Meade's art installations are great! Instead of painting on canvas, she makes these installations where she paints models and props so that they become the painting. Check out her flicker feed .

By Dave Malan - Brilliant Anyway I love looking at Dave's work. The crosshatching looks so amazing! It's like he knows exactly where to put the lines and what direction those lines need to go in. It looks loose and controlled at the same time. I love it! I wish I could draw like this but alas, it's not even close to my own style. I wanna watch him draw and could probably do that all day long for an extended amount of time without blinking - it would be that fascinating.

Frog 4 Wacom by John Liberto Found this on the Daily Design Inspiration Page. I like the painterly work, the subject matter and the extra detail he's added. I very much enjoyed this. It makes me want to start painting again.

The boss showed me a Haiku from a book his daughter was reading called "I Could Pee on This: And Other Poems by Cats" by Francesco Marciuliano called "Sushi". Here it is in all its glory: SUSHI Did you really think That you could hide fish in rice? Oh, the green paste burns! What's so funny about this Haiku (and why I wanna share it) is that I had not been at this job for long when I did something super stupid that you may find amusing. The ministerial staff around here goes to lunch every Monday after their staff meeting. That day they'd gone to a new sushi bar. The office administrator is a meat and potatoes kind of guy. When they got back to the office, everyone was in the front office talking about their lunch experience when one of the secretaries (who apparently watches a lot of food network) said that the hot green wasabi paste is used as a palette cleansing agent. The administrator laughed and said that he'd rather use Oreos and ...

I sketched this rabbit with his umbrella a while back and just got around to digitally coloring it. I have a "clean" un-textured version, but I think this one has more visual interest - what do you think?

I very much enjoyed listening. Check out this instrumental version Lincoln Brewster's Christmas carol medley. It's got a great rock-out feeling to it that made me smile. Click on it and see what I mean. Singing electric guitars, rhythmic but not overwhelming drums, some voice synth at the edges...

So, I finished the preliminary flat zoetrophe 10.7.3.1 tract this week. It's super simple and I used the design elements from a previous brochure for each "explanation" page. Each animation could only be six frames long. I have a new admiration for those people who do animation and do it well cause I now know that's definitely not my calling. So, yeah, it was a challenge to get it animated, but the main challenge this week was to get the booklet printed. I don't know what buttons I pushed to cause such a problem, but for some reason InDesign was printing the booklet out of order even though I had set things up like I have always done. I'm still scratching my head about that one. It took me over an hour to figure out what the problem was and to finally print out the few copies I needed, but if I want to save the booklet as a pdf, I'll have to re-order the pages again. - sigh- the joys of modern technology, right? The animations turned out pretty fair. B...

I've been enjoying Barlow Girl's music for a long time now. I love the harmony and the quality of their voices combined. The video includes two of my favorite Christmas songs. I have too many "favorite" Christmas songs to count, but these two songs are in my top twenty.

Sketched these characters a while back. I absolutely LOVE drawing the Grinch. He's just so sour.

Illustration Friday's Topic was "Whiskers" Unfortunately, the first thing that popped in my head was "cat" but a LOT of people think "cat" when you say that word so... yeah, did the next best thing...

This is my favorite "new" Christmas song this year and I wanted to share. I hope you enjoy it too.

First thing that came to mind was a speedy snail for Illustration Friday's topic, Zoom. I sketched then digitally colored it in Photoshop.

I found this screen capture of Erik Johansson working digital magic on PSDtuts+ while I was doing some research for a project. It's so creative I had to share.

  My sister sent me an article this afternoon that got me riled up again. It is so hard to reconcile facts in my mind. I mean, we’re living in a time where this "democratic" government is forcing people to do the things that go contrary to what they believe and in my mind (and in the minds of a great many others) that isn't the "freedom" that this country was built upon. I'm speaking specifically about the government mandating that tax payers have to fund abortions whether or not they personally support it; and businesses being told that they have to do the same or face huge fines...    I’m telling you, you may as well call Obama “Hitler” or “Stalin” cause he’s leading this country in that direction as fast as he possibly can. That's what Hitler did when he was in power. To shut down businesses that didn't step in line with what the leaders wanted them to - they just passed regulations that put those companies out of business - stupid s...

Ok, so I'm having some post-election day blues. I'm really disappointed in the election results - as I'm sure anyone who has read anything I have to say about the current dictator in office can imagine. I was thinking it's like I want to go to a land like OZ - a place with lots of bright colors and a kindly man behind the curtain and a cool horse of many colors. Sure OZ has its problems, but it's so much better than the reality of "home" right now. Today I was able to continue working on a tract for the children's minister. It's another 10.7.3.1 thing, but this time it's got some optical illusions in it. Have any of you heard of a zoetrope ? If you haven't heard of one, and you've seen any animation at all, you have seen one. They're usually made where they have a large cylinder that has small slits in the sides around the circumference so that you can turn the wheel and see inside while it spins. On the inside walls of the cylin...

Thankfully I voted early. From what I hear, there are long waits to get into the voters booth today. I pray that every registered voter will cast their vote and that (God willing) the dictator will be overthrown. I had heard about this before, but someone was speaking about it on the radio yesterday - making it clear who Obama was. They were talking about one of Obama's first executive orders once he got into office. He personally revoked several orders and started sending U.S. money to Mexico to fund abortions. That's Obama - consistently putting action behind what he believes in - murdering innocents in the name of money and power. ( Here's the official executive order And, here's a list of all of the 141 executive orders he's pushed forward during his term at this point). With the new health care bill stating that employers (and tax payers) will be forced (regardless of their convictions) to fund abortions... Everyone knew who he was before he got into off...

Beautiful sketch I saw on etsy - click image to visit artist's site. I took a "real" vacation this year. I went to Atlanta. While I was there I visited the Margaret Mitchel museum. The tour guide was so knowledgeable about the author of Gone with the Wind (and kindly answered each of my questions) so I found that I wanted to re-watch the movie. I know it's a classic, but it's not one I have ever liked. I saw it while I was a teenager and remember not liking it then - I just couldn't remember the specifics of why I felt that way about it. After watching it again, I remembered. I dislike every one of the characters (save Mrs. Ashley, Scarlet's selfless friend - though, no one I know is that kind and selfless so that character seemed a little plastic to me). Scarlet was more heartless than I remember her being. She was the epitome of selfishness in everything she did. Even Mr. Ashley didn't glow in this, though he seemed more respectable than Mr. Butl...

This afternoon the student minister asked me to put some Elvis hair onto a photo of the preacher for their Elvis hair contest that they're having tonight at the 50s Nite youth event. It took about an hour and a half and ended up with two fun options for them. Source File 1 Source File 2 I found these two images online and used them to make the final once I found a decent photo of the pastor. Last Source File Elvis Reginald 1 Elvis Reginald 2

I donno about most of you artists out there, but one of the TV personalities that made painting seem like something I could do was Bob Ross. Today the Google doodle was of him - apparently today would have been his 70th birthday. I loved how he could make a quick decision and say things like "this is where a tree lives". The way he simplified his techniques made oil painting sound like so much fun. Maybe that's why I prefer it over acrylic even now.

In addition to the preschool logo, they asked for a nursery logo too. Since they have a "take a train ride through the Bible" sort of thing going in that area of the building they decided on "Nursery Depot" as the name. Here are some preliminary sketches. Here are some of the glorious failures... Here's what they settled on.