New Project #2

I am doing a piece based on Oondu's theme, robotics/mechanical. Someone will be running for their life in it. To get reference that wouldn't look posed or stiff I would need to capture someone in motion. The painting will look sweet. This does not. This, in fact, looks mildly insane.

The Bandit

Here it is: Cowboy piece. I really slowed down on the noir piece. It wasn't pushing me in any new direction, so I got frustrated. Thus I busted ground on "The Bank Robbery." I started this sucker on Friday night. It is most of the way done, I might touch up some things here or there, but mostly I want it to keep a very messy energetic feel. And if anyone would like, I would love to hear which artist you think (out of that list) I was most inspired by for this piece. It might just be kinda obvious. The light made the thing look really yellow, but i used mostly burnt umber and yellow ochre, so one can imagine how very not-saturated this painting really is...

AMAZINGGGGGG

Ashley Wood
Jeremy Geddes
Phil Hale
Jon Foster

These are the living, working denizens of my inspiration world. They are truly the limit of all that is illustration greatness. I pee my pants in admiration. The dead ones are obvious:

Norman Rockwell
Maxfield Parrish
Howard Pyle

New Cowboy piece coming soon.

Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen

So I watched the new Transformers movie...

I want to say this first: The robot fights were really flipping cool. And what do you go to a Transformers movie for? Robot fights.

O.K., now that we all know where I stand, I'll mention that the rest of the movie was akin to being beaten in the head with a stupid stick. There were at least five counts of robot flatulence. The entire time Shia and Lips McGee were doing their whole "I won't say it first" shtick I was praying for Megatron to show up and do evil, explosive things to them.

Also, leaps of logic like, "I'm a random dude on a radio, and I demand you fire your extremely classified and impossibly long range weapon into mainland Egypt directly at a pyramid" are damn near criminal.

But lets face it. We've all heard the critics jump onto their high horses and parade about declaring that this movie is below them. I am not here to condemn an already shit-upon movie. Nay, (no pun intended) I am here to defend it!

How do you defend a movie where robots hump legs and humans go to robot heaven? Easy. Let us all go back to the beginning: this is a movie based on a cartoon series based on a toy. Transformer toys are Tonka trucks that turn into ugly people. The age range on that starts at two and ends at frickin' thirteen at best. What the critics don't realize is that they've been duped. We have all spent countless dollars to watch the most expensive, glorified CHILDREN'S movie in decades.

So bring on the fart jokes, little robo-humper. Bring on the loose-toothed cane hobbling antics, grandpabot. As long as Optimis Prime is in his rightful place as true ass kicker of the universe, then all is good. And he was.

Pick on someone your own size, critics: I hear the Jonas Brothers are coming out with a real winner.