Where have you been? (Oils & Digital) 6.20.07

**van** · June 20th, 2007, 01:42 PM

I have been away for quite awhile. Most of you who know me, know me as the country boy from Tulsa that started drawing again the day that I signed up to the Conceptart forums (back then, it was really just a forum...hehe). My learning process has had quite a few ups and downs to say the least. I have bounced around from digital to traditional painting more times than....well, just a lot.

A divorce led me to Philadelphia and a totally new life. I have a wonderful fiance` (will be my wife on 7.7.07) and despite the long distance between myself and my kids I have found ways to be with them as much as I can. My son lives with me, my fiance, and her son now. The new life led me in a different direction. I put down my brush once again in favor of a keyboard. This satisfied me for awhile. I love writing code. I am engineer and I view this as a form of art in and of itself...however, the pull of the brush is too powerful to overcome...thank goodness. Well, the brush...and the eyes of my beautiful woman.

So, I am back. I will try and update as often as possible, but with the approaching wedding, two vacations, and my kids visiting right now from Tulsa...I can't promise it will be often enough. I can't wait to pour through the new sketchbooks.

Here is some older work:

All of this old stuff has been pulled from my old sketchbook thread:
http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=50851

And a new one, finished:

And a few new things not yet finished:

**Jazz** · June 20th, 2007, 01:58 PM

Wow...such gorgeous pictures!! The colour is so vibrant and just fits each piece!!

I love the progress paintings! That snarling boy freaks me out more than he might in real life! Then again... The witch is also freaky. I'd be unfortunate enough to bump into someone like that and have a very awkward lump in my throat! XD I love those beads/bones (not sure what they are, but they suit her well!!).

I'm intrigued with the last piece, too! The close up bricks are really nicely done!

**sve** · June 20th, 2007, 02:24 PM

Hello, van

. I'm happy to see you back... Dear friend, you are so not calm, restless...always... came back to programming when your painting been liked so much by so many people here... Striking. I thought about you, what you might be busy with... I like your restlessness... it is consistent with everything else. with warm color of your paintings, with your themes... everything... very integrated.
Glad to see old loved paintings and I'm glad to feel that the emotion they induce the same...and new ones... but they have extremely tragic feel... all three of them... I think they are about the same actually... walls. blocks, barriers, desperation, sadness, desire to make it though, running from it, restless feeling... Colors are hopeful though, fighting colors. the first one, sadness has a slightly different nuance, I think.
Her face is lovely, the expression is very fine, precise.. I would describe her as soft, forgiving, understanding, submissive to the will of another, living through another person life and will. It is kind of in every feature of her face... eyes don't look straight in the eyes,, soft features, soft, lines. soft lips. everything round, comforting, soothing. Hair.. flowing down ribbons... Lovely woman, very comforting and sacrificing.. not belonging herself...
Hope you are doing great and congratulation on getting married. Wish you all happiness.

**razz** · June 22nd, 2007, 03:05 AM

Really great pieces all around. Good to see one painting both digital and traditional, because usually one of those wins and the other gets left behind a bit. I think knowing how to paint traditionaly will help paint digitaly a lot.
Maybe it's just me, but I've noticed that your paintings have a warm palette or a cool palette. Try mixing the two. You know, warm light produces cool shadows and so on...
Keep it up!

**van** · June 22nd, 2007, 08:32 PM

JazzW: Thanks, a lot! =] Those are beads and bones...so you got it on both counts. I am glad you like the brick one...that was a quickie. About 1 hour or so.

sve: My friend, I have missed your words. Sometimes they were they only thing keeping me going, just so you know. I am as restless as always, but in a much calmer place...so it balances out. You pegged the portrait, once again, and I am very much in tune with this one...because that is my fiance. =]

razz: Thank you! Unfortunately, I hate cooler colors. I dunno why. When I see anything, I see in reds, browns, and oranges. Heh..I will try whipping some cools in...

Here is this one...finished. I call it: The Worshipped and the Damned.

**Jas0n 0n a Bike** · June 22nd, 2007, 09:44 PM

http://mol.angrygeeks.org/art//The_Love.jpg

^^ Absolutely Love that one. So emotional.

**sve** · June 22nd, 2007, 10:11 PM

Thank you, my friend, for such a high opinion about my manner to write, but I have to say... the fact you had nothing in your life besides my attempts to communicate with you ... well it makes me feel very sad... becasue it is very little. we need more, don't you think... we need the whole world through sensations. That's no good. you should have come to me, write about your sadness. Maybe familiarity does breed contempt... but I don't care about it...I don't feel contempt to any person I came across. When you realize that it is something essential to the person even if it is not your essential... you learn to love it too...or at least understand and see its right to exist in this person.

Paint more of your finance portraits please if it is possible...I want to see if face features really carry information for us or t is just expression of the moment...ever changing.
You are right... she is beautiful... the picture above the portrait id her face too?

I like your warm mono chromic paintings... they give me all I need and I don't need any more nuances...for me it is that you don't want any embellishments or visual entertainment in your images... you go straight to the core, to heart in a vivid passionate message, compact, concentrated thrust. Dare to say I understand it in this form and don't need richer palette... it will destroy the strict, persistent call for attention to one, main thing you want to say.

I think you do transfer little differences in emotion with your orange browns. They actually one whole that unites all images together... that's you, your personality which is warm, alive, not capable to live in vacuum.
In the last image those little ovals look pleasant somehow and calming... maybe it is becasue the repetition, patterns and rounds shapes... but it dulls the aggressiveness of tongues of fire... The peak looks like a desirable island to me, refuge... desperate... but in the same time very much needed border between the rest of the world and you.

a lot of sharp edges, cracks, textures beneath and on the sides look aggressive and able to induce pain... flowing away ovals and even surface of the sky are suddenly soothing after the busy rest of the picture.
I like solitude...because of that it doesn't look like an end for me... more like a very much needed break... I read the title... but it is not damned for me. it's sort of silence and distance from pain.

Image is symbolic... maybe it deserved some harsh technical critique how to make it better... but I don't know how to say be more skillful when it is about naked emotion.

Bye and good luck to you.
I like the wolf image very much

. for softness, swirls and silhouette..it howls... but I like it.

**Stormcrow135** · June 23rd, 2007, 12:06 AM

Really interesting work, nic ei deas and executions. Do you find that there is a bit of a difference when you work digitally tahn when you work traditionally? Which do you perfer? I find it interesting that though you do not work from a black or really dark backround, your paintings tend to gravitate towards the dark, moody, and black.

**Seaport** · June 24th, 2007, 07:06 AM

Striking paintings, this ones my favoraite IMG_9937-1.JPG

**Micaiah Nelson** · June 28th, 2007, 08:04 AM

You have beautiful pieces man

**cmoreland** · June 28th, 2007, 05:32 PM

Nice process, ya don't see a whole lot of that on here. As an aspiring oil painter I thank you sir. It really is nice to see a painting come alive, that is even better than the end product. Here's hoping to see more !