Anjelica Huston – Digital watercolor and stylus

Warhol-Sunglasses
What I like about Andy Warhol is that he knew how to "photoshop" before there was Photoshop.

Simply Liz by Andy Warhol

Warhol’s portrait of Elizabeth Taylor disappointed art investors this week when it sold for less than hoped for. Auctioned for $23.6 million, it seems to me that the painting is holding its value.

Small wonder that former Fed chairman Alan Greenspan mentioned artwork in the same breath as real estate and investment portfolios when he wrote, "Stock and bond prices, homes, commercial real estate, paintings, and most everything else joined in the boom." Actor Hugh Grant, who sold the painting, realized a 665% increase over the six years he held on to his investment.

For those of you who are interested in art for art’s sake, Simply Liz’s sister painting Red Liz lives at the Museum of Modern Art in San Francisco. To my own disappointment, she wasn’t actually on display the last time I went up there, so you may want to call ahead.

Warhol-Sunglasses 2×2

Flirt 4

A variation on the Flirt model (last month), incorporating a few facial "ticks" to make it seem more life-like.

Two paintings of rock guitarist Vivian Campbell-Digital Media

According to Steven Samuel, “Digital art is still relatively unknown or even accepted fully by the arts community, but this will change.” Sam first creates a pencil drawing, which is scanned into Photoshop, and then uses a computer to create layer upon layer of color.

Guitar hero Vivian Campbell, depicted here, performed with a number of well-known 80′s rock bands, before joining Def Leopard. Campbell prefers playing a Gibson Les Paul these days, but I am pretty sure the guitar in these paintings (two superimposed) is a Kramer.

Guitar player using Whammy Bar-Digital Media

“This is a photograph that my son Michael posed for with his guitar. There is very little detail, but it is not required!” Sam lives in South Wales, UK.

Flirt view 1

Since I have not been to a live sketching class in a few months, I thought it time to take what I have learned, and apply it back to the computer. Specifically, a computer program might start you off with a rigid and perfectly formed "model," but it will take some doing to achieve a naturalistic pose.

Flirt view 2

Yes, but is it sexy? That shadow across the back is not something you’d normally see in a photograph, but our computer model is trapped in 3D space, and the software renders it nicely.

Flirt view 3

There is no escaping the mannequin-like appearance from this view. On the other hand, a live model will almost never look a sketch artist straight in the eye.

Gearhead – May 23, 2003

Wet Edges – Nov 6, 2003

I would have guessed Painter, but it’s Adobe Photoshop.

Kryptonite Gas – Jul 14, 2002

Found on a write-able CD archive disc, I can’t remember why I called it that. Corel Painter.

Supposed Organic Life on Mars – False Color

My online buddy Mac Tonnies and I have been blogging since before they called it that. I have long since re-engineered my site to run WordPress, and "broke the link" to these old images, but the Internet never forgets and the relentless programmatic "spiders" that cataloge the Web for "relevance" came looking for them.

A long time ago, in Internet time, Arthur C. Clarke made an offhand email remark about "tree-like" objects on Mars, which appeared to have no geological explanation. He might have known better, because once they’re on the network your words can be cross-referenced endlessly. At that time I thought, "Wouldn’t it be fun to show what organic life on Mars might look like?" (Keep in mind that these Mars things are really, really huge, and that this image was "colorized" by nothing but my imagination.)

Lowell Maps the Canals of Mars

Here we see astronomer Percival Lowell, as he meticulously documents the so-called canals on Mars. If you go in for high-tech, scientific "what-if" speculation, Mac Tonnies over at Posthuman Blues offers up the best around. But I am warning you, Mac, that anything you say (or imagine) could come back to haunt you.

iTours Booth at Convention and Trade Show

eWarrior digital art prints dominate a room. Silicon Valley’s 2007 Real Estate Trade Show and Convention was themed "Shoot for the Stars." Three of my rock icon paintings were there to honor famous celebrities.

Immaterial Girl?

Popularity comes and goes like the tide, doesn’t it? Is this famous blonde the Immaterial Girl? One attendee confided that she liked the painting technique, but didn’t particularly care for “her.”

Classic Rocks

Another guy, commenting on the artwork seen in and around high tech offices, said he’d rather see these any day.