Holy cow, it's been a long time since I posted anything. Just goes to show how busy I've been in the studio.

One of the projects keeping me cranking was a book project for Penguin about ancient Pompeii. Currently, I'm working on a book about Bruce Lee for them.

Another project I've been working at is this painting for the Day of the Dead. It's oil on panel, about 24x28". It was actually inspired by the frame which was given to me by a friend. I knew it needed a painting that was dark and dramatic. Here are some stages and details:

Finally made some time to sit down at the easel and get some more work done on this painting. I've had the face and headdress done for months but have been crazy-busy in the studio since then with commercial work. It's oil on panel, roughly 20x30 inches. Of course, now I'm psyched to work on it more but won't be able to get back to it for another couple days. Boo.

Made some progress on my Day of the Dead painting. This was very stressful because the face is only about 4" high, causing me to paint with a round brush a lot, which I hate.  The rest of the figure should be a lot more fun to paint.

Here's the basic background tones laid in. Now all I need is the time to paint. This painting needs to be bold and dark to stand up to the heavy Gothic frame given to me by a friend.

This out-of-order series shows the drawing I did for the Boys & Girls Club auction. I started by painting a piece of Strathmore with paynes grey acrylic washes before transferring my pencil rough. Then I did the rendering with black and white pencils and a blending stump. I'll try to get a better photo of the finished piece as this scan dropped out all the middle tones. The mask is part of the event logo and I punched it up with some white acrylic highlights.