M. SzalPlease click this link if you would like to pre-order your deck of mystical playing cards.
I have opened pre-sale orders to sell my new deck of cards, The American Game. I have changed the cards several times and I am on 4 different redesigns for the entire deck. The deck officially will be released on Thanksgiving, which is when all pre-sale orders will ship. Thank you so much for supporting my artwork and designs, I will have the entire deck on my portfolio soon with watermarks.
I recently finished remodeling my +650 sq. ft. bungalow with a new style I created called “Zen Deco”, which combines the art deco style of 1920s &30s with a Zen Shinto shrine aesthetic. These are a few preparation drawings and floor plans I drew during the project.
L’Aurora (The Aurora) is a large Baroque ceiling fresco painted in 1614 by Guido Reni for the Casino, or garden house adjacent to the Palazzo Pallavicini-Rospigliosi, in Rome. I created this gif to illustrate better the geometric structure underlining Reni’s beautiful sweeping forms of gods, goddesses and angels in the glorious gold-filled dawn.
The Baroque was known for dynamic movement and triangle compositions that seemed larger than life yet replaced the idealism of the renaissance with something more akin to the drama of an opera (which also became hugely popular around the same time in the 17th century). Below is another of my favorite Reni paintings, Susanna and the Elders (1620-25). The Susanna painting also uses a fantastic composition with powerful axial movements galore.
When I was in art school at Pratt, we had several assignments requiring us to select an Old Master painting to break down axially. Any significant curve, line, or other shapes that define the big moves of colors or a figure in the image can be broken down this way. Our professor had us take tracing paper and draw out the significant axial movements with different colored pens or markers directly over a printout of the original painting. These exercises helped me to understand the deeper essence of composition and our class looked at Baroque paintings in particular for their use of balancing diagonals with triangles for a dynamic yet balanced and compositionally strong image. I still make these from masterworks for inspiration and historical allusions in my artwork.
This is an old color study that I found while reorganizing some of my old portfolios. I will post some more old gems and rarities like this in the enminent future, especially ones that have never been posted or never have left the studio/sketchbook. This teapot was from an old knock-off silver set my grandmother gave me when she passed away. She raised my brother and I almost by herself, so she was very much like a mother to me. So, even though it is not worth much in a monetary sense, it is worth more than the Sun and the Moon for me personally.
She wasn’t big on Art, but she always believed I could be a great artist if I put my all into the brush she would say. We lost her almost ten years ago when I was only in high school. Grandma Dot is what I used to call her, short for Dorothy. She also turned me on on of my favorite painters even nowadays, John Signer Sargent. Can you see the influence of Sargent in the wet on wet oil style and color filled highlights?
I am also considering making a series of short videos that discuss my studio process and my major influnces from the Old Masters of Art History. I think combining some old works from sketchbooks and portfolios that have not seen daylight in quite some time with historical influnces would be a good way to showcase some of my old work while also informing my artistic peers and the public at large about important works of art/artists that they may have unintentionally neglected or could further their apperication.
So, I have been working for a couple hours everyday on inkwash and watercolor illustrations. These are a couple of them. I have been working on simplicity of line work and effective color management with this more illustrative or cartoonesque style.
Some new works for the Halloween Season!
My dad flew in from Dallas on Friday to see Roman and I. Although we did have some fun going out drinking in the Vista on Friday, we also took Roman to the Edventure science museum for kids.
Also, we spent a large amount of his visit cleaning/reorganizing my pad. I will admit though that I am glad my art/design space doesn’t look like Francis Bacon’s painting studio anymore!
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