Ugly Mug Mondays! #15

Just a quickie for Ugly Mug Monday! this week. There's a lot of real work that I should be focusing on, but all work and no play causes Jack Nicholson (and myself) to go insane and try to murder his family.

I feel I took it too far and over-worked it, but that's how it goes. I wish pencil were as facile as paint can be. Oh well.

Pencil on bristol. 2.5" x 3.5"

Ugly Mug Mondays! #14

I am King Cheez-It. I am not amused.

I was digging through files on my computer and I came across a handful from my last trip to New York. I became overly addicted to Cheez-Its and, well, you've got to do something with the empty boxes, don't you? And sometimes you've just got to wear a box on your head.

Casein on canvas paper. 2.5" x 3.5"

Ugly Mug Mondays! #13

Ugly Mug Mondays! are going to be making a return in a big way! This one is a littledifferent from the last ten ugly mug posts I've offered, but I've learned a lot since then, so I don't think anyone will hold it against me. I like the little casein paintings I was doing and I plan on getting back to those, but I have plans for this particular drawing. Stay tuned!

11 x 14. Pencil on layout bond.

Ugly Mug Mondays! #10 and #12

My lady has been on vacation for the past couple of days, which has made getting artwork done a lot more difficult than I had imagined. All of a sudden there are three furballs brawling it out for my undivided attention. Needless to say my concentration has been shot. Between that and struggling with my recent painting (which I'll post in a day or so) I've been off track on painting my ugly mug. I did this one earlier in the week, from life. The last few I've done have all been black and white over the white of the page, but I thought this time around I'd try it over a red ground. It's interesting, I think. We'll see where it leads.

Casein on canvas paper. 2.5" x 3.5"



This week's offering I kind of phoned in. I've been sketching a bit more again, so I wasn't really feeling sitting down with paints; and then there was the fuzzy coalition protesting in my apartment - one of whom is a really inquisitive cat that likes to get into everything. On more than one occasion he's jumped onto where my palette is kept and I have no desire to clean up a painted kitty. So I deferred to a quick pencil sketch.

Pencil on bristol. 2.5" x 3.5"

Ugly Mug Mondays! #9 and #10

I kind of skipped last week's Ugly Mug Monday!. It was completely accidental, I swear. I was up late duking it out with the final drawing for my latest full scale illustration and by the time it occurred to me it was something like eight in the morning. Then I spent the past week wrestling said drawing into submission and before I knew it - POW! - it was time for a new week. So I did two portraits for this week, as a way to play catch up. This time 'round I tried working from photo reference instead of sitting in front of a mirror. I kind of felt it was cheating, as I usually (read: always) work from photos, but I stumbled across my senior portrait and couldn't resist.

Once upon a time I had an afro. I thought it was cool. What can I say? Also I have a gap in my teeth. It isn't nearly this bad, but i thought it was hilarious and just couldn't help but leave it. It was originally the center-line in the face and wound up being one of those happy accidents that end up making a picture just that much more whimsical and quirky.

I realized that with the exception of my first week's offering, all of the self-portraits in the Ugly Mug series have been in black and white. There are two reasons for this;

1. I look at things in terms of tone. The simplest way to do this is in black and white.

2. I only have three tubes of casein paint. Black. White. And red. As it would happen I've fallen in love with casein and I sort of naturally reach for them whenever it's time to paint my ugly mug.

That being said, someone once told me I was afraid of color. She was basing this on the fact that everything in my sketchbook was in black and white. Either pencil or pen and ink. I was taught fairly early on that "if it doesn't work in black and white, it isn't going to work in color" and "you choose a color for it's value". These are the two things I hear in the back of my mind whenever I'm painting. So a lot of the time yes, I do work in black and white, but I think it's ridiculous to say that I'm afraid of color. To prove it, I put some red in this one. Hope you like it.

As an aside I really like these two paintings. I think the economic use of brush strokes is pretty cool, and I'm quite fond of the purely implied expression - especially in the second one. I'm liking the direction these are heading in, I hope you good folks do too.

Ugly Mug Mondays! #8

"Schedule time to utterly fail."
-Craig Mullins

"You have to do 1,000 bad drawings before you can do any good ones."
-I can't remember who said this.

This is quite obviously one of the bad ones. It is however a good example of the "Rule of Two". (Hey, if it's good enough for the Sith, it's good enough for us.)

The "Rule of Two", simply put, states that if something is important to your process, you should always have at least two of it. Spares are invaluable. You wouldn't want to be pulling an all nighter and have an important part of your process die on you, now would you? This ranges for everything from technology (projectors, airbrush pump, Wacom tablets, etc) to things that seem so incidental like tubes of paint. There are a few colors I just have to have on the palette when I'm working and if I were to run out of one at 3 am, well, there isn't anything I could do about it. It's to that end that I always have two tubes of my "go to" colors.

Now, that being said, I didn't heed the "Rule of Two" when it came to this week's Ugly Mug Monday! I started this drawing with my trusty Pentel brush pen and quickly realized that it was starting to run dry. As a result I tried to rush through it before the pen died and, well, I failed. Oh well, this is why experiments must be ran.

Ink and brush on bristol.

Ugly Mug Mondays! #7

I've been enjoying the casein studies that I've been doing so much that I decided to shake things up a bit. There are a lot of things digital "paintings" can do well and I think my favorite are the blacks. You can get them instantly without any fuss and they don't have the tendency of deadening a picture. Rich blacks are fantastic.

At any rate, this week's offering for Ugly Mug Mondays! is a digital one. I've been tooling with the ol' Wacom less and less often these days (other than value studies for paintings) which I'm surprised to say surprises me - I'm really starting to have fun pushing the pixels around.

I've got two paintings in the pipe right now. I hope to get those up here within a fortnight.

Ugly Mug Mondays! #5 and #6

Last week I didn't post a painting for Ugly Mug Monday because the moment I finished painting it I was all set up and loose enough to start work on the Steampunk Mailman. By the time I stopped painting that evening (and really it was 8 in the morning) I was too tired to take a picture and write up a blog posting. So, here it is.

It's oil on watercolor paper. It's something I've played with once before and didn't much care for it then either. I got some nice loose effects that I'm fond of, so I think it's something that I'm going to continue experimenting with. This time around I tried applying linseed oil quite liberally, but the paper still soaked that up almost instantly. Next time I think I'll actually soak the paper in linseed oil and see what happens.






This week's offering is back to casein on canvas paper. I'm really liking how that combination handles. I just start blocking in darks with a flat brush and correct as I go. I set up my black mirror to keep my values low and better controlled, since I've noticed my tendency to go more towards high key in my value structures. At any rate, it isn't bad for a 20 minute study.

I wonder what I'll come up with next week! The 12 week challenge is keeping me pretty busy, but it's all very exciting.

Ugly Mug Mondays! #4

It isn't much of a likeness this time around. I just didn't have it in me, I guess. I've discovered that I'm enjoying the casein but I don't know. My head was elsewhere. I'll make it up to you next week.

Casein on watercolor paper.

Ugly Mug Mondays! #3

It's that time of week again! I found some casein while cleaning up some stuff in my studio so I thought I'd play with it a little. I tried to keep it loose and quick, so I used a single #4 flat brush, just so that I wouldn't get caught up in any of the detail. There are some pretty tasty passages that I really enjoy and some things I wish I spent more time on - but that's how the cookie crumbles.

Casein on canvas paper. 30 minutes.

Ugly Mug Mondays! #2

Originally when I set out to do this thing, this... Ugly Mug Mondays, I had intended them to all be paintings. Well, I had a couple of false starts tonight and the clock kept tick-tocking away and before I knew it, it was pretty darn late. So, I trashed what I had done so far and sat down to just do a pretty little pencil drawing. All was not lost! I learned a couple of things.

I apparently can't sit down and produce a "realistic" self-portrait. I always have to exaggerate something. But you know, I feel it always looks like me. Maybe it's because I'm so used to seeing myself that I have to play with my appearance to get through the drawing. Kind of like a kid sticking his baby carrots into his mashed potatoes to make a blob monster that's reminiscent of something from Calvin and Hobbes.

I also tend to make the same squinty one-eyebrow-cocked kind of face when I plan on doing a self portrait. (I wonder what the hell that's about.) So I made my eyebrows really big - especially the one I was cocking. What's more is I tend to make dumb faces in general. Oh well. It is what it is.

Pencil on bristol. 30 minutes.

P.S.
My ears don't really stick out that far. Just felt the need to let you know that.

Ugly Mug Mondays!

Once upon a time I thought I would start doing self-portraits once a week. As with most things I had the thought and let it slip past me. Well I came back around to that notion just the other day, but this time I gave it a name. I don't know what possessed me to do such a thing, but I have named it:

Ugly Mug Mondays!

The plan is to post drawings or paintings that are of the self-portrait variety. Of my ugly mug. It isn't that I'm vain and that I love staring at myself in the mirror - or even that I'm that great of a model - but hey, I'm always available. Cheap and available. If nothing else, I always know where I am.

For the first venture, I broke out the gouache set again. I started with a quick and loose drawing on bristol then I spray-fixed it. Once that was all setup and ready to rock and roll I made a mess on top of it with the gouache. Messes are fun. Weird things happen when you make a mess and have the daunting task of cleaning them up, and in that weird space you learn. I can't wait to see what happens next week!