I have an odd brain (you don’t say…), and the way it works with art has always been interesting.  One of those oddities is in working with grayscale vs. color.

I know plenty of artists who start with a grayscale piece and then go and color everything to make it a full color image.  For some reason though, my brain just doesn’t do that.  When I start a grayscale piece, I expect it to stay gray.  When I start a color piece, I start every part of it in color, and go from there.

But I do have have fun sometimes returning to the old gray pieces and adding duotones or other overall colors to them.  I use layer blending modes and multiple layers in Photoshop to give different overall effects.  I’m not going back and coloring individual areas, but rather I’m adding colors to the overall layer and then toying with the effects.

I’m putting a couple of examples below, of pieces that started out gray and have since joined the color world.  The octopus is actually a new sketch from my “2010 sketch every day” idea, you can see the original on my Flickr page here.

As always, let me know what you think, either here, Twitter or Facebook. Actually, that octopus rather unintentionally came out like a Templesmith work.

I don’t like to do resolutions at the very beginning of the year, I think they can be disingenuous and are likely to fail.  But I find myself in a unique position: everything seems to have all come to this point.

Usually, I see these points and try to act, often missing out for various reasons.  But I think this new year brings a different feeling, one I haven’t felt in a long time: hope.

After a very long last year (filled with both highs and lows), I’m at a point where I can take destiny into my own hands.  I’ve decided to do just that, and, as the man says, “Though the road may wind, yea, your hearts grow weary, still shall ye follow them, even unto your salvation”.

I can see a number of things on my horizon, and a number of things I pledge to do to help make it happen. Though I may sometimes may get hampered by life this year, I intend to:

1. have a brand new, full piece of art done every month

2. do sketching of some kind every day

3. Do at least one art blog a week, and (hopefully) keep the brand new monthly Apex Blog for the year

4. Launch a webcomic strip with a good friend and author

5. Complete (and hopefully sell) a full children’s book with another author

6. Complete a full graphic novel with a UK author

7. Change the daily life so that it’s not so stressful and not so technical

8. Have fun with life, family, friends whenever possible.

———————

That’s quite a bit to accomplish, but I’m off to a good start.  I just came back from my first time as a guest and being in an art show, at the great VisionCon (more on that later), and here is the first of the daily sketches.

Time to get this show a’ rockin’.

I’ve been to a handful of conventions over the years, and through those I’ve always been just an attendee (save for KillerCon last fall where I was on my first panel). Today I’m leaving for VisionCon, and my first shot at being a guest.

I’ve been to VisionCon before, last year actually.  I was an attendee, and in the middle of last year I was asked to be a guest and be in the art show.  I think it’s a great chance to get my work in front of a lot of people, many of whom may never have seen it before.

Now, being who I am, I also tend to be overly nervous about things.  Along with being a guest, I’m bringing a number of small things to sell.  Prints, bookmarks, and so on, and the idea of coming back with all of it instead of selling any is always present.

I’m also the type of person that wonders if anyone will even like my work at all.  Of course, I wonder that every time I show someone any work of mine, but there’s a certain added pressure in my head since I’m a guest.

The attitude I’m leaving home with this morning is this: there’s no way I can control what people think, and I just need to take a deep breath, have fun and love what I do.

Despite the troubles I see in my daily life (especially this week), I am pretty lucky that I get to use my energy to be creative.  I get published here and there.  I have projects in the works with a few excellent authors, and those projects are all very different from one another.  I get asked by great conventions to be a guest.

Taking a step back, things actually look pretty good. No matter what happens this weekend, I have the honor and privilege of getting to do something I love, and seeing friends that I don’t get to that often.  I can’t really ask any more than that.

I’m the first to admit, VisionCon coming up (go visit their site here!) is the first convention where I’ll actually be a guest.  That means for once I’ll need to be in the art show and be selling stuff.  I’m currently trying to decide what prints I want in the art show, what prints I should make and sell, selling postcards and bookmarks, and so on.

I’m also deciding what I should bring for my own self-promotion.  I’ll probably at least bring business cards and mini-cards, but talking online today with Cullen Bunn I also considered “monster cards’.

Monster cards were big in the 60′s-80′s especially.  They were horror-related cards, either straight horror or often with some amount of humor to them.  I though that would be a pretty good thing to bring, and here are a couple of initial ideas. Obviously, I have to throw my smart-ass nature in too.

Comments welcome, and needed!

Monster Cards

Thanks to the holiday season, I haven’t really been able to do much at all, let alone an art blog.  So, let’s start off 2010 the right way, with me trying to do this once per week.

This is Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres’ The Dream of Ossian (1813, Oil on canvas, 348 x 275 cm), one that, as usual, I came across while looking for something else. It caught my eye, and I thought it was good enough to feature here.

The first thing that caught my eye was the white area in the center of the piece.  It’s otherworldly, and soft compared to the bottom of the work. With a certain lack of contrast too, it’s strong but not overwhelming.  It brings your eye to the center of the work, without forcing it there.

The red of the man’s cloak, along with the green of his shirt, grab your attention as well, almost pulling you back into his reality. There’s a bit of a fight in the image, as to whether it’s the story or the storyteller that matters.  Overall, Ingres’ use of color/palette and the brightness counteract one another, and it engages the viewer to figure out on their own which they prefer.

The man at the bottom also has far more contrast, giving the effect that he is in a different realm, in reality where the group above is not.  Symbols like the man’s white hair, the lyre, and the staff, all give the idea that this is a storyteller, and these soft, glowing characters above represent his stories.

In fact, Ossian was described at the time of the painting as being a great bard, much like Homer (of The Odyssey, not of 742 Evergreen Terrace).  The painting represents Ossian and his great stories, though there has been some debate as to whether Ossian really existed (or was a figment of poet James Macpherson’s imagination).

Regardless of the story behind it, in general terms the art represents the idea of a storyteller very well. Characters and stories are often like the ghosts of imagination, never truly real, and yet still very strong and full of influence. Ingres leaves the discussion of story vs. storyteller to the viewer, and any time an artist can engage the viewer in their own thoughts means a successful work of art.

Opinions?