Here is my first real attempt to produce an art piece in the form of a painting. The size of the art is 14"x11"   I titled it Autumn repose.

  I painted this around 2000 thereabouts, the time when my daughter was still a baby, so I intend to pass this on to her some day. I only have a vague recollection of how long it took me to complete but likely around 30-50 hours... it was many separate days of a few hours here and there, laying down on the floor and half inside of a closet... this was to keep my art supplies out of the way and also for more quiet. The light to work by was supplied by my dad who had passed away from lung cancer about 5 years earlier. He used to be a draftsman/engineer who designed the blueprints for new roads through his work with the Bureau of Indian Affairs and previously through the U.S. Navy before that... It was his old desk lamp giving me light.  I still remember him having some good creativity of his own as he liked to doodle horses at times, and he was excellent at coming up with and telling jokes that would split your sides lol:)

  Before this painting my main medium of choice was simply pencil, especially one of dads mechanical pencils in .07. 

   I also started my career as a tattoo artist shortly before this in the beginning of 1998.  I started drawing very early in life, my mother who is locally known for her landscape and floral paintings in watercolor and oil still has some of my first drawings as early as when I was 2 years old. Apparently, as she tells me, she knew I showed some kind of artistic talent or "eye" when I had drawn a simple fish but didn't draw them flat like most toddlers would, I chose to draw them more dimensional as if they were swimming at different angles with the tails in movement positions.

   (Pictured above is an 8"x10" Fall scene done in oil from my mother as a gift in 2012. It's one of my favorites).

  Another inspiration or influence I had back then when I wanted to try painting was through not just my mother (my biggest inspiration) but also through the meeting (by way of a mutual friend) local, national artist Greg Alexander. Greg is a well known wildlife artist, and although I don't know all of his accolades I do know he has won for the design of the stamp that was used for turkey hunting licenses for a particular year (back when they used stamps) at least once, his work was also published and promoted in magazines such as Outdoor Life... It was Greg that gave me the prepped hardboard to paint on, so that added to my inspiration for sure.

  Now as you might imagine, laying on a floor in a closet isn't your premium place to have an art studio, and the dust, hair and debris stuck within my first painting shows this, and is now a permanent resident as the painting was later sealed after drying... so now it likely has DNA from myself in it, but it only adds to the character in my opinion:)

  The medium I chose for this painting was a combination of Acrylic and Oil paints. Having no experience with much painting and especially this medium/style of painting I simply chose to just keep putting color of whatever flavor I thought looked decent onto the surface... Live and learn.

 

(Pictured above is a pencil sketch of my gals dog that I did as a gift, shortly after the dog "Ozzie" passed away. Approximately 5"x7" I think...) Some charcoal pencil and a white one for highlights was used.

  Most of my Professional art career consisted of roughly 25 years being self employed as owner and operator of a tattoo studio. This medium is quite different and is demanding in very different aspects compared to other forms of art, in ways such as: Thinking much quicker, reading people as well as their pain thresholds, relating, reading their character, creating and designing quickly for them, gaining confidence and trust... everything is basically sped up and the limitations are more bound by time, and what I think they reasonably can tolerate as well as the customers desired investment into the piece. 

  Unfortunately I can no longer tattoo people as my poor posture gradually took it's toll on me over the years to the point where I was only working on one customer a week, spending the rest of the time recovering from back pain and then getting ready for the next appointment... this went on for years towards the end and literally had to turn hundreds of people away. It was a far cry from where I was when I started and could work up to 18 hours a day if I had to.

  The good news is, I haven't done any oil painting in the last 20+ years (since "Autumn Repose" at the top) so it'll be interesting to see what I can do, now that I have more time to think, and quite possibly more of an open mind:)

  I created this blog for two reasons:

1. To keep somewhat of a record or short story to part of my life.  Maybe my kid will want to look at this some day... idk.

2. To give credit and confidence to others that I've spent my life being a very observant individual,  half of it so far professionally. I feel comfortable saying "most of the time, I know exactly what I'm looking at". And this may not be limited to seeing some strange things... lol

   (Below I will picture a small pencil drawing and a few tattoos I have done... this is sort of an experiment so I didn't choose to dig really hard. A fair amount of the work in some of the images is what is known in the tattoo industry as "freehand", which is what the shoulder/chest armor piece is mostly consisted of... Freehand work is where the basic concept of the design is just sketched onto the customer with a pen or marker (no stencils) with only an idea in mind and little if no references used to look at). (Some of these are a stencil but then the background or even important areas are then "freehanded" on to fit the customer). You need a very good understanding of light and shadow, and how things are generally supposed to look or flow with the body to freehand a design.

I apologize if the photo quality isn't great... I'm still learning this site. I'm also not saying that my art up to this point is the "end all be all" of anything great... I'm always learning and will always strive to improve with whatever medium I choose to create with. Thanks for looking!