Category: Studio

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Studio The American Game The American Game Deck

The Making of the “American Game” Football Tarot

NFL Football season is back once again, so I thought I would share some more information about a project I have worked on for the last couple of years (there are three different deck versions in total).

This video covers much of the physical process behind the making of my “football tarot” cards. I used emblems from the 500-year-old book Devises Heroiques. Each emblem has a conceptual or actual reference to a modern-day NFL team. For example, I used an emblem with a bear for the Chicago Bear’s card.

Below is an example of what the emblems look like in the book version:

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Personal Professional Studio The Flying Dutchess

Mech. Job and new Cromwell

When I moved to Schenectady, the first job I could find was at Harbor Freight. Luckily, after a few months, I found a shop to work as a mechanic called Warren Tire. I have worked at Warren Tire since April and have been very happy there.
I haven’t been able to work on my animated series, The Flying Dutchess, as much as I would prefer. Yet, I have completed the new version of the Oliver Cromwell character.

My representative character, Ace Malagurio, has a new companion animal. His name is Hals, and he is a Dutch Rabbit that rides at the back of Ace’s broom while he flies around.

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Studio

Invisible Cities

Check out my latest portfolio addition from 2018, a set of intaglio etchings inspired by Goya – here

7/10
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blog old gems pencil/colored-pencil Studio

“Learning & Marbles”

colored pencil on bristol paper – 2009

This drawing, “Learning and Marbles” was in my portfolio, which blessed me with the scholarship to Pratt in 2010. The piece was an assignment from my Drawing 2 class at Carroll. I placed three marbles on a bookshelf with some large, glossy textbooks.

The reflection in the wooden bookshelf and the glossy reflection all intermix with reflections of each other. Thinking conceptually about the subject matter, I wanted to play on the idea of marbles representing knowledge along with books.

Have you lost your marbles?

-Anonymous

I was still developing my eye for depth perception and the nested marbles could have been pushed farther into the recessed textbook’s horizontally rolling plane. This diagonal isn’t balanced with another axial movement and thus, I tried to soften it with a very subtle curve.

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acrylic blog gallery oils old gems Studio

Ft. Worth Weekly ft. Fringe Gallery Exhibition May 2013

View the article online here: https://www.fwweekly.com/2013/05/15/gallery-47/

“Urban Bull”- 2013, acrylic and wax on canvas
Gallery
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acrylic blog Studio

Veteran’s Day Art Competition 2009

I found this from my Junior year of high school in 2009, was blessed to be the winner of this ‘Southlake Carroll Veteran’s Day Art Competition”

“Pledge to Lady Liberty” \\ 16 x 20 – acrylic on canvas, 2009

I was obliged to give a speech at the award ceremony during the ‘Veteran’s Day’ pep rally. I saluted and walked off the stage since I knew they would rather see the picture than hear me talking about it. Sometimes the frame can bring out a mood or more profound statement by monumentalizing the picture plane. I always have been drawn to the play of middle red and blue, like the colors of 3d glasses.

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astronomy blog Studio

Pangea Collagraph Explainer Video

Pangea collagraph project
A brief look into the studio practice of Matt “Magick” Szal with making his famous series of collagraphs – the world’s first “supercontinent” is the conceptual inspiration for these works along with “postgea” – the end of our Blessed Mother Earth…

You can view the parralax web story created for this video at the link below:

https://spark.adobe.com/page/4smzXGDArL6rv/embed.jpg?buster=1638774151698

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blog Home Studio Personal Studio

Zen Deco Bungalow Remodel

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.

My artsist studio with final sealer/varnish on floors – Aug. 2022
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Art Criticism Art/Design Design Home Studio Studio

Axial movements in Guido Reni’s Baroque masterpiece, “Aurora”

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.

Susanna and the Elders, Guido Reni / 1620-25

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.