Spectators

 In honor of this week's British Open, here is a piece I did last year.

A Pepper

This is my latest still life. I wasn't really planning on doing one, but I saw this pepper from my wife's garden sitting on the kitchen counter. Painting the transition from red to green was very interesting. I also learned that I should try to complete the painting quickly. I stopped painting before I was finished and came back the next day to a much redder pepper.

Gargoyle

Here's a little still life. I got this gargoyle when I was a kid. It's a souvenir my Aunt Carol brought back from Paris during one of her many trips there. It sits in my studio with my other statues and dolls-um, that is, "Action Figures".

Rockabilly Angels

Here's my latest painting. Its been some time since I've done a piece on canvas. The image has been in my head for quite a while.

20"X30" Acrylic on canvas.

Merry Christmas

Here's our family Christmas card for this year. Merry Christmas!

Barlow's Banter

My friend, Steven Paul Barlow, has just started his own blog, Barlow's Banter. He is the author of "My Brushes With Death And Other Outdoor Blunders", a book that I illustrated a couple of years ago. I shared some illustrations from the book here, here and here. Steve (no one calls him "Steven Paul", that's his writin' name) will be sharing his thoughts on all things outdoorsy in his usual humorous style. He is considering doing another compilation of his columns from Game & Fish Publications. If he does, I hope to illustrate that one too.


This is the cover art from the first book. I know I said that I wouldn't show anymore art from the book, but hey, it's the cover. And he's got a new blog. I had to show something. You can still get a copy of the first book at Briar Hill Books or through Amazon.

IF - Repair

This week's topic at Illustration Friday is "repair". I thought of all those character shaped holes in Tex Avery Cartoons. Someone had to fix them. I'm experimenting with my new fluid acrylic paints. I was trying to use them with a watercolor technique. They don't quite work that way. They are good for building up glazes, but they're hard to fix if you mess up.

Lab Partner

Here's a piece I did for the latest SCBWI contest. The challenge was to illustrate the following. "When your book's main character gets to the first day of Biology something worse than mold in a petri dish is waiting". You can see the winners here.

John

Last year I started doing little still-life paintings inspired by the "painting-a-day" trend. One time on a visit to my in-laws in Pennsylvania, my wife brought all the paintings I had done to that point to show off to her family. My father-in-law, Rev. John Denicola, was really taken with them. He would examine them and tell me how good they were and that he would like to watch me paint one. I assured him that that would be only slightly less boring then watching the paint dry afterward. I'm a slow painter.
Because he was so encouraging to me I decided to do a still life for him. One of my pieces that really caught his eye was the bottle and button. He liked the depiction of glass. Because of that, his Italian heritage and skill in the kitchen, I arrived at a picture of some cherry tomatoes, bread and a cruet of olive oil. We gave it to him for his 75th birthday. My mother-in-law told me that he would often sit and look at the painting. He intended to hang it but left it on the fireplace next to his recliner where he could look at it.
In March of this year, John fell in his garage and hit his head. He died a day later in the hospital. At his viewing my mother-in-law brought my painting to display it.
It meant a lot to me that John liked his painting. I consider it the greatest piece I've yet done for that reason. He was a great and godly man who we miss.

Baseball cap

A still life of my Yankee cap. It was a present for my son. 5" X 7" acrylic on hardboard.

The Withers

A few years ago my mother showed me an old photograph of my great-grandparents and my grandmother taken sometime around 1919 , the year they immigrated from England. The year is a guess based on the apparent age of my grandma in the picture. I took the picture home, scanned it and cleaned up all the scratches and stains. I was able to give a cleaned up copy in a frame to my mother along with the original. While I was cleaning up the image I became fascinated with my great-grandparents' apparent discomfort with getting their picture taken. We are used to getting our pictures taken all the time, but this was probably quite an event for them. The picture appears to be taken in front of a backdrop. They are wearing overcoats which leads me to guess that it was taken by a street photographer. My great-grandparents are leaning into each other awkwardly and staring at the camera. Grandma is standing between them with a hand on her hip calmly looking into the lens. She seems much more comfortable. Just like the young lead the way with new technology now.
After working on the photo I decided to do a painting of the picture. The colors are, of course, a guess. Great-grandpa was wearing a pin in the photo which I decided should be an American flag pin. And I changed the background to a ocean pier, symbolic of their immigrating.
I was very close to my grandma and great-grandma, but I never knew my great grandfather. This painting was a way to connect to the part of my family no longer with us.
I continue to be fascinated with the photograph. A copy is pinned on the memo board over my drawing table.

Red pear

The last of the pear paintings. 5" X 7" acrylic on board.

D'Anjou Pear

Yet another pear painting.

Bartlett Pear

Another pear painting. Same dimensions as the last.

Bosc Pear

A small still life of a bosc pear - acrylic 5" X 7". Part of a series of pears.

Alligator wrench

A still life of an "alligator wrench". It is an early style of adjustable wrench. The mouth has a smooth side and a toothed side that conform to the sides of the nut you're turning. It is also neat looking and a good subject for a painting.
Acrylic on board 5" X 7"

Cutbelly

Here's a picture of Cutbelly the werefox from Michael Chabon's Summerland. A fantasy book he wrote a few years ago that involves elves, indian legends and baseball. It's no Narnia, but it has a lot of cool imagery that makes for a good illustration exercise.

Nectarine and Plum

Another still life I did a while ago.

Jazz

I entered this in a contest to illustrate the poster campaign for the Syracuse Jazzfest. It's an attempt to show a connection between the early forms and modern forms of jazz. There's a classic double bass player representing the Ellington/Basie era playing with a "modern" looking fusion type playing a 5 string electric bass guitar. I also tried to capture the sense of joy musicians can have when playing well together. I depicted bass players because they're the coolest musicians, of course.


I didn't win. The woman who did win did a great job. I would have picked hers, too.

Dwight!!

A double caricature from my son's favorite show. I had less trouble with the faces than I did with getting the background where I liked it.