Beyond the Five Known Senses

First of all, here's something from last year that just came my way! It's the Pangolin (what in the world is a pangolin? find out!) painting I did for the "Inside Out" show I had last March. I actually didn't get a chance to scan or photograph this before the show but luckily it went to one of my best friends, Jeff ,who sent me this photograph this week. It's nice the see the weirdo again. A cool thing about this painting is that it has tons of iridescent detail work that pretty much...no one will see except for maybe Jeff.

I figured that since I have a little downtime I'd talk about supplies for a second, in case anyone is actually curious haha. All of my paintings are done on bristol vellum almost always exclusively with brushes. Since I work so small I basically stick to very small detail brushes though I do have a few (still small) moderate sized ones. After much searching the best and tiniest seem to be these:
Loew-Cornell 18/0 Round and Spotter. The short squat handles offer a really good grip and the points are suprisingly versatile.
so teeny tiny!

At this point I primarily use three kinds of ink. The first two I appreciate mainly for their vivid and concentrated color:
They're both very watery and fluid but the color is so concentrated that it isn't much of an issue. The fluidity makes it really easy to get a nice continuous line. The Liquitex has a very slight gloss to it which irritates me because I like for everything to be totally matte, but the colors are really good and can be great for mixing with thicker paint. The absolute most essential and recommended ink/paint I use though is this:
I first bought a jar of black Pelikan Plaka in college, mistaking it for a basic ink. It's actually a highly opaque casein emulsion paint, which dries perfectly matte. I can say with some certainty that their black is the BLACKEST BLACK I've ever found, and has none of the iridescent qualities of other black inks. While the black and often the white are pretty easy to find in most art supply stores in the U.S. , I've only ever found a full selection of the colors at one place. In addition to all these I have no qualms with using any kind of water-based paint, from cheap acrylics or gouache, to craft store 35 cent paints, to flourescent and glow in the dark tshirt paints. I also occasionally use these koh-i-noor watercolors for backgrounds:
Annnnnyway, if you survived all that shop talk, I also wanted to mention the H.P. Podcraft H.P. Lovecraft literary podcast that Mike and I have been listening to. I highly recommend it! They love Lovecraft but have no problem poking fun at him and critiquing his work and offer a lot of interesting context and background for his stories and ideas. Haha of course it doesn't hurt that they also reference Suicidal Tendencies and Futurama. ALSO, I just listened to their podcast about The Chronicles of Dr. Herbert West (featuring Stuart Gordon as guest commentator) and was startled when they made the same connection I did in my post about the Women record cover , between the experiments with transplanted dog heads and Herbert West. Excellent! I just wish there was one of these for Robert E. Howards work.

Just slugging along doing work for my show! At some point I need to write up a little bio for here, and one for a hang tag for the shirt I did for my friend Carol's store. I don't know how to talk about myself in the third person without wanting to vomit though.

Oh and hey, if you live in philly, check out the Exhumed Films Ozploitation double feature this friday. Road Games and Patrick!