Showing posts with label Museum Quality. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Museum Quality. Show all posts

Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Demented Doodles


I know that in the past I've talked about my general lack of childhood interest in anything of a scholastic nature and of my teachers eventual (and all too readily given) acquiescence to my desire to sit in class all day and do nothing but doodle... my greatest ambition in life has always been to be left alone to my own devices. While I appreciate my educators complete disinterest in my 8:00 AM - 3:00 PM activities I have to say that anybody seeing this page in my notebook really needed to step in and say something to the guidance counselor...

It's a three-way tie for my fav between the slug-butted scarecrow, the unicycling skull and the 'I Heart NY' zombie with a mouth in his forehead!

Sunday, October 26, 2008

Hey There, Mr. Glue Bones!

Wednesday, October 22, 2008

Wednesday, February 28, 2007

Imaginary Friends

This very tiny (less than two inches high) yet nifty address book souvenir of someone's Great Smokey Mountains adventure has been in my possession since I was just a little thing and found it at the bottom of a box of junk on a shelf in the storeroom of my grandparent's antique shop. I was too young to appreciate the hand-painted wonder of that cover, but I did like what I saw inside- some kid previous to me had filled the pages with dinosaurs, robots and Bugaloos!

It's outsider art-






















There were only a few pages that weren't already doodled on, but I filled those up quickly enough. Here's an example of my contribution to the project-


I think I manged to retain the spirit of the original artist's intent while adding a little something of my own aesthetic sensibilities to the work... namely lots of blue!



This last drawing is my favorite-

How creepy and enigmatic can you get? What the heck is that thing? A guy going up in flames? A living straw man lurching at you from the darkness? Pigpen looking for someone to hug him?

Sunday, October 22, 2006

My Little Monsters

Anyone who does a lot of blog surfing probably knows that one of the most popular types of blogs out there (second only to Chinese baby-adopting trip journals) is the art blog. Blogs are a perfect format for artists of all types, professional and non, to show off their sketches, doodles and fully-finished works to a larger and more varied crowd of people than you'd ever be able to lure into an art gallery or non-Starbucks coffee shop. There are more art blogs out there than you could visit in a lifetime, much less during your regular working hours which is the only time of day anyone ever hits the 'net anyway. Whatever kind of artwork you enjoy you're sure to be able to find several talented people out there who are glad to share their stuff with you and to all those same talented people I'd just like to say- I want in on some of that action!

I think that it's really unfair of you people to hog the art spotlight just because you happen to be the one's with all the talent. I mean, just because I couldn't "Draw Smitty" to save a busload of blind children from certain death doesn't mean that I shouldn't be allowed to share my sad scribblings with the rest of humanity! So with that in mind and in honor of the Hallowe'en season I present "The Monster Art of Steve," a brief retrospective of the artist's works through the years. Please, love me.


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This first piece is perhaps the earliest known example of the monster influence in Steve's work. Up until this point most of Steve's pieces revolved around a similar theme- house with chimney, one tree with bird, smiley face sun and a handful of stick people labelled 'Mom,' 'Dad,' & 'Me.' What might have happened in Steve's personal live around the time that this pen & marker drawing was completed that took his work to such a dark place we may never know, but there are theories. Kindergarten was a bitch.

This picture was either finished off with a dark wash of some sort or Steve spilled his grape juice over it. Either way it works. Also please make note of Steve's inspired use of a backward 'a' in Dracula's name which some philistine art critic attempted to correct!

Steve would like to add that he is not at all bitter about the fact that Wes Craven later stole Steve's visual interpretation of Dracula for use in the alleyway scene of the first Nightmare On Elm Street movie.
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This second piece was never really intended for public showing but it is too good to leave out. "Devils Got A Green Dress On" was created as a gift for the artist's younger brother, Matt. When Matt was quite little he found it hysterical to have other people sing the 'Devil's Got A Blue Dress On' song while substituting the word 'blue' with some other color. He thought that this was pee-in-your-pants level funny although nobody could ever figure out why. Steve theorizes that while she was pregnant with Matt, his mother may have had an asbestos licking habit.



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"Finger-zilla" is perhaps Steve's best known work. Words can not do it justice so let's just stare at it in silence for a few minutes, marveling at the subtle way in which Steve manipulated the finger paints so as to perfectly convey the clashing natures of Godzilla's savage fury and his all too human desire to find his place in this unfeeling world.


"Finger-zilla" was created when Steve was only seven years old, proving that he's no Genji-come-lately in his love of all things Godzilla.


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Steve enters his primitive Grandma Moses phase with "Sea Monster Attacks House." Notice how he disdains such things as realism and perspective in favor of just drawing a cool monster tearing stuff up. That's the hallmark of a true professional.

This picture was drawn and colored over the course of several school classes which shows, if nothing else, that by high school all of Steve's teachers had pretty much given up all hope for him and let him do pretty much anything he wanted. Steve doesn't know how he got away with that for so many years, but he suspects that it's 'cause he's so damn charming!

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This is not Steve's work, but he found it in a library book so he's claiming it as his own. Found art is still art.

This is the coolest thing that Steve ever found inside a library book even though the artist didn't plan ahead well enough to save room for both of the vampire's wings. Amateurs!








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Thus ends today's showing. Please feel free to comment upon the profound effect my art has had on you, but don't go overboard. I blush easily!

Tomorrow- "The Poetry of Steve"

Saturday, October 07, 2006

Mathcrow


My name is scribbled across the back of this cut & paste scarecrow, but I have no recollection of where or when I might have made this. If you click for the bigger pic you'll notice that the scarecrow is covered in simple addition and subtraction problems so I'm assuming it was a school project of some sort since math (or as it is known in Spanish, "La Lengua Del Diablo") is not a thing that I would fool around with just for kicks. Then again, none of the math problems have been solved so maybe I did just cobble this together in my spare time. Even as a kid I think that I would have been able to forgive a cool pumpkin-headed scarecrow for trying to teach me to arithmetate.