Homage

And He Sailed, Acrylic, 20x22, NFS

"[And] he sailed off through night and day and in and out of weeks and almost over a year..." The painting above is a glimpse of the imagery conjured in my mind by Maurice Sendak's wizardry in Where the Wild Things Are.

For My Brother

Voice from the Stars

My brother loves just about anything to do with space, so I painted him this astronaut come to rest on a [heavily fictionalized] star. Maybe the astronaut was marooned there by crew-members. Or maybe he escaped from his ship as it was torn to shreds by debris only to drift slowly into forgetfulness among the stars. His voice is silent now, but perhaps his last words still echo in the vastness of space.

Painting the Hunt

A while back I mentioned a project which I was working on for my brother. He composes and performs music, and not too long ago, he was writing music inspired by Nintendo's game, Metroid. Having fond memories of my own attached to that game (and a good portion of those that followed), I offered to contribute something to the effort, a little visual kick to round out the whole project.

Solitude, exploration, and danger are big parts of the Metroid franchise--all things I wanted to tap into for this painting. So, the main character becomes a small figure alone in the vastness of space, the stars at once alluring and frightening.

 Early thumbnails saw the bounty hunter filling the cover with an action pose, but those designs didn't feel quite right. The image needed to be moodier--the game wasn't an arcade shooter, after all. It was also decided that the painting should have a slight retro look, so initial redesigns of the famous yellow suit were scrapped (see the middle image above). Someday I'll pick that strand of thought up again and pursue it to completion... 

As for the music, you'll find a taste of the album below. If you like Metroid, or dig music with a metal vibe, definitely check out The Hunt. The music's on Spotify, Youtube, Band Camp... Just search for "Anthony Cordes, The Hunt" and you should find what you're looking for.

Sports Triptych

A small painting of a baseball glove from a few months back recently sold, and the patrons requested two other paintings to accompany the first in order to form a triptych of sorts. The project proved to be a pleasantly unexpected challenge.

A baseball glove is a visually interesting piece of sports equipment: there's all that lacing, there are different textures, there's a nice overlapping of forms, and, in the case of the glove I worked from, a nice contrast between the lacing and the leather. A football and basketball, on the other hand, aren't necessarily as interesting on their own. They are, for the most part, simple forms and create pretty unbroken silhouettes.

It seemed appropriate, however, that the two new pieces should match the original painting in pairing balls with equipment. Shoes seemed the obvious choice for basketball, especially in order to echo the lacing in the baseball glove. Pairing the football with cleats lent a bit of visual symmetry to the triptych and easily provided a more dynamic silhouette than might have been had I paired the football with a helmet.

And that touches on another interesting challenge. The glove and baseballs were all in front of my face; that painting is essentially a still life. The other two pieces, however, required a bit of imagination and reference. I do not have a football helmet, nor anything like it, and, in the case of this project, really didn't want to paint something from photographic reference only. I wanted the two new pieces to be as close to still life painting as I could manage. So, although I also do not have football cleats or basketball shoes, a pair of Asics tennis shoes worked well enough to indicate perspective and the patterns of light and shadow.

Sketching from Memory

A frequent problem of mine is being caught sans sketchbook by an inspiring view. In my defense, this often happens whilst I'm piloting my trusty Toyota on a schedule that doesn't allow for stopping. While the driver's manual may not explicitly condemn sketching while driving, I suspect my fellow travelers on highways and interstates would prefer I focus my energies on safely maneuvering my vehicle in traffic. So, stuck as I sometimes am in the flow of America's automotive arteries, I do my best to commit what I've seen to memory and then dredge those memories up as soon as I can get out of the car and get my hands on any sort of tool for image making.

Knowing that memory is faulty somehow takes the pressure out of the exercise. The aim isn't to sketch what was seen so much as it is to synthesize the memory, the impression left on the mind by the sight. (Throw in cardboard as the painting surface and the stress of making a nice image all but vanishes.)

Sometimes it's nature's colors that really make an impact, as in the image above seen on a flight home. This massive thunderhead was floating somewhere over the Great Plains, glowing in the sunset. The whole sky vibrated with rich color. Other times it's the mood of a scene that tickles fancy. I saw something like the image below while driving down a country road on a misty night. The grain elevator looked like some mysterious bastion glowing on the horizon.

Or maybe, an effect of the atmosphere or of light will catch my eye, like trees looming out of the fog or the moon glowing behind thin clouds.

And sometimes it's the landscape itself that interests me.

Plein air painting (or simply sketching from life) doubtless serves as a better method of learning, but the act of painting from memory exercises the imagination and the ability to translate what's in the mind onto the paper. Painting from life and painting from the imagination are both important activities; the former expands your visual vocabulary and the latter helps solidify what you've learned. It's not always a bad thing being caught without a sketchbook in hand...