July 2008 Archives

After seeing the image below of a buried crab claw the movie, "Princess Bride" popped into my head. In the movie Mandy Patinkin plays Inigo Montoya, a man out to avenge his father's death. Just before starting a sword fight he proclaims in a polite, but serious tone, "Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father prepare to die." It seemed logical that a seagull would eat a crab, and that one of that crabs offspring would one day grow up with a huge claw to avenge his father's death.

Two external images were used from my portfolio. The bird I used actually went over the top of where a different gull used to be. This birds mouth was opened up. The extra parts of crab leg were painted in Photoshop.

Moon Dog wasn't preconceived. He started out as nothing more than me trying to blend a dog (see image below) face into that of a bald man from istockphoto.com. I removed the man's eyes, replacing them with a rooster's eye from istockphoto.com. The moon shape is the result of messing around with Photoshop's liquify tool. The background image is a shot I took of fireworks in downtown Seattle of this year.

You may be asking yourself, "What on earth inspired you to make that thing?" My response would be, "the plate of sushi seen below and lyrics from 'The Dead of Night,' by Depeche Mode." The head shape is from istockphoto.com. The eyes were removed and replaced with a dead fish eye and a woman's eye. Sushi parts were brushed into the head. The entire body below the head was lovingly made with sushi.

This image started with the image of leaves going through change seen below. The ant was painted from reference, no underpainting. I'm quite pleased with how the ant turned out. It would have been so easy to just use a photo, but one must constantly challenge themselves to keep growing. Woman is from istockphoto.com. Foreground created with a grassy brush in Photoshop.

The inspiration for this piece began with the image of the hand seen below. Originally the idea was going to be something about the hand of God being guided by little hands, with big mouths, blowing up Tinky Winky. In the end I almost gave up doing anything because the hand didn't have the right look. With a deadline fast approaching I opted to turn the hand into a rocky mountain in silhouette, which was combined with an image from istockphoto.com. I painted in the organic beam. I then overlayed another image from my personal collection, a shot of a leaf with water drops to create the planetary-like orbs.