Art in R.L.

Finished a painting I've been working on for two years. It wasn't as if it took two years of work to do it, it was more like it took two years to get enough free time to work on it with the world and it's crazy  ways combined with editing two books and trying to write seven more! I think it's important to do art in the real world jus to sharpen your skills and change your thinking. There is no Command+Z for correcting mistakes when you're doing a painting. Who it comes to mistakes, like children, you have to own them.
The painting was from a photo I took when I was in Paris on Rue d' République. It was raining and I wanted to go on a walk. No one in the apartment wanted to go with me so I headed off to this main ave in the 11th district and followed this street until it transformed into a canal. This is one of those golden sphere moments for me that I'll always cherish.

Books and More Books!

Book 3 in the Flaming Jackass series is up and running in print and e-book form!

I'm thinking of doing a hard Cover version of the first Mary Mack book, sort of a collector's edition.

 Book 2 is finished and being edited.

Books, paintings and Monty Python.

The second novel has been up and running. The first one is out selling it, which is understandable because no one buys a sequel first. Hopefully, they will like the first enough to get hooked on the series. Here is an ad for the second novel, announcing it's arrival.

My painting, Ciao! is going to be in the Richmond Art Center's annual Member show, from June 16th - August 19th. It is for sell.

For my kids birthday party. They wanted a Monty Python and the Holy Grail party. My wife knitted all the kids chain mail head dresses which were accessorized  by painted white sheet out fits and I decorated the living room in a castle like theme.

  

Venturing into the Slush Pile.

For Christmas 2015, I did something which I hadn't done in a while. No, it was not staying up all night dancing, eating Krispy Kremes for breakfast and then go to work for 8 hours—those days are over. I did an actual  acrylic painting in the real world. This one is a scene in Le Marais district in Paris taken from a photograph of my 7th trip to one of my top 3 favorite cities in the world (New York, San Francisco, filling out the rest). It was also one of the largest paintings I have done at around 30 x 40 inches. I chose the size in reverse, meaning I found the frame first and then cut a panel of wood to size, primed it and painted it.  It took a while to do but I enjoyed every minute of it. Very therapeutic and meditative. I've decided I would try to do at least one real painting per year, if not more.

In Etsy news. I sold something on line for the first time which usually only sells in person at the Richmond Holiday Arts Fair. The Mysterious Box of Mystery has finally made it's on-line presence in the sales department. Usually it takes a while to make these because it contains lots of trinkets, intricately hunted down and recreated letters, post cards, news articles and other nick knacks that come together to tell a story. The new one will be the fourth one I have made, as they have all sold out.


Another new venture is on the very horizon, or rather whatever comes before that, is I will be trying to venture into the world of publishing again to push a series of novels out of the nest. My early experience with publishing all involved comic books and dealing with distributors or book stores. I am not looking forward to trying to convince someone to take a leap of faith with my novels because they are only looking to publish the next : Twilight, Divergent, 50 Shades of Gray or some other sure fire hit book which can easily be made into a movie and the publisher and editors make enough money to pay the rent on their time shares at Martha's Vineyard. I totally get them and I can't blame them for only publishing 50,0000  fiction books per year on a average (150,000 non fiction) , but lets face it. On the Road by jack Keroack was rejected by many publishers as was Harry Potter, The Princess Diaries and countless others that were not only good books but financially successful. All it took was a leap of faith from an agent and a editor. That being said, I have created yet another blog for one of the novels so you can follow it's journey from the type writer to the coffee table or to the slush pile (where 99.9% of submissions end up). Believe it or not, I'm not being pessimistic only realistic. One way or another, my books will see physical or digital print and be made available for the public.

The first novel: Flaming Jackass, is based on a comic which first appeared in 1996 in the the pages of a  magazine called Splunge Comix,  a humor magazine aimed at Gen-xers. The story followed the life of a 21 year-old girl who I loosely based on a friend of mine I knew when I lived in Atlanta, GA back in the 90s.  

A bit of a warning, because this novel was written for adult Gen-xers, some language in the book and on the blog are a little raw.

 That's all for now, A.J.

There's a Dragon on my Lawn!

It's that time of year again.

The skeleton

Last year, I didn't do a Halloween display in the yard because we were in the process of moving. After a year of moving into the new house, I was finally able to resume the tradition. I was unsure if I was going to do something elaborate because this is a new neighborhood and even tough we've been here long enough for people to wave hello to you, this was basically going to be some people's first impression of us. Did I want to start things off by being THOSE neighbors? Especially for the conservative neighbors who just wanted to retire in peace without any shenanigans. Then I remembered that it is almost my duty as an artist to shake things up. It wasn't like I was putting an 8 foot phallus on the front lawn (mind you, a friend of mine suggested that) I was going to create something to bring joy to all who saw it and perhaps get some conversations started. 

Fleshing out the dragon.

The choices for this years design was: Bat Man, Zombie Attack, Giant Snake and Witches. Because my daughters were big fans of The Lord of the Rings,  I ditched the other ideas and decided to go with a fantasy theme. The winning idea: Dragon.  Thanks to designing the giant robot years back, figuring out how to make something so large was an easy process.

The only hard part I had to use my brain on, was how to make it look more organic. I work with nothing but cardboard boxes, sticks, and paint, so making something smooth had to take a combo of cardboard boxes and paper mâché .

Added head. Notice the large amounts of duct tape which will  have to be covered.

Covering with craft paper gave it more of an organic look.

The best thing about these Halloween displays, it teaches me a new skill. I had no idea what I was doing as I cursed my way thorough this project.

Ta Daaaa!

You can't have a dragon without someone showing up with a sword to slay it.

The final look with lights.

As I had hoped, as I was working on the dragon, lots of people in the neighborhood would slow down driving or walk by and talk to me. It was a great ice breaker.

Wine and Unicorn Angel girls

Spending my time trying to get my studio ready in my new house is taking a lot longer than I thought it would. Believe me when I say: always empty the furniture completely out of a room before painting it. I did manage to do a side project. There's this space underneath my house's stairs that I thought would  be perfect for wine storage. It has the perfect temperature and everything. So I decide to build my dream wine rack. I am so sick of those 12 bottle wine racks. I mean seriously, when I find a good bottle  of wine I like, I get at least 12 bottles of it and save it for the holidays such as Old Wine Day (a holiday I made up where you pick an old bottle of wine and drink it. It takes place on June 22 because there ain't nothing going on at that time of year.)

As you can see, the old set up was pretty crappy:

A week later;  little paint, a cheap over-head light from IKEA, some sawing and screwing and voila, a contoured wine rack that can hold at least 53 bottles! 

 Not to be completely out of the art practice, I did this digital drawing of a cross between a unicorn and a winged female called an Cornalas:

Projects 2014

New projects for 2014.

1) I wrote a novel. I was thinking of creating just a blog for it but I already have like a zillion blogs so I think I'll just post any information about it here.

To be honest, I don't want to talk too much about it because it's not published or picked up yet. So I'll just call it: 'The Book' and report all of the progress I make on my journey to the Great American blah blah.

I can share these character illustrations I made using a Walcom pad:

I guess the first step for publishing the novel is I need to fish it out to publishers, I think submitting anything in any form to people outside the art community is probably the most undesirable activity for an artist next to getting root canal from a blindfolded chimpanzee with hook hands. I really don't have the mental ability to deal with 100s of rejection slips so I think I'll limit it to 50 before I just publish it myself. Those who have read it, have really enjoyed it if people enjoy it, isn't that what the most important think about a book?


2) Add Hawaiian shirts to my Etsy site. I have absolutely no idea how to see shirts so this is going to be interesting. I don't really care about the Hawaiian pattern of the shirts, just the style.

3) Finish yet another novel that I don't want to give any detail on. (I know, why even mention it.)

4) Get my Etsy stuff into an actual store. The things I made do a lot better when people can pick them up and see the quality I put into them.

5) As you can tell by  the digital drawings, I want to do more illustrating. Perhaps I'll start a site on Deviant art when I get really good.

6) Be in more than one art fair. Again, my stuff sales when people can touch it.

7) Be in at least 2 art shows. Art shows are a real ego boost for artist.

8) Learn to play guitar. I know this is technically not an art thing, but I just want to do it. And I think it makes you think better, playing music.

9) Go to more galleries. We all need to do this. To inspire us, to break us out of normality and to lift our spirits.

10) Network , network network. I need to make connections because that is how you make things happen in the art world. This is along the lines of the chimpanzee dentist thing. It's what artist hate and is probably why artist are successful when they are more social. Its because they are usually more introverted and therefore spotting one out of the wild is like a rare occasion, like a unicorn walking in a shopping mall.


These are the 10 goals so far. Wish me luck.

That's all. A

How To Build a 10 Foot Long Shark On Your Front Yard

The skeleton

The Skin

Once again, for Halloween, I decided to put something interesting in the front yard. I wanted to do a giant snake wrapping itself around the house, but my wife said I should do a shark. "A shark?" I thought would be a lot harder than a snake but I accepted the challenge just because its important to challenge yourself sometimes and level up . As luck would have it for me (and not very lucky for a local hardware store), they were going out of business and everything was on sale. This was lucky because I was able to score some really cheap wood and screws for the armature. As with all of my Halloween decorations, I wanted to make sure it was made completely out of recyclable material, otherwise, I wouldn't easily be able to get rid of a toxic,10 foot long shark.
The armature was put together with one thing in mind; When I finish it, it has to be strong enough to carry the weight of the cardboard and be transported from the back yard to the front, without falling apart. The armature was the easy part, the hard part was building up a relatively recognizable shark shape out of the cardboard, using a staple gun, screws and duct tape. The rain gods were on my side and it never soaked my creation as it did the giant Japanese robot I made last year.

Feeding the shark

With less than a week to spare, I got it together and was able to spray paint it just in time for Halloween.  It held together, when we carried it to the front, with a brief scare as it snagged on a telephone wire. I wanted the shark to face the arriving trick-or-treaters, but my wife persuaded me to point it in the direction of the street. This worked out a lot better because anybody who happened to walk by, took lots of pictures of themselves posing with it. It got tons of compliments and put a smile on many faces, and thats why I like to do these projects, it makes our neighborhood a cooler place to live and lets them tell their FaceBook buddies: "Check this out, this is in MY neighborhood."

Say Ahhh!

Now on Etsy and Zibbet

I'm diversifying my business and opening up another site on Zibbet, a competitor to Etsy. I'm curious to see if the sells will be better or the same. The thing I like about them is that they promise not to have sellers who aren't really independent and make things in factories and they don't charge anything if you have under 50 items for listings. We'll see how long that last, after all, every dot com is nice until they're making money. I did get a lot more hits on Etsy when I used their paid ads and I even had a near sale from somebody in Ireland that back out at the very last minute. Pretty cool to get international attention like that tough. Here's the link to the Zibbet site: Rabbit Studios

Coming In December, I will be taking part in the Richmond Art Center's Holiday Arts fair.
This year Im going to be selling twice as many items than I did last year which creates more pressure to at least break even. After all, more items produced means more overhead. There are going to be a lot of things that haven't even made it on the Etsy site so I'm excited to get the reaction of the buying public. Another thing Im excited about is the fact that I can also accept credit cards this year. This means I won't have to hear the excuse: "I'd like to get it but I don't have any cash."

That's all for now, A

The Slow Push

Trying to get another "Big Push" going. It's tough following up on a successful year and trying to out do it. I missed the dead line for the film festival  (unless I want to pay to get in) so that may have to wait until next year.

The Etsy site now has almost all of the things I want to upload on it. My goal is 50 items and I'm almost at 40. Getting the most traffic are the kid aprons and the Mysterious Box of Mystery. People also seem to like the "Anne" series: Zombie Anne, Dracuanne and Ali Anne. I thought about making one that's psychotic called Stabarella.:

I  put an art piece in the Richmond Art Center. It's a palm leaf that I smoothed, polished and put some metal strings on it called "Harp". It will be hanging until August: Here is a like to their web site: Richmond Art Center

I'm trying to finish my movie by the end of the year but it's tough putting in the time to do the animation. Hopefully, with summer, I'll have a little more free time as kids go to camp and things. This is the first thing I've done on it in months:

That's All

A

Look Out! He's Got a Böm!

The BIG PUSH continues as I try to get more and more of my art out there. Last year was very successful as far as accomplishing 99% of my art career goals . The missing 1% would have been to quit my day job but, I'll let that one slide (for now). I have a lot of exiting products to sell on Etsy. One, a hat that's also a scarf called a Böm. I was going to call it a Bam or Boom but the fact that it covers up your face could make it the perfect accessory for terrorist and that's not the kind of advertising I need–This product is endorsed by Al Queeda! 

The other product I'm excited for is The Mysterious Box of Mystery. This is like something that I would buy if I had the money instead of needed the money. It's a strange box full of clues that are somehow linked to a story. It's your job to go through the box and figure them out. I made a commercial for it and I think it came out well: Here it is:

There are also a couple of other experiments coming to the Etsy site like a hat that looks like a frog called a Ribbhat:

…As well as lots of anmal style hats and aprons. 

My goal for this year s going to be of course to step up the Etsy game and try to at least be selling one or two items per month. 3 would be great but as I say prepare for greatness but be happy for what you can get.

Al

There's a Giant Robot in My Yard

Stage 1

Stage 2

The robot Halloween decoration was a success. In spite of being destroyed by two rain storms. I kept at it and finished it with just a day to spare. This was not going to happen if  it wasn't for my daughter who said:  "Daddy, why don't you just build it in the shed." I said because it wouldn't fit–lo and behold, with just a little bit of sawing of the neck, It fit perfectly and I was able to work without worrying about the rain destroying it again. Sure enough it did rain a lot.  This is the reason I did not want to work with paper s maché. If I did that, you need at least 3 sunny days to generate enough heat to dry that stuff. The cardboard boxes were easy to work with and thanks to a staple gun, I was able to keep things in place pretty well. For some stuff, I used duct tape but sparingly. I knew once it rained, that would  be the first thing to fall off. I got a window of sunshine at one point and it was the perfect time to paint the thing. It took two cans of silver to cover it. I'm sure my lungs will collapse from all of the poisons fumes I inhaled.

 I moved it to the front yard and wired it down to keep it from killing someone if it fell. The final size for the robot was around 9 feet tall. I designed it specially to not interrupt the power lines in the front. I added two  'spider bots' One on the garage and the other a destroyed version with lights wires and strobe lights. The neighbors loved it and many cars slowed down and apparently people posed with it. It's nice to make your neighborhood special for at least one day. It's hard to compete for interesting things when you live next to Berkeley and San Francisco.As expected, lots of people showed up but not until later because of –you guessed it, more rain. i was so glad because I bought a LOT of candy.

Final Stage

 I'm already thinking of next year. Giant Spider Bot? Witches around a cauldron? Who knows, I'm sure it will come to me next August.


That's all,
A

Gundam Style

It's that time of year again where I design an eye-catching Halloween decoration. This year, it was between a robot battle, witches or zombies. Since everyone is doing zombies, I decided to go with robots. Not just any robots but I want to put a really large Japanese anime style robot on the lawn because I figure, no one would do that one. I could do one that was old school like those clunky monster kind: but it would just take too many curves and it would have to be metallic which would take lots of toxic spray paint.  I want this thing to be as recyclable as possible so that I can get rid of it after Halloween without worrying that a peace of art I made is now killing baby seals or something.


 Me,  serving as Mr. Scale for stage one.

I like this style as the ones used in the anime,  Total Eclipse

So, going with the more squared off modern version, I want to make something that looks deadly and could actually fly if need be. Perhaps not as bonky as a Gundam style robot: Maybe a Macross style or  a Gundam/Macross hybrid. So far, I've created the armature. It was surprisingly cheap to build (around $12). As for the skin, I'm going with pure cardboard boxes cut up and rearranged. I usually work with paper mache so this is a new medium for me and one that hopefully, will be easier to work with. I decided to make the robot not too tall because if it were too high, it would touch our telephone lines in from of the house, and I'm afraid of it falling over during a rain storm. I want to make sure that it will survive high winds because at this time of year, the wind and rain start up and I remember the hell it caused my other two lawn sculptures. As you can see by my pics, it's around 10 feet tall, Big enough to be menacing. When I'm done, if I have time, I'm also going to make some bad-guy spider bots attacking the house. But, I'm not going to promise you anything.

Gundam Style!

That's all for now, A

Success!

My film got accepted into the  Oakland Underground Film Festival! I was put on the shorts program on October the 30th. It was a Blast! I got to see some really talented local filmmakers and heard some inspiring words of encouragement. I'm very Jazzed to start some new projects and finish the ones I've started.

• My list of things to do:
• Make more hats, aprons and dolls for the Richmond Art Center Holiday Arts fair.
• Finish my Sci-Fi novel by 2013 (I'm on page 245) and get it published
• Get back to work on my FARM movie
• Start to work of the Halloween decorations for my yard:
• Finish my 2D animated short:  Catholics on the Moon:

Thanks to my Success in getting my film in the Festival, I feel I'll be able to complete any of these  task as part of THE BIG PUSH!

TAFN (That's all For Now)
Alex

Christmas Art Show

I signed up to be in the Holiday Art Fare at the Richmond Art Center. This is kind of a big deal for me because it will be the first time in a while that I'll be selling my artwork out in the opening at my own table. A couple of hats sold on the Etsy site which is a little encouraging but I really want to get some traffic going. The Vampire Box
got the most hits with 639 views making it the most interesting thing on the site. Hopefully I can move it out by Halloween. I think for the Christmas Show, I should really push the dolls and hats. This means I have to increase my inventory by at least 3 more dolls and 10 more hats. Time to hit the fabric store!

I submitted this film into the Oakland Underground Film Festival but I've haven't heard back from them in any form. Oh well, move on, nothing to see here.


I always have a good feeling about my art even when it's not finically sucessfull. It's makes me feel like I'm accomplishing something when I try to get it out in the opening. Like having a child, raising it and sending it off into the world, hoping that society sees it as wonderful as you do.

That's all, A

Streaking Across the Desert in a Rocket Car.

So far the "Big Push" has been a personal success. I managed to open the Etsy store and sold two hats already! I also created a bunch of dolls and put them on the site and I built a unique kit for battling vampires which got like over 100 views in only a couple of days!

I think the best feeling for any artist is keeping busy even if what you create isn't any kind of financial success it still feels good that you actually followed through  with your projects and got them out of your brain. Whenever an idea pops into your head it's almost like a virus that spreads around and takes over your thoughts and the only way you can get this thing out of your body is to create it. The more you procrastinate, the worst it gets until you get obsessed or depressed about it.

I've also had to spread my social wings and joined countless social media groups in order to promote my stuff:
You can find me here on:

 Twiter, Tumblr, Pinterest, Etsy, Google+, YouTube, SoundCloud and  Cafe Press .

That's another thing about art. In order to be a success, you have to open yourself up socially which is one of the scariest things, even for non-artist. It' s like a process of un-learning.

My goal so far is to keep going forward and never look back no matter if this all crashes and burns, at least I was in a rocket car streaking across the salt flats at 300 MPH when it happened.

That's all, Alex

THE BIG PUSH!

I'm trying to really step up the game and  start getting some notoriety for my art projects. I'm synchronizing a lot of projects and creating what I call The Big Push. The Big Push's goal will be simply to sell  my artwork and get some recognition, connections and hopefully some added income.

Step one of The Big Push was the creation of the Etsy store which will be the front lines of selling anything that I create which can be sent through the mail.

POW BOOM ZAP on my Etsy site

Paintings as well as squid-like hats which I call H@ts  and eventually dolls will be displayed here for sale.









This is the first commercial on youTube for the hats which links to the shop as well:

I'm also creating a series of business cards and post cards trough: Moo to once again draw all eyes to the shop.

If all goes well. I should be in a good position expand into even more areas including publishing and T-shirt printing. But first, baby steps.

My line of hats or H@ts. Coming soon.

That's all, Alex

I.C.U.

Last year, I decorated the house with an Alien theme. This year I decided to go with another fear theme: paranoia. I covered the house in eyes. Big ones made of paper mache and little ones made out of white balloons. I'm hoping that the little ones don't pop before Halloween is over. It seems, whatever I throw up for decorations, the weather always kicks in with something that's going to try to ruin it. Last year it was lots of rain, this year it's wind which is trying it's best to ruin the streamer  dripping blood effect on the garage. I guess that's the price of art installations, they're always a product of their environment. You can either work with the environment or pay the price for ignorin it.

The eye in the front yard has a hidden wire holding it up, creating a floating eye effect.