An examination of Michael Kerbow’s dinosaur paintings in his “Late Capitalism” series.
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The Long-legged, Big-footed, Headless Giants of Steven Beercock
I am the least constant, most confused person outside my safe rectangle of canvas. Safe because it is mine, my world, my rules, my flat Earth. ~ Steven Beercock. Seeing his work is like finding your uncle’s paintings in a shed; then noticing how weird they are and how eccentric he is; and then slowly…
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Death’s Dream Kingdom 03: The Monster In The Mirror
The third in the series, and I sat on this one for a long time. There were some technical difficulties towards the end, such as in making the monster’s appendages persuasively symmetrical (working anatomically and compositionally). If I share an earlier version, you’ll understand why. Below you can see I’d drawn in a couple appendages…
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Before and After Process
One of the oldest techniques I use to invent imagery is to just make a bunch of marks and see what I see. I sometimes make a bunch of thumbnail sketches, and then choose whichever one inspires me at the moment. I made about a dozen thumbs before making my most recent piece (above right…
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Death’s Dream Kingdom 02: Lazarus’ Carapace
This kind of piece stands on its own, needs no placard, no description, no interpretation, no translation, no perusing a CV, no background or context, and no assaying the significance of the biology of the artist. The only reason to read any further is if you are curious to know more. Sometimes it seems like…
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Death’s Dream Kingdom 01: Salamandrine
It’s just a wee bit odd to propose this as the first in a new series, as this is a core example of the type of art I do going back decades, including the technique (though I used to do this in charcoal). Let me just dredge up one of those real quick. The reason…
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The tantalizingly Mysterious Painted Figures of Amy Regutti
One of the good things left about the Internet and social media is that we can still discover artists we appreciate on our own, before they become popular. Amy Regutti (a.k.a. “spacethrob” on Instagram), with her deceptively simple, brightly-colored, and peculiar paintings of mannequin-like, animated figures is one of the more unique artistic voices I’ve…
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New Art (#49) ~ Alienscream
I’ve been picking away at this one for a while, abandoned it a couple times, and finally finished it. It was more difficult than my prior piece for this series (below), and the main difference is just that I used a smoother brush. The smoother brush is more technical and demanding in terms of rendering…
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New Art (#48) ~The Giant’s Den
This is a style of B&W drawing I return to again and again. Not only have I done at least 10 using the same approach recently, I used to use the same technique for charcoal drawings 25 years ago. The procedure is super simple and direct, and it relies entirely on my imagination, memory, and…
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New Art: Selfies From Alternate Universes # 25
Hi kids. It’s your Uncle Eric. I’m back with another image in this series, and I know you’ve been dyin’ t’ see it. If you don’t know, all of these digital paintings are based on my humble visage after feeding it through the ever popular neural network that is Faceapp. Now, your uncle has been…
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Instagram Gem O’ Th’day #1: Charlie Immer
Because I find some of the most striking visual art when prowling through people’s Instagram posts. @charlieimmer Don’t be deceived by the comically horrific subject matter, this is a serious and sophisticated achievement in fine art painting. Just stop and notice how the artist — Charlie Immer — has negotiated illusionistic three-dimensional space. Look at…
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New Art (#47) ~ with a Galapagos Marine Iguana
It’s a bit of a miracle folks. I haven’t added to this series since November 7th, and I haven’t been able to make art for about 2 months. I gave away my monitor when I moved home to America. I couldn’t stay in the U.S. because of some unforeseen circumstances, so moved (back) to Thailand.…
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Eerie Alfred Kubin: Forgotten Pioneer of Symbolism, Expressionism, and Surrealism
Here a new art was thrown open to me, which offered free play for the imaginative expression of every conceivable world of feeling.~ Alfred Kubin (upon seeing prints by Max Klinger). If this work from 1903 doesn’t seem really weird to you, and in a good way, with its bizarre crab fishing babies out of…
Read MoreNew Art (#45): Now is the Season of the Witch.
Yup, this is #45 of images all made from my imagination, and unpremeditated. And this means there’s a lot of subconscious influence. I don’t know that I would have deliberately thought of that weird, striped creature, who is striped or entwined by snaky coils, depending on how you look at it. It’s also bending forward,…
Read MoreVideo explaining my new piece, Ecstatic Communion.
I did this in one shot, and just used my laptop microphone, so the sound quality is not as good as I’ve done in the past. But I cover the main points, and there are some good ones in there. And now I want you to look at this shit: Occasionally I get somewhat dejected…
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New Art (#44): Ecstatic Communion
This one merits some explanation, but I’m working on a video that handles that better than writing about it, because I can zoom in and out, and highlight areas I want to discuss. In the mean time, better to access it through the eyes than via verbal/written language, in the same way it’s better to…
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New Art (#43): Gorgon-Odalisque
Look if you dare. Do the typical swipe before even blinking once. But beware if you linger. This is one of my darker pieces, dredged up from the subconscious. If you stare at it you start to get sucked in and images will suddenly appear. The more you look, the deeper it gets. There is…
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New Art (#42): Looking With the Inner Eye
Dear Readers: Here’s my latest creation, and I’m having so much fun with this style. It’s a way of working I started decades ago, but which was beaten out of me, metaphorically speaking, in art school. If I were in art school today I don’t think I could get away with churning out this sort…
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New Art: (#41) Ancient Alien Cave Art
Don’t worry my discerning fans, the title is humorous. I don’t think we descended from an alien/ape hybrid. Well, not, y’know, like an alien named Enlil, who was an Ananyaki space commander from planet Nibiru, came and inseminated a bunch of chimps in order to create a hybrid slave force to dig for gold. I…
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New Art: (#40) With Chains
This is #40 in this series so far, and the 9th in which I’m using the same basic technique. I have a very hard time working in a single, definitive style, mostly because one of my primary objectives is exploration, as opposed to the much more popular and practical approach, which is to produce a…
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New Art: (#37) Veil of Dreams
There are some barely visible images in there. You may even find things in there that I don’t see. Here’s all 37 pieces in the series so far in a slide show. Or, if you prefer, you can see them in a click-through gallery: To see other posts about other pieces in this series, go…
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New Art: (#37) Looking at Fire.
Notice the man looks like he’s carved out of wood and that if you look in the fire you will see things yourself. There’s an obvious scary head in there, for starters. Just wanted to mess around with a sort of charcoal-looking drawing technique, which brings me right back to my charcoal drawings from the…
Read MoreAliens, Monsters & Robots
Here are 39 aliens, monsters, and robots (and an android or mutant or two…). I don’t consider myself a sci-fi artist, but these are all sci-fi creatures with a fine art sort of treatment. You an watch the slide show or click in the gallery below it. I recommend watching the slide show through once!…
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New Art: Alien Head
This is a sketch of an alien head for a new series I’m starting. I’m planning all aliens for the next few months. We’ll have to see if I stick with it. The series is unified around the topic, not the medium or style, so allows for stylistic variety. There’s a lot more to it…
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New Art: (#36) The Little Mermaid
In this image I just went about it by making lines in black and white and goring over them and seeing what emerged, but keeping in ambiguous and not trying to make it into anything concrete. The foreground and background shift, and there are overlapping and intersecting parts. If you look at it for a…
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New Art: (#35) Untitled in B&W
The previous 4 pieces I did were digital impasto, and incorporating some 3D modeling. For a little break I decided to do something only using drawing. For this kind of drawing, of which I’ve done several in this series, I just use one brush in Photoshop, and I switch between black and white. It allows…
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New Art: (#33) Death of an Android
Impasto liquid metal paint. Notice how some brush strokes carve into the Android head. If you don’t know my work, this is digital. This is a new direction I’m exploring, and you might expect some more offerings in a similar vein. The technique is something I’m developing on my own and can be a little…
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