Hey there everyone!  I'd like to announce that I've launched my new sports art website!  It's called Impact Sports Art and you can find it here:  Impact Sports Art

Yes! I am still alive.  It's been, oh, several months since I've made an entry here but I've decided to rectify that matter.  No promises on whether or not I'll update things regularly but maybe I won't be quite so scarce.  I've completed several new pieces but I don't really have any plans on uploading them here.  I'd like to announce that I'm working on a website for my artwork and it should be up and running in a fairly short order.  In the meantime...click here:  Frederick GFC

Wow, it's been quite a while since I've made an entry here.  I've been quite busy lately.  I just completed a new work of Raven's Tight End Todd Heap.  I will post a picture of that one fairly soon.  I have also dug out a canvas that I started about 15 years ago while I was still in High School.  Back then, I was quite an avid skateboarder and I wanted to try to do something I had never seen anyone do before: paint the action of skateboarding.  However, after getting the background filled in, I found I had quite a problem with rendering the flatness of a concrete landing as well as a set of steps and the painting got pushed aside.  With the confidence I've gained through some of my recent work, I decided I could now complete this.  As it stands right now, I have about 2 or 3 more hours of work to complete this one!  I shall feel a huge sense of accomplishment when this is done.

 

I have also been talking with the very talented and successful Jim deMaine.  He does a lot of sports paintings and specializes in football.  He has been a great help to me in giving me an extra set of very expert eyes with my works in progress.  If you have the inclination, check out his work:  Jim deMaine.

Just to show you that I've not been completely idle, here are my two latest paintings.  I'm not insanely happy about the hurling painting.  The background which was supposed to be a crowd in the stands just doesn't seem to do it for me.  I'm also very unhappy with how the faces turned out.  On the football painting, I happened to sign it and then realized I had forgotten the shoulder numbers on the Ravens player as well as some striping on the Browns player.  This will have to be corrected, hopefully today.

 

 

Well, I completed the first in my hurling series this weekend.  I also got quite a start on the first painting of my football series.  We got a decent snow on Friday, enough that schools were canceled so I slept in and skipped work to stay home with the little one.  So, a nice 3 day weekend was really helpful in getting a lot done.

 

I'm toying with the idea of permalinking some entries and using those to post work-in-progress pictures.  There are 2 problems with this that I see: 1) it would force me to upload pictures more often and 2) I tend to not have works-in-progress for too long before they are complete (with the exception of 2 canvases that are over 10 years old....)

I really guess I should make another entry even though I don't have much really popping out at me to discuss.  I've started the first of my hurling series.  I'm pretty happy with it so far.  It really came together quickly and essentially all that remains to do are some facial details as well as some logo work on the jerseys.  I think I've begun to realize that my experiment with bolder brush strokes and high contrast to capture the speed of action does not work well for me.  My natural style is subtly blended highlights and shadows and I find myself fighting that tendency while trying to use this experimental style.  Therefore, I believe I will adondon this avenue and stay true to myself.

 

I've decided that I will also begin work on a football series concurrent with my hurling series.  Yes, this is selling out, at least to me.  I really don't care much for football.  I believe we Americans took a fantastic sport in rugby and destroyed all the good points to create this horrifying spectacle called football.  However, the popularity of football makes it much more marketable than hurling, lacrosse, or hockey (shame on me for not doing any paintings of my favorite sport yet).  I'm hoping to have at least 4 football paintings completed in time for a show next June in addtion to the other projects I'm working on as well. I must say, painting football will make it much easier for me to part with original canvases.  This is something that has prevented me from trying to market any of my pieces before, it's hard to sell your children.

Ok, I've finally gotten my pictures of my two newest paintings cropped and renamed! 

 

Feel free to comment...

Unfortunately, I was unable to find the time to take decent pictures of my two latest paintings.  Hopefully tonight I'll be able to do that.  It looks like a pretty action packed evening though.  I have a trip to Best Buy on tap to buy Mr. and Mrs. Smith as well as attempt to return that horrendous MAGIX Audio Studio.  I at least was able to work with it well enough to make a few loops that are being incorporated into a new song I have going.  It's really a shame, I like the MAGIX movie editor quite a bit.  It's actually easier to use than Sony Vegas.

 

I did manage to get the Windows Media Player installed on here so now you will all be forced to listen to music of my own creation! :P

 

Also in the works is a short series of paintings of more sports action scenes.  This time, I'm going to focus on an obscure Irish sport - hurling.  I must admit, my motivation for this is a bit mixed.  I really like this sport.  It's one of the most ancient sports in existence that is still played in some form that would be recognizable by the Celts who first invented it.  I was introduced to hurling via the Baltimore Gaelic Athletic Association.  I played hurling with them the summer before last.  I was too busy with hockey this summer to join them but as soon as practice starts up again, I plan on being on the field.  My other motivation is a bit commercial.  A new Irish pub has opened up in town and they display some works by local artists.  By exercising a few connections, I'm quite certain I could get the paintings in this series displayed there.  If enought interest was generated, I would certainly go to the expense of getting prints made.

 

For more information on hurling visit the above link or go straight to the Irish GAA site.

 

For the record, some of my other favorite sports include:  Hockey (of course), lacrosse, and rugby.

I'd like to wish a belated happy Thanksgiving to all the Americans out there.  I didn't make much time for coming online over the holiday so here's a rundown of the events since last Wednesday:

 

-First Thanksgiving "dinner" at midnight on Wednesday after hockey (again, midnight cookouts are a must if you never been to one).  We got a nice light dusting of snow that night!  Once the fire got up and roaring it was rather toasty.

-Second Thanksgiving dinner at my dad's house on Thursday

-Hockey on Friday!

-Third Thanksgiving on Saturday

-Sunday was finally devoted to painting

 

I was actually able to make my goal of finishing 2 pieces during this holiday break.  I got a little discouraged by Friday since so little was being done and I apparently tore a rotator cuff on Wednesday.  Luckily, it's in my left shoulder so I have full range of motion in my painting arm.  I'll post new pictures of these pieces tomorrow or Wednesday.

 

I really guess I need to make a new entry here.  I'll typically be pretty quiet on the weekends since I really don't like firing up the computer very much.  This last weekend was pretty quiet.  Not as much hockey going on as usual. 

 

I'd say I'm just over halfway finished with my latest painting.  It's rather small.  The subject is a lacrosse scene as I think I've think I've mentioned.  The viewer is looking downfield with goalie and net on the right.  On the left is a grouped mass of two players, one forward who is leaping into the air to shoot with a trailing defender.  It's sort of a vertical steelyard/balance composition.  There isn't enough separation between the two masses to be a true steelyard and the goalie/net mass really isn't big enough to balance the more foreground shooter/defender mass.

 

I'm going to rearrange some my other works.  I've made a gallery called nightmares and dreamscapes.  This will be for some of my older stuff.  I used to describe some of my work as dreamscapes and in fact there is one that truly was inspired by a dream.  That canvas was never completed and the concept has lain dormant for about 10 years.  I got it out this weekend and dusted it off and began to work on it some more.  It is supposed to be a night scene but my sky made it look very hazy and not at all clear like I had wanted.  So, I completely repainted the sky with Payne's Grey and Ultramarine Blue.  It's an extremely deep midnight blue that is vagely translucent.  I'm much more pleased with this.

 

all for now....

With the Veteran's Day Holiday, I was able to complete my most recent project: the Green Salamander (Aneides Aeneus).  This is a fascinating little creature.  It lives in rock crevices with a narrow habitat range from extreme southwestern Pennsylvania through West Virginia, Kentucky and Tennesse to extreme northern Alabama.  It can only be found in one county here in Maryland and considered endangered in this state.  I don't think my camera can capture this piece very well.  At least, I don't have the capacity to use my camera to capture this piece very well.  I'd like to give some credit to DieselBoy.  His music keeps me working even when I feel like taking a break.  I think he deserves a link...

 

Now it's off to start a new lacrosse painting.  I'm still working on developing a frenetic looking technique with bold brush strokes and little blending that doesn't look too thick and expressionistic.

 

 

Have you ever heard a song and been able to distill it into images?  That happened to me yesterday afternoon on the drive home.  I actually heard a song on the radio that I thought was pretty good.  That's a rare enough occurence in and of itself to remark upon.  But for some reason, this was one of those songs that I was able to delve into and become lost in.  I came out of with an enduring image burned into my mind.  Hopefully I'll be able to turn it into something that captures the true essence of those images.  That's always the hard part.  The moment is gone and you're left with a decaying afterimage...

 

This song, the name of which was never given by the gabbing DJs who refused to shut up, also left me a burning desire to make some more music.  My wife had been working a new song lately and it needed some nice toasty guitar riffs.  We downlaoded a couple of guitar synthesizers last night and played around with those.  One of them was really awesome.  We had put our heads together several months ago and decided that we would work together on music and we quickly composed a song that stretches the boundaries of any genre definition.  It was fully mastered and ready for release on AcidPlanet several months ago but we got hung up on, of all piddly things, a title.  For some reason, an apt title occured to me last night and we finally put it out there for people to listen too!  You can listen to it here.  Eventually, you'll hear many of our creations on this page.

 

"President Bush was informed that 3 Brazilians had been killed in fighting in Iraq, to which he replied, 'How many is a brazilian?'"  Mickey Cuchiella

Busy weekend.  Had houseguests on Saturday night, fired up the grill and burned some ribs.  Stayed up till about 5am....  Sunday barely existed because of need to catch up on sleep.

 

Needless to say, my art work was neglected this weekend, much like every other weekend.  I've been surfing through a few artist spaces and I must say that my queue of planned work is growing out of control. 

 

Daniel King's plane drawings have definitely made me want to give this subject a try.

After two consecutive very late nights playing hockey, I just didn't have it in me to go to work today.  So, I stayed home and work on a painting instead.  This is the painting with the rock that was giving me fits.  Fortunately, the rock and I have come to an understanding and it is coming together to my satisfaction now.   Today I was able to complete three large leaves that help to break up the mass of the rock and I've begun to add color blocks to the salamander (main focus).  I think this may have been a bit premature as I still had not put in the costal grooves on the side of the animal or the spinal groove done the back.  I still need to add in some moss and lichens to soften the harsh edges of the rock and to add some interest to the foreground treetrunk.

I added a few new pics last night.  These were taken with a higher quality setting on my camera but still not the resolution I'd like.  We've been talking about a new camera for a while so I suppose we'll have to buy a new one pretty soon.  Anyway, I used some better lighting on these but it was essentially a spotlight and not diffuse lighting.

 

Unfortunately, I did not have enough time to put brush to canvas last night.  Nor will I tonight or tomorrow because of hockey.  I've got a pickup game with a cookout afterward tonight and a league game tomorrow night!  Maybe I can at least add a few strokes one of those nights so I maintain some forward progress.

 

Thanks!

Good Afternoon

 

It was around 15 years ago that I begged my mom to let me take painting lessons.  I had been feeding upon a fairly steady diet of Bob Ross on PBS and decided that I could translate my drawing talent to the canvas.  She relented and enrolled me in a local school with a wonderful artist named Gene Brantley.  Gene taught me how to really draw and invoked in me the philosophy that if you can't draw it, you can't paint it.  Unfortunately, as I've come to find out, if you can draw it, the ability to paint it is not always guaranteed.  Over the past 15 years or so, I've accumulated a fair body of work.  However, large gaps exist when my ability to focus on this aspect of my life disappeared.  Numerous are the reasons for this: lack of time, lack of things to express, a career that has seemed to suck the very art from my soul....

 

I typically have not shared my work amongst a wide array of people.  Even fairly close friends have not been exposed to what I have created.  Only my wife has seen the full closet of work.  And so, with the upwelling of new artistic energy I seem to have come by lately, I've decided to put forth my efforts here.  I want not only to share what I've done in the past but to also hold myself accountable to work through the difficult times when I just don't feel like picking up the brush.  Hopefully, when I hit the doldrums again, the gap between works won't be on the order of years....