Parched

In a lot of ways I am starting over with my work. I spent Almost 2 years working for Disney Interactive and in that time I produced very little personal work. I still drew everyday, but a lot of what I did was wrapped up in my job. There were some great little things I did while employed with “the mouse” which due to contract restraints I couldn’t show anyone (and sadly still can’t)

That was really tough for me. I am such a blabber mouth that when I finish something I want everyone to know about it. So for that time although I am proud of the work I did for Disney, I felt mute and couldn’t really perform well on my own work.

However, I thought of a ton of ideas in that moment, but due to time, fatigue or expended creative juices I couldn’t work on them. So now that I am freelancing I am making up for lost time. Right from the start my goal was to develop a whole new collection of paintings. These would be to show off my current skills, for future exhibition and really just because I could.

I am happy with my older work, but after a while it becomes just that, and it’s unfair to expect anyone to give a damn about the same set of paintings they have already seen. Plus I had gotten better since my old standards, and the direction I want my work to go in has become clearer.

My current goal is to complete a full set of ten or more paintings in the whimsical storybook style I have used for the Piñata and Tree paintings. Than I will exhibit them somewhere or collect them in some fashion I’m sure, however I am not worried about the end result for the time being.

Each painting will use the children’s book cliché of having a character discover a world they have never known. However each painting will try and deal with more mature themes, like violence in the piñata piece or unfamiliarity in the tree piece.
Attached above is the built out sketch for the recently added tree painting. I had the idea a while ago, but sometimes I like to let an idea bake in my head for a bit before doing it. However when the idea originally came to me I did a mini painting of it that was posted on the old blog. Here it is again:

It is funny because I started building this sketch out as a whole painting matching the composition almost exactly. However it just wasn’t working so half way finished with it I started over. The dark colored tone wasn’t right, plus this tree seemed so lonely being the only one to witness such an event. It also lacked the monotone to color relationship that happens in the final.

I hope you like it too, and really… thanks for listening.

Vincent