Totoro Forest Project

I was invited 4 months ago by Daisuke Tsutsumi to do a painting for the Totoro forest project.
It's basically an art auction to support the "Totoro No Furusato National Fund" which was established by Hayao Miyazaki to preserve Sayama Forest ( the forest that inspired him to come up with the concept of Totoro.) There are nearly 200 pieces done by some amazing artists who i look up to. Im very excited to be a part of this. The auction is september 6th 2008. You can find all the information here:

Http://www.totoroforestproject.org

Here is my contribution 11x17 (18x24 with the frame) Soft Pastels on Sennelier pastel paper. My interpretation of Totoro based on an idea my fiancee Sylvie and I came up with.



Some Close Ups:

Stream

Ive been to a stream before!



Ive also been watching way too many horror movies this weekend. I love horror movies. THey are One of my favorite types of movies to watch. Id love to direct/art direct some horror project one day! At work i tend to have to paint things very bright/ saturated and happy for the most part but I LOVE to use black and shadows and its something i dont get to do very much except in some personal works. Ive also noticed that i have some kind of obsession with water/ little animals in my work these days.

Dream over

Just got back from my vacation in Korea. Once again Best trip ever ( Thanks Sylvie Miss you already) Visited many places, ate alot of good food. 4 weeks is SOOO short. I was planning to do some pastel painting while im there but i realized while trying to paint outdoors on the spot that i either dont know how to use pastels properly ( technique ) or the materials im using arent correct ( combination of both i think haha ). I was using alot of Rembrandt pastels but couldnt lay more than a few layers of pigment on the canson mi-tente pastel paper, so the result was alot of crappy flat pastel paintings that ended up going to the trash. I did learn ALOT though. For one i think i need to buy alot more VERY soft pastels such as the smchicks , terry ludwigs or unisons. Also i need to try to force myself to work from hard to soft pastels. The rembrants work fine when i do illustration work with combination of fixative inbetween layers to add tooth to the paper but when i had to use them on the spot for spontaneous paintings i realized they were no where near as soft as the schmick pastels that i had brought with me which were alot easier to use due to their softness. Unfortunatly i only had a few sticks of schmicke pastels. On a side note, To anyone who plans to bring pastels on the plane, make sure you bring them on your carry on and be ready to take them out every single time you go through a check point. The airport security always thought i was some kind of terrorist carrying a battery bomb and had to be checked on the side numerous times as well as break a few pastel sticks to show them nothing was inside. Back to real life now and time to find work again. Ill post some new artwork when i get something new done soo keep checking the blog.


Here are some pictures

sneak peak

UpUp and Away

Been quite busy lately. Jumping around from project to project. Just started new short term gig which should keep me quite busy for the next 3 weeks! After that im Off to Korea for about a month. From May 10th - June 4th. No plans for work when i return but i hope its some cool project.



Went out and bought some more softpastels to add to my collection for this painting im gonna do in the coming weeks. I also bought some paper that i wanted to test out. Its this small pad of panoramic format cold pressed sennelier watercolour paper. Its kinda smooth , i wouldnt recommend it for pastel work but if you have fixative handy to add some texture bewtween layers it works alright. Heres a quick 15-20 min pastel doodle just to test thigns out. Pretty boring composition and nothing special is happening but its nice to get back into tradiational stuff again, more to come at some point down the line.



Fun times start now

Lost Ducky

Heres a new entry for the lost ducky story. From now on ill be updating this series at http://lostducky.blogspot.com ( you can also click the link on the side bar under Projects)

Little Sketch

Been a little busy with work lately. Heres something i just sketched out for fun this morning.
On an other note, Go watch Horton hears a who!!! it looked really nice! I did some early Viz dev work on it for Blue Sky studios back in 2005 and also most recently painted all the bg's in the 2d sequence that House of Cool produced for it. Go check it out!