Mega Man, Home Photos...

Yeah. Mega Man. This game was the bane of my childhood. I have still never beat the first one. The sequels are still nearly impossible for me (I use guides to figure out which bosses to fight in which order - yeah I know that's pretty damn weak :( . For the uninitiated, that thing on his arm is his blaster (Mega-blaster?), not a nub.

I think Mega Man is iconic. In fact, I think many of these retro games had iconic characters and artwork that were screaming to be reproduced at a larger size in paint. So, I did Mega Man. He is 18x30 inches, acrylic on gessoed panel. I used the orange background to contrast the blue and make the whole thing a bit more vibrant. My original background color was violet/purple but it didn't send Mega Man into the foreground, it all kinda just ran together.

This photo is from my living room of my apartment. I did these paintings as a sort of set - I think its pretty easy to see how they go together. Buzzy Beetle and the Goomba need some touch up work, in fact, the entire dark blue part has to be repainted. I used an acrylic paint called Master's Touch PHTHALOCYANINE BLUE (drug of the future) and it sucked. After three layers the paint was still spotty. In direct sunlight it looked terrible. I have used other Master's Touch colors, some with okay results, some with terrible results. I think they work well if they are mixed with a higher quality brand like Grumbacher or Liquitex. I don't know. I'm still figuring out which ones work and which ones don't.

Whoa, that's  at a weird angle. That's because the floor in the apartment is slanted slightly. I tried to compensate with the tripod but I guess I failed. This is Mega Man and Blooper just above the TV alter.

Okay, so I set up a background and a header and I have the blog pretty much how I want it. I decided not to get encumbered by the look of the blog, tweaking everything to perfection and getting caught up in that endless loop of some unattainable goal - the goal of which I don't even know. Anyway, I thought I would put up a couple of my recent works to get the ball rolling. So, here we go...

Up first is this flying fish guy that used to always bust my balls. He's from Super Mario Bros. and as far as I can gather, his name is Cheap Cheap. This piece is 18x18 inches. It is acrylic on gessoed panel. I realized, after taking these photos and cropping them that they have some problems, the photos I mean. This is a work in progress and I hope to learn a few things about shooting images of artwork.

This piece is Bullet Bill from Super Mario Bros. (see the theme going on here?). Bullet Bill is 18x18 inches, acrylic on gessoed panel. This photo looks pretty good to me except for the distortion of the image. In actuality, the painting is not skewed.

This last piece is of one of the most irritating SMB characters of all time. I looked him up and learned his name is Blooper. He is that squid thingy found in the water levels. Blooper here is 18x30 inches, acrylic on gessoed panel.

Alright. So, there is my first real post with some of what I hope to feature on this blog. I love doing these paintings (although they require a good deal of time and attention to detail and I find it relaxing). My big concern was to try and get the lines as straight as possible so that they look like pixels. That's why, after playing with various surfaces, I opted for this smooth faux wood paneling (I'll figure out the specific name and post it later) because it lets me get a smooth finish without the paint falling into the tiny divots of traditional canvas. That being said, I want these pieces to be paintings, not flat pixel art. So you can see brush strokes (although not in the picture) and texture which is unlike a digital pixel. Its a crossover I guess. What I find funny, and this may be my lack of knowledge/practice with a camera, is that these painting look much better in actuality than they do in the photos. Later I'll post some pics of things hanging on my walls.

Getting the blog in order, testing, making backgrounds and seeing what looks good and what looks not good.