More Semi Flat Cityscapes

Did this for a hidden object game, the style wasn't exactly what was desired for the comics, but I think I like the results more than what went in. Oh well. Enjoy the picture, it was a few hours of work in Photoshop with some Boston reference.

Silly Jets!

Starring at Concept Ships to much. The point of distinction of course, there stuff is awesome, this is, um present and accounted for. Whatever, NOT drawing isn't going to make any better. So um, here's a Jet, and yes at heart, I am about 8 Years old. Anyways here is pictures of Jets SSSSSHHHHHHRRRRROOOOOOOMMMMMMMM!

2008 to 2009

Well, I have held out for four days. The dust has settled the day has dawned and 2009 is upon us and I guess I just want to talk to briefly about what I have learned.

Inside people there is a fantastic potential, to love, to care, to nurture, to inspire, to create worthwhile mystery, to teach. In the balance there is just as much capability to create, angst, misery, jealousy, falsehood, apprehension, lies and general misconduct. These are all facets of our being and no one with any virtue worth mentioning is not possessed of some equally disturbing vice.

The whole of history is a just a tale of human relationships, sometimes wearing the masks of states and institutions, sometimes dressed in the garb of prophecy. Small activity to broad waves just patterns of noise and emotion. The whole of human activity can be seen as kind of struggle against natures both internal and external.

So here we are, simple creatures that can only understand the world as concepts and symbols, masks on the more ornate and difficult to understand deeper realities. Each of us bound by a world of proxy scratching the surface on a broader mystery.

A year like 2008 can put even the most disjointed dislocated person back in touch with the harder edges of our real world. Even the people most comforted by status, position and fame felt some of there own inertia and weight, stocks hitting the ground like watermelons thrown to the pavement of a third story window. Those on the ground already are just trying to cover there heads.

It is all too easy to caught in the rigging. To think that you are your job, your income, your relationships, your friendships. It is an easier route to put your faith into institutions, religious, financial, governmental and just hope the autopilot works. It is nice to just shut off, disconnect or unwind. Who doesn't want it easy?

Here's the rub. Easy isn't real, easy isn't even easy! This year I got a big look behind the curtain, and it's just like the Wizard of Oz. What you see on the screen isn't the real deal, and never mind the man behind the curtain.

At the front of everyone of our vaunted institutions is the layer of glamor that we all fall for often too hard. The glitzy appeal of the life we think we want to lead. The slick, comfortable nonsense and the artifice behind it. The great big world that we can see in magazines, movies and TV. The wonderful world we imagine it could be. But you

The reality is the day to day struggle, the hard work of good but fallible people just doing the best we can. The truth is that we all fight the same fights, to get ahead, to help each other out, to do the right thing, to make the most of the time we have.

Even once that the institutions we have built crumble, the things we may have believed in have let us down and we are lost and confused let me offer the small bit of wisdom I have learned.

In the beginning there were people doing the best they could, in the middle there were people taking all they could, and in the end there will be those that have the courage to make things great again. I am optimistic that I am in the latter portion. Somehow no matter what happens I still believe in people and think things are going to be alright. We are still those people that got us to this point. We have lessons to learn but I think things can still get better. I guess that is the change that is coming, I guess that's why I have hope.

As Hunter S. Thompson wrote, " Walk tall, kick ass, learn to speak Arabic, love music and remember that you come from a long line of truth seekers, lovers and warriors." Happy 2009, Go Forth and Kick Ass.

Brooklyn at Sunset.

Happy New Year,

Here's to back to back to back days of Art Posting (and I think I might toss in another tonight as well). Here's the goods:



Far from finished but worth working on. I think I want to break for a while.

I have a horrible tendency to just wear out. The last six month's have been amazing, but some of the most draining of my life. My battery has been steadily recharging over the last couple of weeks, think I am just about ready to enter the fray more dear friends! In the meantime a Small Large World beckons or perhaps a Little Big Planet!

Cliche Clouds

I've determined that there is only one thing I am not doing enough of. I don't post enough art. I am going to try and fix that. So here is a work in progress. This is a backplate, I am reading On the Road, just thinking about some the things that Neil and Jack might have woken up to out there... I 'll keep working on more foreground stuff tomorrow.

Elephant

Getting back on the Horse,erm, Elephant! Just wanted to do a rough, semi-expressive, semi-realistic painting. On top of that I had a friend who wanted to see me put together an elephant. This is a SKETCH this isn't like, a real piece, there is form but no real drama, shape but no need to really push form. I guess I just wanted some color and thoughts down, just a pensive idea and some fading light. Also, laziness. I really need to spend more time, but I can't stay in the zone very long at the moment, so I guess I will just have to keep working at staying there longer in the next few weeks while I recharge. Well folks, hope you like it...

6 Months in India

I guess this is the milestone month. This weekend marks six month's of working for Gameshastra in Hyderabad. I've spent 7 weeks back in the U.S. since this started. I feel more at home in India than I do in the myriad of changing homes Sinead has been bouncing to. I return to the U.S and its like it did after I lived in Washington State and Nevada, like a stranger in a known land, the perpetual tourist.

Well three days until I turn 30 years old. I am entering the decade of fast fading youth and slow slide into an uncomfortable, ill fitting middle age. Oh but the all the things I have to show for it! I guess its fair to say if was looking merely run up the score I am failing, a career in games and no high marks for how I have lived. Not that I am bitter, or at least half as bitter as I will be when I am 40.

I guess now that wine of my youth is turning to the vinegar of middle age I should look for the positive applications of my innate change in characteristics. One, I will make a salad taste better with out risking the friskiness of being tipsy. Two, my cutlery will be cleaner than ever. Three, I finally have an excuse for being worthless at parties, but no excuse for being worthless on a dirty bathroom.

Some days you just want to hear a record a player looping revolution #9 backwards and a pound a bottle of cheap merlot. You want to watch the shadow of the sun paint a dancing slit of yellow light across the room, the only illumination from the sun as peeks through the almost closed shutters. You want to see that thin strip of bleached light redden just as you pass into blackness of the Indian night.

Instead you will be lucky if you don't have to work 10 more hours in the Salt Mine with a cupcake and candle to commemorate your thirtieth round trip on Spaceship Earth. It will pass with all of the pomp and circumstance of a Ken and Barbie wedding as you drift through another day.

I have peered into the cold beating heart of space and time and heard only the flatulent convunlsions of the Space Child called God. What if the powers that created the Universe are infinitely dumber and less interesting than the creation itself? What if we peer deep into the mind of God and find only the abstract wonderings of a child-like dreamer? What if the Universe is so fundamentally retarded that every single Scientist is doomed to go mad when they realize that universe doesn't actually make sense? The bastard contraption has only one rule, it can change the rules so it doesn't fail. Every other piece of nonsense is the part and parcel of the code. Supreme inelegance.

The notches I tick past have a little more relevence these days, like the braids in the noose I will surely hang from, just as everyone else will in time. By most estimates I have lived over 40% of my life. I guess there is no time like the present to make these days count. Surely the braids of the noose will eventually tick along until there is no more rope left to run into. Nothing left my neck and the fleeting moments before the sharp drop and dull shock. One last time to look up and see the sky before the light fades into the final night.

In the meantime I look forward to making the most of the 60% I have left on a messed up, backwards rock spinning away in the backwoods of a forgotten galaxy. A moment in time, unique as a snowflake, and just as meaningless as one more ice crystal in Antarctica.