On Long Island, as in much of the country, birds once called common are engaged in an unsettling baffling vanishing act. Recently the National Audubon Society released a list, compiled from 40 years of data, of the top 20 common birds declining nationally. These 15 are no longer common on Long Island. Like the honey bees this past year, no one knows exactly why bird populations are declining. This is 18″x24″ black sand on canvas
Recently I was perusing the website of illustrator & mad-genius Roger DeMuth whom I was lucky enough to have as a professor at Syracuse University. There’s a great video interview of Roger on his site as well as a ton of his drawings, paintings, pop-ups, sketchbooks, boxes, plantlife etc and I immediately set about some creative output of my own. After I finished the drawing above it slowly dawned on me the DeMuthesque nature of what I’d done and I realized: I was under the influence of Roger.
I recall he gave me some of the best and most frank advice I ever received as I was preparing to graduate. He said “Paul… just go out there and fail.” Roger has graciously accepted our offer to do a bit of guest posting on InvisibleMan so you’ll see some of his amazing works here soon.
This is the eighth year of illustrating for the Siren Music Festival and I went with a half land/half sea composition. Props to Jon Keegan for encouraging me to go aquatic. The Creature from the Black Lagoon makes a strong showing this year but then again he does have centuries of passion pent up in his savage heart – so it sort of makes sense. Click on the image for a larger view.
This is the second version of the art posted previously, but now I painted it on canvas. I haven’t bought a wood panel yet, so i tried to do a similar effect with sandpaper and modeling paste
To the best of my knowledge, these are the last pictures I shot on 35mm film. When we were living in Los Angeles back in 2003, I grabbed my trusty Yashica T* loaded up with black and white film, and Julie and I set off to explore the haunting Salton Sea area, about 60 miles to the south-east of Palm Springs.
We had heard it was an interesting place to visit, but we weren’t prepared for the things we would see: An artificial mountain built of mud, paint and car tires as a monument to God’s love (Salvation Mountain), entire neighborhoods, buildings and vehicles devoured by pink alkaline slurry, sulfurous boiling mudpots, defunct hotels from the 1950’s heydays and a dead, smelly sea.
If you are ever in the area, be sure to make time for a visit.
Recently broke out one of those watercolor sketchbooks that Moleskin make and did a few draintings (just made up that word) of Alaska using GoogleEarth as reference. Volcanoes in the Aleutian islands and the Kenai mountains, rendered with watercolor pencil.
