December 15, 2007

Miguel Calaveras

Click the image for a 1024x768 wallpaper version.

Posted by Red Monkey at 5:01 PM | Comments (0) | Sketches | Stumble

October 5, 2007

Big Boy

Patrolling teh Intrawebs is his job. Whenever he sees injustice ... whenever he sees a rude dork who needs smacking down ... wherever he sees seriousness in need of lightening up ... MIKSTER is there in his patented Big Boy Pants.

(Hopefully he doesn't kill me for this!)

Posted by Red Monkey at 8:18 PM | Comments (15) | Sketches | Stumble

September 18, 2007

Blue ... Rubberyjido

This is my following the EXCELLENT tutorial available by RubberyJido at Deviant Art. This is not something I made up on my own, this is just me doing some practicing and trying to learn my Copic markers.

Click for the larger picture.

Posted by Red Monkey at 10:20 PM | Comments (4) | Sketches | Stumble

August 27, 2007

Do You See What I See?

... a star, a star, shining in the east ... blah blah blah. I suddenly forget the rest of the words anyway.

I should start this post by mentioning that I once nearly got thrown out of the Dallas Museum of Art for proclaiming my views on modern art. Well, sort of. See, I was dragged to the art museum by my other half who was an art student at the time. And we made the mistake of going to the modern wing first. Whilst I was really hyper. And there was this canvas that was painted red. Like with a roller. Just ... red. No funky shape. No design in the red. Just a canvas painted red.

This offended me. Any monkey can do that. There is no art in a red canvas. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar and sometimes the crap the art establishment refers to as art is just crap.

Anyhow, I was in a highly sarcastic (to some people that means annoying ... to me, that means hysterically witty and funny) mood. And I kept up a nice running commentary throughout the modern wing. Now, once we got into the stuff that actually takes some modicum of freaking SKILL to create, I was enjoying the purty pitchers and stuff.

Then we walked into the very cool Egyptian room. Nifty stuff abounding. And as we walked out of the "tomb," we see this HUGE ... TALL ... MONGO wooden statue of a woman sitting in a chair. Yanno what they say about Texas women? The higher the hair, the closer to God? Well, this woman had them all beat. And, without missing a beat myself, I said, perhaps a mite too loudly, "LOOK! IT'S MARGE SIMPSON!"

Every child in the museum turned and laughed in total agreement.

The security guards, for some convoluted reason, took exception to this. Maybe it was because there were about ten different school groups there.

Anyhow, that's all backstory. What I really wanted to talk about is THIS.

To me, and I realize this is a subjective field, to ME, this is paint slop. This is not art. I can get Cubism, although I don't like it personally. But it's art. I can see Impressionism as art. Surrealism. I can see a lot of the Isms as art.

To me, this painting simply looks like the work of a four year old. That's it. Paint smeared around. Random, for the most part. Playing with paint (and there's nothing wrong with that!).

But, museum-worthy, great sums of money worthy, art ... it ain't. It's paint and canvas and no great shakes.

However, the art of the four year old Marla Olmstead of New York is being touted as the work of a child prodigy. They are comparing her work to Jackson Pollock and Wassily Kandinsky.

In my opinion, that's crap. She's sold 25 paintings, or rather her crafty parents have, and they've made $40,000. That's an average of $1600 a painting.

OMFG ... there are people honing their craft out there making nothing. This kid is playing with paint and raking it in.

I will never understand the New York "high art" world. Never.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm gonna go watch I've Heard the Mermaids Singing and enjoy the visual one liners.

Posted by Red Monkey at 12:55 AM | Comments (5) | Never Underestimate the Power of Human Stupidity | Sketches | Stumble

August 25, 2007

Bid on Wooden Iguana

AUCTION ENDS AUGUST 27 ... CURRENT BID IS ONLY $25 ... COME ON FOLKS ...
let's raise some money for a good cause!!

Want your very own copy of the first issue of Wooden Iguana? How about the Sketchbook used to create it?

I have donated the original sketchbook (much as losing it pains me) and a laser-print copy of this issue (a nice, colour laser print ... for those "in the know" about graphics, it's a 300 dpi version ... not just a printout of the webpages) ... anyhow, I've donated the sketchbook and a nice print copy of issue one to iSurvive.org to help them raise some funds. iSurvive is a wonderful resource for people struggling to cope with abuse issues. There are people there from all over the world ... they've got resources for review, various categories in their forum for people to post and discuss their issues and even a chat feature. They're a non-profit organization who has recently changed their software ... and believe me, they help a lot of people. They have to pay for the software, for bandwidth ... a technician to help keep everything running ... and I don't know what all else. I do know that they serve a very valuable function to a lot of people.

And I'd like to do a little bit to help them continue.

So ... while letting that sketchbook go is a really hard thing for me ... that's got some pieces that I'm extraordinarily proud of in it ... it's all going to an excellent, excellent cause.

If you're interested ... you can see some photos of the sketchbook here ... and you can address any questions to me: red DASH monkey AT coyotethunder DOT com.

If you want to bid, you can send your bid to: isurvive_org AT yahoo DOT com . Please, please, put Auction Bid in the subject and please, please please don't spam them. They're a good organization, good people.

Auction ends August 27, 2007.

You can check the current status of bids in the Open Forum section of the iSurvive site ... or you can email me for an update.

Good luck!!!

Posted by Red Monkey at 9:58 AM | Comments (0) | Sketches | Stumble

August 22, 2007

Playing with Copics

I'm still debating the baby's head. It looks better in the larger version (click to see it "full size"). Or maybe it looks better in the small size and not the large. ARGH!

I swear, if I ever learn to do the shading of people well, it might just be a miracle.

Posted by Red Monkey at 12:40 AM | Comments (3) | Sketches | Stumble