Well well kids, here it is!

"Cthulhu III/Cthulhu for President"
50x60 cm, mixed media on canvas

vote for him, he'll make it all end soon. This painting is getting mad props wherever I show it, so maybe people would even buy prints or so? I don't know, but let's see what we can do!

I've been pretty productive in the last few days, experimenting with different techniques and formats. Here are two other new pieces, both done in a very quick fashion. Another Cthulhu:

"Cthulhu IV", 40x50 cm,
acrylics on painting board

I never get sick of that guy :D Painting this took about two evenings, that would be a quick painting (it's 40x50 cm, not large)

And this one is a depiction of a horror story local parents used to tell their kids to keep them away from the river, so they wouldn't drown: If you're alone by the water, the witch (she's got a strange german name I forgot, need to ask someone from there) will come out of the river and pull you down! Two friends of mine who grew up by that river only recently discovered that they had both heard this story when they were little. They also both agreed that it was very terrifying.

"The witch" (in lack of the real name),
40x30 cm, acrylics on painting board

Hey you people!

There's been a lot going on in the past few weeks, though I haven't taken a photo of the now finished Republican Cthulhu yet. It turned out pretty well, you'll see it in a couple of days, I hope.
For now, here's something different. I've returned to a weird topic that seems to be haunting me: Large, flying objects that aren't supposed to fly.

"Seascape I", 60x50 cm, acrylics on canvas

The idea for this one popped into my head a few nights ago, and it simply wouldn't leave me. Around the Same time (during the freakquenzy records Roundup, which is an excellent occasion for weird ideas), the title "Laser Moses parting the Red Sea" also came up, but I'm not entirely sure yet how to realize that.
I've also done some smaller pieces, one of which falls into the same category as this one, might post them next time.

Besides these weird images, I'm also workingon another tentacle chicks-painting, again a large piece that takes forever to be finished. I'll take my time. Though a rough, quick style is fun for works as the above one, some paintings need a lot of care and a very fine brush.

On the above mentioned Roundup (and you'll probably never find out what that is, because it's so beautifully obscure), I had the opportunity to show some of my paintings to a bigger audience, and the reactions were great: Although nobody had the money to afford an original, many people asked for prints, especially of the nudes and Republican Cthulhu, so I might look into that.

Finally, I'd like to direct your attention toward my official site again, where all my work is being featured, and where you'll find contact information and all that official blah-di-blah.

Have a good time, dear internet, we'll meet again!

Cthulhu III, first steps

Hey there,

Somehow, this guy doesn't leave me alone. After the dramatic depictions in the first two paintings, I'm going for a slightly different look this time: the uniform of evil, a well-taylored suit.
This here is a preparatory drawing I made in charcoal, already on the canvas. I fixed it with some fixative spray and am currently applying color. nice unhealthy green for the skin, a bright, cool light from above and a gloomy red one from below.



Later that evening I found this myspace profile: http://www.myspace.com/cthulhu2008
I'll definitely send them a jpg of the finished piece, and now I think of giving him a star spangled banner-pin :) He'll also get a signet ring, and I'm thinking about a monocle. But that might be too much.
Cthulhu is a republican, or isn't he?

Digital stuff!

yo world! today i've got something digital for you. these are parts of the artwork to my awesome band's first full length album, which will be be released on may 22nd all across europe. check out our music: myspace.com/parityboot
you can also find the video to the title track in one of the first posts in this blog (and on the myspace profile). all the visuals for the band are supposed to stick to the topic of decayed, abandoned places, so textures of rust and mold make up most of these images. i took many of the billions of photos worked in here by myself, in hamburg, the rest come from this site, a great place for every digital artist.


the front cover. the band logo and name were made in cinema 4d, with textures later applied in photoshop. the background is composed from pictures of some kind of tar container that stood in front of my house for a while, some broken concrete and loads of dirt photos.




these two were made almost entirely from photos i took on a sunny day in hamburg. locals might recognize some places :)


that lamp thing in the foreground is from one of dozens of german tanks that stand and rot on a field near the band's hometown as a reminder of war time. it's a famous place for local metal bands' photo sessions.


this last one is the tray card, the inside of the cd case. it's supposed to look like one surface with a hole in it, although it consists of countless seperate images.

when working in this manner, you find out what photoshop is actually capable of: everything. big thanks to my teacher anthony who taught me this stuff, and to travis smith, whose artwork for devin townsend's terria album is a gorgeous example of what can be done this way (and was probably my biggest inspiration).

there's another painting in the making right now. after the flying elephants, it features a rificulously large flying whale. might be finished toward the weekend.

more paintings

Hey there everyone,

today I'll give you some more art. This first one is a work in Progress. As I mentioned earlier, I'm trying out new techniques. This is how far my layering and super fine brush detail-painting has come as of now:

"Nude with tentacles, blue"
Acrtylics on canvas,
70 x 110 cm

It's still far from finished, but I'd like to take my time with this one. Breaks of a few weeks can be pretty helpful when I'm not clear what exactly I want to change in a painting.

Here's another thing. A friend of mine had a birthday party a few days ago and I painted him a little painting. He likes apocalyptic visions, weird stuff and elephants, so I combined these ingredients. It's called "the 5000 elephants of apocalypse", is about 40x50 cm big and was made in a completely different technique: very quick, raw, big brush strokes, more focus on colors and composition than details. The reaction of the party people (and the birthday man) were great, and some said they paricularly liked this rough style. I do, too. Looks like I won't specialize in the slow, detailed technique anytime soon.
This absurd, catastrophic topic is also something I enjoy. Might be that you'll see more of this otherworldly, bizarre stuff soon.

Excuse the crappy photo, I'll try to make a better one:


Thirdly, here's Cthulhu II, which I made earlier this year and somehow haven't posted yet. I wanted to make a really majestic, magic-the-gathering-style portrait of the Great Old One, so that's this with the strong vertical direction and energy bolts and all.
I will do more Lovecraft/Cthulhu, probably darker and more sinister the next time.

"Cthulhu II"
A. on C.
60x80 cm (I guess)

And finally, the video I mentioned some posts ago is finished. Have a look!

That was a fun project. 2 weeks of storyboarding, 4 weeks of animation and cutting, no boss or co-workers, no fixed hours, but just 6 weeks of free, creative work. And the band loves it. Who's next? :D

repost, this time with a proper photo

...also, I changed some details in the anatomy. If you've got some time to spare, find the differences between this one and the original :D


"nude with tentacles, red"
Acrylics on canvas, 60x90 cm, 2009

The next piece for this series is almost done. As I mentioned earlier, I keep learning stuff with every painting. Sometimes even when I don't paint at all (I was busy making an animated music video in the last few weeks, should be up soon), since I will always dig around the web for tutorials and "how-to"-pages from other artists. Since I last worked on a painting I learned a lot about layering and translucent paint. Incorporating these techniques makes the process slower, but the results become better. I guess I'll finish the next one within the next two weeks, and then it's time for another commissioned painting I'm already pretty excited about. Stay tuned, there's a lot going on!

No image today

...instead I'd like to write a bit about the recent shooting at a german school. I can't stand the media reaction anymore. I never want to hear about video games, black coats, guns or "violent music" in this context again, because nothing of this has to do with the root of the problem.
It's also no solution to watch out for symptoms or closely control kids who might become a problem someday.

Millions of kids worldwide dress in black, play first person shooters, listen to metal and hate mankind, that's their way to cope with the angst and aggression that normally builds up in an adolescent person. That alone should make us think. Doesn't anybody in politics or the media realize that this generation has every reason to be mad? Being protected from all things hard and real for the first years of your life and then finding out that your are one of the gun-selling, clear-cutting, over-fishing, blood sucking evildoers that drove the world to the edge of destruction is a bitter pill to swallow.

Especially the demographic all those school murderers belonged to has a very good understanding of what's going wrong in the world, of how we, the industrialized nations, give a shit about the rest of the world and run from our responsibility. Then take into account that their peers usually behave as if they had no clue about those big topics, yet the goth kids and weirdos are isolated and ignored.

Those school shooters see very clearly that the majority prays to fake idols. They know how the consumer mentality is wrong for people, they see how shallow the mindset is that their peers celebrate. And they get mad when they see that all the other kids at school, who are mean to them, obviously don't care about the evil they are going to continue once they are old enough.

No add to that the fact that they never get the girl, that they get ridiculed and ignored, although they really are superior in a way, and you see what it's about.

Millions of kids feel like that. What makes some of them go out and kill everybody?

Look at it like this: The human psyche is a very complex thing. It takes years of socialisation to build it up, and over the course of millennia, it was normal that this took place among siblings, aunts, uncles, grandparents, friends of the family, other kids from the neighborhood and so on. Humans usually grow up in a web of responsibility. Kids take care of each other and rely on several adults to watch over them. In our "natural environment", we have close personal contact with many people from all age groups. It has been like that since the dawn of mankind. We should understand that we've gotten used to that. That it's a part of being human.

Well, within the last three generations, we have destroyed this structure. The natural environment we evolved in and adapted to is gone. The extended family is completely extinct in our culture, and school can't be a replacement, because they largely work against character development and favour those who shut up and blindly adapt, instead of encouraging children to look after each other and understand people.

Many people still manage to develop some social skills, because humans are smart, but we must not be surprised if some don't. It's exactly the same problem with young mothers killing their babies (wich happens every year here in Germany, especially in poor areas): they don't do that because they're evil, they simply don't know how to deal with the situation, because their cold social environment didn't let their brains pick up the necessary skills to take care for a child. Think of zoo animals. The mother polar bear kills her kid, because instead of snow and other polar bears, there's only concrete and yelling people around, so she doesn't learn how to be a proper polar bear. We understand that, so what's so hard about drawing the parallels to humans?

If we let the grown structures that built up mankind over hundreds of thousands of years suddenly crumble away in favour of a materialistic world where everybody lives only to consume, we must not be surprised if some of the mechanisms such a healthy social environment guarantees fall away.

So, people of the internet: Shut your face about those evil, evil killer kids, unless you understand that we, collectively made them.


I really had to get this off my system. There's not much painting going on at the moment, as I'm working on a video. That might become the topic of the next post.

Hey there,

here's another commissioned piece. The task was "paint me a magic forest". Oh well, here it is:


80 x 60 cm, acrylics in canvas


I left one out. there's another Cthulhu painting, maybe I'll put it up witht the next update.

So,

back on track. Here's another Tentacle Chick. 60 x 90 cm, Acrylics on Canvas. I realize how I keep learning lots with every painting. That's great. Also, screw small paintings! Large is the new black.

Oh, I'm not sure if this one's finished yet, there might be an update later. As always, excuse the crappy photo quality. Once summer comes around with proper daylight, I'll take pictures outside that should turn out better.

And this: if you want to post one of these images or show them around, do so, but always link back to this blog and give me credit, ok? I've got most of the originals in my flat and can prove that they're mine, so I suggest you don't try to make money with my work.

Hey there,

today I'll post something out of the line. It's not haunted, weird, sexual or anything, but quite mellow and nice. It's a requested piece, some kind of harbour scene after the humans are all gone. I went all Bob Ross on this one :D
It was a nice experience, though. Halfway through, when I hadn't painted all the big ol' trees yet, the reflection of the ship looked really convincing. Then I painted it over :/ But it reminded me that reflections are something to do more often. It's so easy: Paint something, then paint it again upside down, with slightly darker colours and a bit blurry, and that's it. Looks perfectly like water.
Well, there'll surely be other water paintings in the future.
For now, I'll back away from that friendly nature stuff, since it looks like I'll have an exhibition later this year. Can't talk that much about the location + context yet, but it would surely demand something else than peaceful landscapes. Right now, I've got the second tentacle chick in the making.
Oh, and I did another Cthulhu. Not sure if it's done yet, but I'll post some pictures in the next few days anyway.

So yeah, enough talking. Here's todays piece. I like the lighting on the Ship. Looks sunny :)

Final steps



So, I think this one is done for now. Next steps are to find out what kind of finish to use, since the conventional varnish would eat up the colour, then apply that, paint the head (I haven't got the neck here yet), finish that and finally put the baby back together again.

In this last big effort, I decided to give the front side two distinct layers, by making the "lower" parts darker and keeping the brighter, more saturated tone on the "lips" and tentacles.

Also, I'm very happy with the elongated teeth and depth in the mouth. The lower part of the mouth will be obscured by hardware, so I had to find a way to incorporate that into the painting. I think this "deeper" part in the jaw should do the job





Here you can see how the decoration goes
all around the body. I'm particularly proud
of that veins- and-bubbles part on that stretch of flesh in the middle. Seeing how that turned out, I decided to paint more of these blisters or bubbles on the lips.







The pieces of "skin" that cover part of the front side wrap around the edges of the body and connect again on the backside, creating a cloth-like surface with blood vessels on the center of the back. Most of the pointy edges of the guitar stick out from that, as I thought that would emphasize the shape and at the same time help create the illusion of an organic entity, rather than an instrument.







This "skinned flesh" look you can see on the side here (and on several other parts of the guitar) was a new experience for me: The highlights are created by removing paint with a dry brush. Usually, I would have either used white paint to lighten up the colors, or applied the red and blue tones in very thin layers. Instead, the really smooth surface of the white base colour allowed to wipe of the freshly applied paint in parts, thereby generating this very organic, chaotic effect. Even from close up, it looks really fleshy and "alive" (in a painful way) in some parts. Also compare the "neck" in the picture above.







Finally, here's the one really sharp picture my trashy old camera managed to take in artificial light.
I love to paint with relatively big brushes, aiming for a convincing effect from the distance by working with rather rough strokes and low detail.

In the end, this guitar will be seen in stage light, often through haze, and from a couple meters away. microscopic detail makes no sense here. Instead, effects like strong drop shadows, color contrast and unrealistic reduction and exaggeration of details are necessary to transport the image under the given circumstances.

Overall, this project is more related to stage design or movie prop making than it is to classical painting or fine art. I find this very interesting. Painting a picture is fun, of course. But painting something with a distinct function in mind, and therefor having to respect certain rules of perception is a very different task.

I'll take proper photos outside in the sunlight when the guitar is complete.

In the meantime, check out the band it belongs to once more: myspace.com/tsagd

Yay everyone, here's a new project, and a really different one, too.
Upon seeing my custom painted guitar (that one there on the right) on a gig a while ago, this metal dude asked me if we could maybe co-operate in the future.
Turned out he was totally dedicated guitar player, or even guitar nerd, as he quit school in order to have more time to practice and even build electric guitars on his own.

Some months went by when he (who is named Thomas, by the way) approached me on another show and showed me his new, hand-built, edgy heavy metal axe, which he apparently assembled from hand-picked parts that he ordered from all over the world. Of course, it had no finish on it, just the smooth pure wood.

Well, now the body of that thing stands on my easel, and I spend hours giving it a face that fits the purpose: His band is called the splatter and gore department, they play death metal and usually have an additional band member operating the barbeque on stage. So the way to go was: blood and flesh galore, make the thing look really horrible, but with the tongue in cheek.

Now, here are some photos of the process.

This is what the body looked like after applying several very thin layers of white acrylic paint:

I forgot to take a photo of the outlines I painted on it after that, so here's an impression of what it looked like after a few hours:


Before I went back to it today, it looked like this:


And now I'm going back to work on it for the rest of the night. Next steps are:
- Getting the whole thing covered in paint, so I get an impression of what it'll look like in the end
- Adding cool shades and blue-ish relections for more depth
- Adding loads of tiny detail, like maggots, scars, and blood vessels of all kind.

If this guitar turns out well, that is, if it still sounds as awesome after the painting is finished as it did before, we're planning to make some more guitars together, and that might even include desgning a new body shape instead of using a pre-made body that the world knows already.
As you can imagine, I'm pretty excited!