Sketchy

Here's a fun samurai design...
And did I steal this layout from a movie poster or something? Someone call me on it. I recognize it's pretty cliché imagery, but still...


Oh, and a free Rooftops Recordings CD to the first person who tells me which movie I happened to be watching when I scribbled out this gem:


???

-Mike

More old sketches

Had some fun looking through old sketchbooks recently. Here are three pen & ink sketches from Vincent's in Worcester. Nothing incredibly special about these images, now that I really think about it. Pure nostalgia. I used to visit the bar on a semi-regular basis and just sit there and draw, and have a meatball sandwich. Good times.

-Mike

Unused Artwork!

Not everything works out like you hope it will. Such is the case for these few pieces. Here are a few examples of sketches (occasionally finished art) that were intended for a project or two that, for some reason or another, fell through. Fortunately, there shouldn't going to be too many posts dedicated to this sort of work. First off, below is a painting I did in the hopes of landing a children's book deal:

Then a mural, featuring Latin pop-stars. I added the sketch to a photo of the actual wall in Photoshop so we could see how it would fit. Unfortunately, the client seemed more excited by my ability to do that than the sketch itself.


Come on! Look at Santana! He's rocking out!


Here are two from a proposed science book that apparently fell through on the funding end:

Must I go on? Probably not. But I'm going to, anyway. Here are just a few more sketches, and in some cases pre-sketches - now that's planning - that never became full blown pieces.










I guess that's it for now. I'm sure all of these incomplete projects were launched, both by the clients and myself, with honest intentions, but nevertheless wound up in a stack in my closet in this post. I admit to being pretty frustrated at the time when the projects were unceremoniously dropped, but regardless, and only in retrospect, I can appreciate the experience gained with each one, at least for providing the motivation to get to work on new comps and techniques I wouldn't have otherwise.

Then again, get me to start a project without a down-payment or a kill-fee at this point and I'll send this guy after ya:


Gr.

-Kung Fu Mike

Bocado Tapas Wine Bar pt.3 - more nudes

Special thanks to "Mama-Menemy" for keeping better track of my artwork than I do! Here are some photos of the rest of the nudes for Bocado from their original hanging in 2006. The frames have glass protecting the artwork, so there's a little problem with glare/reflections on the surface which made them difficult to photograph, but it's not so bad.






I didn't write about it in my last post, but I thought it took some guts for the owner, Michael Covino, to hang these in a restaurant dining room. A lot of people would be too up-tight to put nudes up in a public setting, tasteful or not. Thankfully, it went over really well, no one seemed to mind, and I've been fortunate enough to have my artwork on display in a successful restaurant for about five years now. So, thanks to Mike for the opportunity, and thanks to Mom for sending these photos to me!

-Kung Fu Mike

Bocado Tapas Wine Bar Artwork pt. 2 - nudes

Quick post today! Once again I'm realizing how few photos I have of these. I'm sure if I dug around a bit more I could find some more, but here are two pictures of pen & ink sketches I did for Bocado at the same time as I was finishing the paintings. I remember thinking that I was going to blow through these in an hour each or so but wound up staying up really late the night before they were supposed to be done. Sometimes anxiety about the quality of the work shows up at the worst possible moment. The model wishes to remain anonymous, and therefore has no face in any of these...



One of the original sketches:


And then I ran out of images to use. So next is a sketch for one of the dancers from an earlier post:


This next sketch I think deserves more explanation than I'm prepared to give. I put it up here because I'd promised some nudity in this post and haven't really been able to follow through! It's a little dirty I guess, but in my defense it was for a client who'd wanted a sexy new image for his computer repair business. Previously, he'd been fortunate enough to have a friend who would do this sort of thing for free, so when we got to the pricing part of the negotiation, I suddenly stopped hearing from him. Eeeenteresting. Oh, well.


-Kung Fu Mike

Artwork for Bocado Tapas Wine Bar

I approached this fine art project from the perspective of a commercial artist. I was commissioned by the owners of Bocado (click title for a link to their website) to do a number of Spanish themed paintings and drawings for their dining rooms and bar. It was a great experience and has been terrific promotion for my work in the Worcester area since its completion.





Upon starting this post, I realized what an awful job I've done at photo-documenting my work for Bocado. To attempt to make up for it, here are a few details from the paintings while still in progress:



























Up next: I'll leave you with what we all came here to see - hardcore nudity!

-Kung Fu Mike