Well, here it is...my self portrait. This is the first one that I do in oil...I didn't think that I would have finished it by now, but I gave myself no choice in the matter. I had to see for myself how this was to turn out. I am pleased with it, and the experience that I gained will be used on the next piece. Anyway, it's freakin' late and I don't want to ramble on and on...

so, bon soir my friends.

Oil on Canvas 12x12

Well, I'm back for a few minutes and I thought I would share this self portrait that I started on Sunday night and worked on for a couple of hours this evening...

I started out with a pencil drawing on hard canvas board and placed a transparent layer of scarlet red and vermillion for the background. I then went over the highlights and shadows with black and white and different shades of grey, I let dry over night and then went over it with a mixture of yellow ochre and yellow mild. Over the darker shadow areas I used burnt umber and some black. I will let this dry for another day or two and come back and finish it.

Not sure how it will turn out, but who gives a crap...the point to doing this at this time is to break the routine...to try something totally different from what your mind tells you, you should be doing and tries to force you to do...SLAP THE CRAP out of your habitual, monotonous, everyday responses!! Go and paint, draw, sketch something beautiful and extraordinary...no matter how long it takes...Live long and prosper my friends! (In the voice of  "The Most Interesting Man in the World" Dos XX commercial..lol)

   Well, I am done with the painting and I talked to a friend of mine who wanted me to donate a piece for " Deep Eddy Mural Benefit "Art for Change"" silent auction...soooo, I have told her that I had just finished this piece and that I thought about donating it to the cause. She accepted and it will be shown along with many other artworks @ the east village 1200 E 11th street, april 17th from 6pm - 9pm...Austin, TX for all the local yokels who want to attend.

Here is  the finished piece.

 By now I should have finished the work in progress...but alas, reality sets in and it has to be dealt with whether we like it or not. Such is the life of a non-starving artist and it will remain so until the end or I become rich...whichever comes first. I am just now at this moment finishing the piece below. I will start another much bigger work hopefully by the end of the week...maybe I will start on the Perceived Time piece...Godspeed man!

And now a word from our sponsor...NOT!

This is the painting that I have been working on and off; weekends, after work hours, etc.,etc. It's a 11"x14" oil on canvas panel...will get it done soon.

  The cicada is a remider of the short life span that I have...if I was to live a full, long life; it's a kind of dark cloud that hovers over me at all times and doesn't vanish just because it's a new day, new year, birthday, anniversary, or Spring(rebirth of a new life); if anything, all these things just remind me that I am mortal and that every day that I wake up, I continue on the path to my inevitable death...I pray to Baby Jesus that it is not soon...help me Baby Jesus!!

  I remember my days of childhood, capturing cicadas and observing them for hours. I use the cicada as a symbol of mortality and place it on the cross because I have a many cross interwoven into my life fabric...a fabric filled with holes, rips and torn vestiges of my former self. The tree is my life and it taps into my ever so emotional chaotic heart, eventhough it is buried beneath layers of impossible dreams...yet it beats with life and dies, then beats again and dies again...like the cicada's natural life span...it dies and lives again and every time its alive, it beats stronger and stronger with each new life. It must live! 

  I can still remember the very first time when my hands came in contact with paint...I was in kindergarten and the teacher had assigned us 2 per kiddie easle. I had some girl, at least I thought it was a girl, back in 1976 it was kind of hard to tell, since a lot of boys had long hair and would have confused even most adults back then, for a partner. She or he, just stood there motionless and stoic...I just put my hands into the fingerpaint and moved them acrosss the paper. I didn't really know what I was painting, I just know that it felt a freedom of sorts, as much as a 6 year old can normally feel. It felt good!

  From then on, I would spend my time at home drawing and coloring animals out of a set of Encylopedia Britannica that my parents bought from a nerdy sales guy who came to our home and presented the future of education in nicely bound volumes. I would spend hours perfecting my skills so much so that my parents thought it was abnormal for me to spend so much time inside and would opt to cut my inside-the-house time and run me outside to play...which I did by not playing but observing things around me and losing myself in shapes and colors...to be continued

April 23, 2010                                                                                                     5:25 PM

So, I was living in Houston up to the 6th grade and realized that I really liked drawing and such...all my spare time was spent with the Britannica's...it was like I was absorbing images and text as I skimmed the pages...I couldn'd help myself from flipping page after page.Once I came across an image that I liked, I would draw it...then onto the next one...I mean I was a self-made geek from 6th grade onward.

  The latter half of my 6th grade career was spent in South Texas in a small town of about 2000 people. Not the metropolis that I had hoped it would be, the small town actually grew on me...I mean, the rest of my schooling took place there until I graduated and left for Austin in '89...the best move I have ever made...to be continued.