Time for Some Tough Love

Thought I'd kick this entry off with some shots of some of my work since I'm sure many of you are here for the art more than the words and I haven't really started painting for the initiative yet.  This is one my forays into "serious art" I go here reluctantly but I know that not everybody wants jokey art hanging in their living room (God bless 'em if they do though!) and I really want to sell some work from this.  That's like, the definition of selling out, I know but I gots bills to pay yo. Anyway, there's got to be a middle ground where I can be true to myself and still have other people like it enough for their walls.  That's part of what I hoping to find.

My ArtPrize 2011 entry entitled "Famed Portals", parodies of Chagall's "I and the Village" and Matisse's "Dance"

The original is on top, mine is on the bottom. Had a little fun with the face of the leftmost dancer, since her face didn't show in the original I used the visage of another of Matisse's works "The Green Line"

The original is on the left. In my version the subjects of the painting show awareness of the viewer

The works opened away from the wall to reveal what the subjects in the painting see through the portal that is the painting

Got a LOT of my work giving me this look

     I've made declarations about getting into a real art regimen about a million times before.  Some of you closer to me may have heard about my six days/ six genre a week plan as recently as a few months ago.  I have a line of greeting cards that have needed tweaking for about a year now.  I have a comic book I've been in the script phase on for about seven years. (the most recent attempt got halfway through the storyboarding phase)  I have a web cartoon that I recorded dialog for and downgraded it to a newspaper comic of which I have only ever drawn two strips.  The details of these well thought out, but poorly executed plans and projects are unimportant.  The point is that since school I have done less and less artwork every year despite my intentions otherwise.  I'm hoping that this plan will work where the others failed and I think the key is pressure.
     It's not that I haven't finished any projects since graduating art school, but the ones that get done are the pieces that someone was counting on to be completed, either because they were paying or because I had some sort of obligation to complete them like as gifts for people whom I couldn't afford to buy for (or couldn't decide what else to get them) but that expectant pressure is what eventually gets my butt off the couch and a brush in my hand.

       So, for this current endeavor to work, I need anyone who reads this and has even a passing interest in my work to apply pressure to me.  I know it's a bit of an imposition and I'm not asking anyone to call me day and night and nag me about why aren't I painting.  Just leave a comment for me here, send me a facebook message or email.  To my friends and family who have my number, send me a text.  A small encouragement, a comment on what I post, just a casual "How's that painting thing you were gonna do goin'?"
     If I know that if there is even one person in the world that is counting on me to forge ahead with this, someone who I am letting down by not doing what I said I was gonna do here, then it'll be that much harder to treat this as business as usual and go play Skyrim instead.

Probably not the kind of tough love this guy doles out

      If saying nice or caring things isn't your thing then I give you permission to absolutely bust my chops on this, post me up, make me feel like crap if I don't keep it up, I'll deserve it if I fail after being complacent for so long.  I need any kind of help I can get on this and even negative attention is attention.
     The nice thing about having so many projects of different levels of completion is that I will have absolutely no problem coming up with 26 projects to work on. So there's a silver lining if ever I saw one. I don't want to start painting until I have a plan for at least half the works that I am going to complete so I am well under way before I start to get that aimless lost feeling of "whats next?" I'll have to dig through my old and half completed stuff and get back to you with my plan. I know it seems like I am stalling but I just really want to set myself up to win right out of the gate. I'm not starting the clock on the 79 days till I am all set to go.  Next post will include some of the projects I will be taking on.