I've slowed down a bit with the updates... but I am still alive. Much has happened over the past few months, but I have found time to make a few paintings throughout that time. One of those is Hildi, the newest member of the Misfits.

As a child I remember watching Nick Cave's music video for Where The Wild Roses Grow featuring Kylie Minogue, and being struck by the beautiful shots of Kylie lying motionless in the water. I loved the serene expression on her face as she calmly sang to the song. Years later while studying art history I learned of Sir John Everett Millais' painting Ophelia, which depicts William Shakespeare's Ophelia from Hamlet. In my version of Ophelia, I tried to pay homage to both Cave and Millais.

Not that kind of stool porn… This bistro table and set of stools from Coordination are quite the lookers. Made of American walnut and steel, the clean design can easily blend in with most any decore while still making a bold statement through color. My favorite detail would have to be the cross shaped joint at the center of the top surface. 

Andromeda is a little messier than some of the other Misfits. There is a dash of Greek mythology mixed with a small amount of Alien face hugger.

Sam is a blend of Elle Driver from Kill Bill, with a healthy dash of Lisbeth Salander from the Millennium series. Her bleeding eye was inspired by a recent eye infection that I got, and my desire at the time to rip out my eye in order to ease the overwhelming pain. Fortunately, I didn't succumb to any of my gory inclinations and still have both eyes! -_o

Sakura was inspired by Björk's beautiful music video for her single "Cocoon" as well as the single's album cover. The art direction for both are quite incredible and inspirational. The album cover, which is of Björk with a mouthful of red licorice noodles, was particularly inspiring.

Originally I wanted to make a traditional "Calavera Catrina" skeleton makeup inspired painting, but it quickly evolved into something related yet different. In the end I drew inspiration from Rick Genest's incredible skeleton tattoos as well as from the cover photography by Patrick Demarchelier for Madonna's "Justify My Love" single.

I am totally swooning over the recently introduced powder-coated frame options in the Eames Aluminum chairs. While the white option is quite stunning, the black variant is seriously making me want to click on the checkout button… now if I could just convince myself (and my credit card) that I really need another chair.

Lulu is the sadest clown in the circus. Pay her a visit in the Misfits collection.

As I mentioned in the previous post, Light & Magic was one those paintings where I had a difficult time deciding on a final color scheme (in the end I decided on the blue underwater look I posted here on the site and the fiery one in the top left corner of the image above - which is available on DeviantArt).

Usually when I make a painting I work in grayscale so that I don't let colors distract or influence me into different directions. I know a lot of other artists out there are probably against working this way and would prefer to let color guide them through the artistic process, but I usually find it too time consuming and distracting.

Working in grayscale is more like painting with light, as all I really worry about is shading and highlighting. Once I am happy with the overall tone and lighting in a painting is when I will typically begin to experiment with adding in color. Most of the time I will set up a matrix like the image above and I will make dozens of color alternates before slowly narrowing my choices down to a winner.