Another inspiration

So I thought I would post about another artist who really inspires me. Mike Wieringo. Mike worked for Marvel on some big name comics but that is not how I first saw his artwork. It was random web surfing that first brought me to his website and I became an instant fan. He had such a clean, clear style, I just loved it. It wasn't until later that I discovered he was actually quite popular and was a bit of an industry icon. He quickly became one of my favorites, I would visit his website pretty often to see new artwork that he put up and read his blog posts. Then one day I went to his site only to find out that Mike had died a few days earlier. I couldn't believe it, I had to go check other comics news sites to see if this was true. He was a young guy, it was a freak heart attack if I remember right. It was kind of strange but it hit me really hard. I mean here was this person that I had never met, never had any contact with besides reading their blog posts and I was really really upset. I still can't make sense of my emotional attachment to this person I had never met, but his artwork still inspires me, if one day I could be half as good as Mike I would only be too happy.

Get Smart

So I have tried to avoid posting anything that is not art related on this blog but that resulted in no posts for over a week, so as a compromise here is a non-art related post. Saw the movie Get Smart on Saturday and it was AWESOME! 5 out of 5 stars, two thumbs up! I loved it. Get Smart was one of those shows I watched ALL the time when I was a kid and this did not disappoint at all. Now maybe there are more hardcore people out there who could nitpick it to death but for me it had all the feel of the tv show with the goodness of modern comedy movies. Loved it, loved it, loved it. Incidentally, I was wondering the other day why were most of the tv shows I watched as a kid in the 80s from the 60s or 70s? I mean I guess there were a bunch of 80s shows that I watched as well, but still there were a lot of older shows. Nowadays you don't see shows from say the 80s or 90s outside of the specialty channels. Weird.

Manga

Trying to do some manga style stuff. I need a scanner, taking photos of stuff sucks, or maybe I just suck at taking photos of stuff :).

Kung Fu Panda

Saw Kung Fu Panda on the weekend, it blew my mind. Soooooo Awesome. Right from the opening scene I knew we were in for a great movie. Go see it no matter how old you are. Right now. Go. Stop reading this, don't even waste time closing your browser, get your car keys and drive to the nearest theatre immediately.

Monday should be the third day of the weekend.

So I started the weekend intending to get a bunch of my work from my drawing class into my computer but other things conspired to make that impossible. The weekend turned out to be much busier than I had expected, so in lieu of some more art I will instead post about another artist who has inspired me. Hmmmmm... which one though, there are so many... ok, let's go with the big one, John Howe. John Howe is a legendary Lord of the Rings illustrator. He has done the art for many a LOTR product as well as concept art for the latest movies. He seems to work mostly with watercolour and he is amazing. He is a Canadian who lives now in Switzerland (It sounds pretty rad over there). Man I suck at this, perhaps these will get better over time but suffice it to say go check out his website here.

Inspiration

One of the artists who really inspires me is Stephen Silver. I believe I found out about him from his podcast, it wasn't until later that I learned he worked on a pretty great cartoon called Kim Possible. Now most of you out there probably don't watch cartoons anymore and I have to say you don't know what your missing out on, there are some really funny cartoons out there right now, and with some good art design to boot. Anyways back to Mr. Silver, he has really inspired me through his podcasts, the provided an insight into the life of a professional artist which I couldn't get enough of. Seeing as how I don't personally know any artists it is something that I have really cherished, I just wish he would do more of them, after 1 or 2 years he has only done 11 of them. In any event you can go check out his site here.

Life Drawing Class Work

So a little while ago I took a life drawing class. It was pretty fun and I think I learned a bit... I hope. It wasn't so much a 'class' per se as it was studio time with a model. I am thinking of taking it again when it starts up in July, a little unsure though as it will mean less money for vacation (if work lets me go on vacation). I will be posting a bunch more from the class once I take pictures (they are all pretty large) / scan them in. This one I have already posted elsewhere but for the sake of the blog here it is again.

Rising from the ashes

So I don't want anyone to get too excited, not like anyone comes here anymore anyways, but I think this blog is getting resurrected. It is likely though to be more focused on my artistic endeavours (such as they are). I am right now looking for a good (free) place to host images. So if anyone stumbles across this by accident and knows who is the latest darling of the free image hosting scene, by all means leave me a comment.