Artistic endeavors and such

that ol' thorny devil..

2011-05-19T15:46:00.001-07:00

Just wanted to throw up an old ink drawing of a thorny devil lizard I did a while back. I actually did end up digitally rendering this guy, but I truly preferred the simple contrast and line purity of the original here.

2 years or so later...

2011-05-19T14:03:00.000-07:00

With this post, I am hereby restarting my artblog!

For my premiere piece I present to you the love of my life, Gwendolyn Marzano.

I completed this piece as birthday gift for her upon her request for an illustration of her donning the full armor of God from Ephesians 6:10-17. I began with the traditional line work of pencil then ink, and then utilized some acrylics in an almost watercolor approach. Anyone who knows me as an artist understands that I just love iconographic halos and so we have one featured on Gwen as well. What can I say, she's my angel after all!

tatoo designs...

2009-11-05T21:02:00.000-08:00

Cheerio...

I thought in case anyone has not seen the original work for my tattoo designs, and also so people can see the one I made for Brandon, I'd make a posting for those...

The first is the cherub design final...for an explanation see the earlier entry about it..

The second is the seraph design...

The second is the one I designed for Brandon for his right upper back. At its core, it symbolizes the twin-ship he shares with his brother Brandon. Of course, in Lane fashion I incorporated much latent symbolism and research to form this composition. It is centered around the myth of the Greek twins Castor and Pollux: their mother was raped by Zeus in the form of a swan and they are said to have hatched from an egg(s), also said to have been adventurers and often helmeted. I also gave them corresponding wings in reference to their swan relation and for an aesthetically more pleasing composition. The entire composition of the hatching from the egg is also a reference to Brandon and Andrew's favorite painting, Dali's "Geopoliticus Man".

I'm hoping to do more tattoo design work, and am currently in the process of designing two for a couple of other friends. I'll post that material as it manifests..

a series of art, an exodus, and the aftermath...

2009-09-14T16:34:00.000-07:00

G'day.....

Lots of major life changes since I last posted..

I am once again an official Houstonian and also unemployed....which I havent been in quite a long time. Job hunting is proving to be difficult but it is still early to give up too much hope yet. Seriously considering focusing on a teaching route....

The thesis show went quite smoothly, and I am quite satisfied with the pieces I created for it. While much of the in-progress art has been featured here, it would be wrong not to put up the culmination of much hard work. And so, here they are in the following order :

1 and 2 : These two are an album poster and a shirt design for the drone ambient duo Hammock. With Hammock being a band almost completely instrumental with very little vocals and lyrics, I chose to draw from their latest album title "Maybe They Will Sing for Us Tomorrow" and the overall feel of their music. Hammock certainly has an encompassing and ephemeral quality to their music, like a flock of Canadian geese across a winter sky. To represent this feel, for the poster I came up with the image of a fair girl staring through an old window pane, her hand pressed up in the glass in a thoughtful and introspect gesture and expression. The shirt design works as progression with the girl now absent and departed, leaving behind only a handprint as a legacy.

3 : This piece I came up with late in the series. This one is show poster for the band "A Northern Chorus" a thoughtful and beautiful indie band from Canada. The inspiration for this piece comes from their song "Winterize", specifically the chorus : "Pockets full of spent bullets, old train tickets, and pictures of the sun that couldn't warm up those winter eyes". The concept was the simple idea of taking the phrase "winter eyes" and creating my own visual representation. In this instance, it features a maiden with cold blue eyes and tears that have become snowflakes from their icy chill. The snowflakes were actually hand made using the classic method from childhood.

cont. previous entry...

a series of art, an exodus, and the aftermath...cont

2009-09-14T14:44:00.001-07:00

The other three pieces....

4-6 : These three pieces are the designs I made for Oh, Sleeper (christian hardcore band), the first two being shirt designs and the third being a show poster. They center around the lyrics and themes of their first album "When I am God" which follow the struggle against the flesh and the spirit through a war and battle analogy. Of particular note was the final song "The End of a Dark Campaign" which presents the allegory of being wounded in battle, calling for the medic, and the choice to lay down in defeat or get up and continue the fight (derived from the lyrics "Lay dead or charge the line") symbolizing the personal war against our human nature. Thus the three soldiers represent three choices: the two with the X's (from the slaughterhouse mark placed on the doomed animals) have chosen to accept defeat, and the third (the X has now become a cross representative of the medic and Christ) taking arms again to press on despite his wound.

Although I am a very harsh self-critic, I must say I am quite satisfied with this body of work especially considering it is my first foray into art for band promotion. I only hope now that someday I may actually be able to do this as a career.

old window frame + Raychel = Hammock

2009-08-12T11:26:00.000-07:00

well folks, its coming down to the wire here, but I finally have an ultimatum....August 29th...

Upon this day shall be my grand thesis show, and If you are in Savannah you should most certainly come..Im treating it as a goodbye sort of thing too since I leave 2 days later...

Here are the first glimpses of the Hammock piece I am working on...the first image is the design for the poster and the second is for the shirt...I may add another element to the poster design...and of course there will be the text too which will be a handwritten format...

Lots to do still, but its nice to have a deadline finally even though its frighteningly close...

The Cherub..

2009-07-22T22:52:00.000-07:00

In the continuing theme of christian symbolism in which my tattoos seem to subscribe to, I have finished the next design for my second tattoo. Mirroring the Seraph on my right arm, I have created my interpretation of a Cherub.

Now first a disclaimer...For all of those who dont know, a Cherub is NOT a little fat winged baby..that is putti...It is in fact the angelic sentinels that watch over the gates of Eden with flaming swords that turn every which way.

There are other instances of Cherubs which are more obscure in the Bible and in Jewish scriptures and other literary sources. They are also know to have 4 wings, multiple eyes, and four different faces (an ox, an, eagle, a man, and a lion).

Drawing from my research, I used the four wings but I made two out of fire which at first were to represent the fiery nature of the sword, but I ended up putting a flaming aura around the blade anyways. The helmet is purely aesthetic, however the "eyes" are in fact the Scutum Fidei or Shield of the Faith: a symbol which is meant to explain the trinity in a simple, visual way).

The next step is the inking, which will probably see some small changes but other wise I'm quite satisfied with the design. Naturally it will be larger than the Seraph tattoo but it will on my left forearm.

Feel free to let me know what you think...

the war rages on...

2009-07-20T11:01:00.000-07:00

So now July's sun has almost set....and I still have so much to do....

This thesis is killing me, but at least an end is in sight.

Here's the near finished versions of the other shirt design and the poster design for the Oh, Sleeper campaign titled "Bandage Head" and "Charge!" respectively. I'm still working on the type...that being the most difficult part of it all and the aspect I am the least confident in as I have no training in it all. It's pretty much a matter of trial and error for me.

Im in the middle of the Hammock works, and I will have material from that to throw up here soon.

I also have nearly finished the pencil drawing for my next tatoo! It's in a similar vein to the Seraph on my right arm but even more detailed and larger. It is in fact my representation of a Cherub (which is not a fat little flying baby for all you misinformed, that is in reality whats called a putto. Somewhere in history they were confused.) I'm planning on scanning it in tomorrow and I should have it up either then or wed.

Lay down or charge the line

2009-05-17T15:17:00.000-07:00

Salutations....

Lots of things going on lately...ah life...

Despite that, Im nearly finished with the first package of work for Oh Sleeper. Ive posted here the near complete design of the gasmask soldier piece. I decided to use hand painted brush strokes for the red butcher X instead of the digital one....much better...

Also, Ive added a hand painted background texture made using roughed up brushes.

The "Lay down or charge the line" text is a lyric from the final song in Oh, Sleeper's "When I am God" album, and the primary inspiration for this body of work.

more to appear soon....ciao

Gasmask and Bandage Head....

2009-04-15T23:11:00.000-07:00

Cheerio....

Ive done some renders on two of the three soldiers for my Oh, Sleeper work. These aren't necessarily the final versions....but Im getting close...

Soldier number three will be up soon...hope you chaps enjoy...

Godspeed ~

Catch for us the foxes...

2009-03-04T16:27:00.000-08:00

In the midst of the triple triad as I call it (see the last post if you dont know what that is), I have found some time here and there to do some more leisurely work. Naturally, after the unanimous success of my seraph tattoo Ive most definitely been thinking about getting more. A few ideas have begun to surface, and so I thought I would reveal them to you my multitudinous viewers.

One of the ideas swirling about in my maelstrom of a mind derives from both a bible verse and lyric from one of my favorite musical collectives : mewithoutYou.

" Catch for us the foxes in the vineyard...."

The vineyard is symbolic of our bodies, our temples, our spirits while the foxes represent the evils attempting to infiltrate them. If I were to get this tatoo, it would feature three of such canids making there way up my left arm from my wrist to lower tricep....like they are on the prowl. Two of such early sketches are featured here.

Ive also been playing with the idea of more biblical symbolic creatures...such as the seven-eyed slain Lamb from Revelation. As they make their way from my head to the paper, I will be sure to put them up.

Godspeed....

Maiden sentries and flora spewing helmets

2009-03-01T20:30:00.000-08:00

Cheerio...

At long last, I have a bit of new material to put up. As of late I have been occupied with the triple triad of Design Methodologies, my website, and my thesis. It can be a bit of a pickle balancing the three, but Ive tried to really push the website work so I can get that up and running and begin sending linked resumes out.

Ive really tried to focus on making the template for the website intriguing and indicative of my work, so the viewer is immediately bombarded with Smollustration (which Ive created solely for the website instead of using existing work). Here is an early idea for a layout, and the sketches involved.

Long three months ahead of me.....

~ L ~

New piece...

2009-01-07T14:55:00.000-08:00

Hello...

Here is another piece I have completed in the style I have been working in as of late. This one was also a gift...I'll let everyone guess who it was for. Oh by the way, if you didn't know you can click on the image to get an in depth look.

For this one, I began with the word "Amor" because I deeply love the person featured in this piece. The flowers she holds are a type of "amomum" derived from the page. The branches behind her are sycamores, because "Amos" was a dresser of sycamores.

There will be much more work soon to come, both old and new. It will be truly a busy final quarter. God be with you all...

a return....

2008-12-28T13:25:00.000-08:00

So it has been a little over a year since I last touched this...oh do I have to call it a blog? In light of someone else's..er..blog...I have decided to continue mine, with a somewhat modified purpose. Though I will still include some musings, I'm going to place a greater focus on art I am working on. So to begin, I will feature here two of my most recent works. Both of these were done as gifts to my mother and grandmother, respectively. The two were inked and painted on old encyclopedia pages. I simply browsed the encyclopedia (this one was the letter "A") searching for interesting entries.....

The first piece here comes from the word "Adrastia". Adrastia is another name for the Greek goddess Nemesis, symbolic of justice and retribution. The Egyptians placed her above the moon to watch over the deeds of man. She is also often portrayed wielding a bridle, symbolic of her power over the destinies of mortals.

The second one is derived from the word " ablution" which means a ceremonial washing or bathing. Perhaps the most well known form of this is baptism.

in regards to myself...

2007-12-10T10:59:00.000-08:00

It is raining outside my window, and it is quite peaceful....

Water.....Something so simple yet we take it for granted so skillfully....Thousands of people will die from drinking dirty water, yet many of us clutch at our precious bottled water and shun tap like its cyanide. Oh what some people would give to stick their burdened heads beneath a corroded spigot on the side of one of our over-privileged houses! Because of this, I will be content with drinking from our "poisonous" tap. Please pray for those whose thirst is met with death and disease....pray for all of us...me especially...for action....

- simply a man

2007-12-05T15:13:00.000-08:00

This is a sort of test to see how images work here. But yes...this is a beautiful piece of work by Frantisek Kupka that I saw in the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston this past Thursday. Love it...

and so this begins...

2007-12-05T15:08:00.000-08:00

I'm giving this whole blog thing another try after laying to rest my xanga account many moons ago. As always, I don't know what form this little endeavor will take, but I think simply it will be about sharing...myself. Christ's love to all who read this