This is a representation of the mythical Mother Earth, or Gaia as she is sometimes called. Her hands in the clouds and legs in the water show the hydrological cycle. Her body is the color of arctic ice, ranging from white to deep blue. On her person you can see a human hand brushing the surface of the water. Those are typical Northern California hills in the background, and it appears that the water line is rising.

If you enjoyed the movie An Inconvenient Truth and are interested in areas susceptible to global warming, you can view dynamic maps created about climate change and sea level.

It is a rare treat to be working with digital stylus in Silicon Valley. At the last sketching class I went to, I met a guy who was working on the beta version of Painter 10. You might think he was working on a computer as well, but no, he was there with sketchpad.

Dozens of ArtCars converged on Silicon Valley for the day, at the San Jose Museum of Art. The vehicles, transformed by their owners into mobile, public art, moved on to Berkeley the next day to complete their 10th anniversary festival.

The cars ranged from re-worked wrecks to polished, custom-made designs. In fact, one of the exhibitors was gluing more do-dads to her car when I arrived. Watch the slide show captions, because I included some photos from a few years back. The red, high-heeled shoe and guitar-shaped motorcycle were not at this year's event.

The fm mini-player was specially coded for this exhibit. You can swap between slide show and panorama. You should know how to work the buttons by now. Please leave a bug report comment if you "break" anything.

Jagged rocks, tide pools and fog are typical of Northern California beaches. Moss Beach is situated just north of Half Moon Bay.

Yes, my landscapes are interpreted, or photoshopped. The player lets you stop or pan the image if you want to.

Outdoor panoramic view of wooded rock formations at Castle Rock State Park in the Santa Cruz mountains of Northern California.

Try out the ForthMedia mini-player, now in beta, right here, right now.

Los Gatos, live sketching, August 14, 2006.

Born, they are soft and supple. Dead, they are stiff and hard.
-Lao Tzu

Work in progress, plus detail.

Readers might enjoy a description of what is posted here. The first image, top left, shows a live sketch made some time last month. (Same day as "Spontaneous," below.) It is a software simulation of artwork done in charcoal and watercolor. There is some disfiguration in the buttock area, same as might happen on paper in real life if too much water was applied. All is not lost, however, because in the world of digital painting, it can be fixed.

The middle image shows the same sketch, after some touch-up. Even though the sketch was done more than a month ago, the artist's palette of colors is saved in the file somewhere, so color can be sampled and then re-applied somewhere else on the canvas. That's what all those splotches are.

The image top right is a zoomed-in detail of the finished work below.

Detail.

"All artists bear the imprint of their time but the greatest artists are those in which this stamp is most deeply impressed."
- Henri Matisse

This is a "study" inspired by a Self-Portait of Matisse.

Los Gatos, live sketching & brushwork. Six minute pose.

20 minute pose

Digital paint. San Jose, CA.

Los Gatos, live sketching & brushwork. Six minute pose.

Below, I used my swirling, "singularity" textures to see how they look on skin.

The universe is a vast net of energy rays -Hua Hu Ching

"The Field also reveals a radical new biological paradigm-that on our most fundamental level, the human mind and body are not distinct and separate from their environment, but a packet of pulsating energy constantly interacting with this vast energy sea."

This print of Macbot Singularity is being prepared for acquisition in Los Angeles. At 40"x40", it's twice the size of the special edition version recently on exhibit in San Jose. (That's a painter's mask top right, for reference.)

The subject of this painting, Mac Tonnies, is someone I have never met face-to-face, so you'll find it interesting that Mac was in Los Angeles for "four days of fun in the sun" as this print was being made. Mac is back, and we will be down there this weekend, so we did not quite manage to synchronize a visit.

Mac's blog has a good discussion of what is meant by the Singularity: "I'm extraordinarily wary of the 'Rapture' mentality that's taken over the debate..."

The hands are an important focal point of this work. Here, the heart-shaped outline of the flower is more apparent. An obvious visual reference, along with the lily itself, to spiritual purity.

For this version, I have lightened Lily's eyes. I think the change makes her look like Tyra Banks or Vanessa Williams, but the remblance is entirely superficial. People often ask, "Who is that," or "Is that so-and-so?" Lily is an all digital creation. You can see a concept sketch for this work, below.

Los Gatos, May 15, 2006. 20 minutes.

eWarrior: I'm interested in creating some "contemporary" nudes and struggling (I guess) with what "contemporary" means anyway. Genetic engineering and the intersection of humans and technology are themes which I think I can visually convey.

Mac: I think the trick is how to convey these very important themes subtly, as opposed to the "in-your-face" school of transhuman art (which has always bothered me because most of it seems excessively fetishistic.)

eWarrior: Exactly. Something like this: the loteks in Wm Gibson's old stories did things to themselves in a fetishistic way, like getting real shark's teeth. In-your-face. Time passes, people get used to it, pretty soon some super-model is sporting the "next big thing." And she looks cute. It's what the super-model does that I'm after.

Mac: I'm facinated by the whole supermodel thing, a minor obsession that resulted in an unfinished (but interesting) short story about genetically engineered fashion models. I think models are the Delphic oracles of the cybernetic age.

eWarrior: Poised, self-confident, and in control. See the same model, later on, "behind the scenes," and she is a "mere mortal" after all. Something else was there.

Mac: Right!

One thing I was quickly reminded of when I began live sketching of nude models was that few people fit into the ideal presented to us by the mass-market beauty and fitness meme. If you look at Renior's Bathers, from about 100 years ago, you can see how contemporary ideas of beauty are always changing. You can browse the archive for when this face showed up last year. I think the reason this painting was put aside is that I couldn't make it "work" without putting more weight on the body.

Los Gatos, March 20, 2006. It rained.

The Electric Warrior is proud to present an exhibit of all digital artwork at Starbucks, The Alameda and Julian in San Jose. Click this way for more about the exhibit.

Who's the next Pop Rock Icon? While you're there, you can enter the name of your favorite performance artist or group, and help select the subject of a new painting. Silicon Valley's favorite will be posted to this blog.

Los Gatos, February 27, 2006

The Internet meticulously clocks time. Somwhere in the world, it's eleven-thirty point fity-seven seconds a.m.

Orchard Valley Coffee, Campbell, February 23, 2006

Digital media.

I copied these ants from Salvador Dali's famous "melting clock" painting, The Persistence of Memory, using Flash as a drawing tool. It turns out he did something similar, called The Ants. Dali once said "I always encourage people to reproduce my paintings because I find the reproductions much better than the originals."

This is what a canvas looks like, partially framed. See those folds at the bottom (near the red stapler handle)? They usually smooth out, but in this case it's best to remove and replace a staple. The whole process is kind of like riding a bike: you have to do it, not talk about it.

I recently talked to a photographic artist who tried stretching digital canvases onto frames. He wont' do it anymore. He's no slouch, either; his other specialty is casting bronze statues. So, I guess you can tell that framing your own artwork isn't all that fun to do. These are four wooden frames, for four canvases, for an upcoming show in Silicon Valley.

These images were studies for "Electric Gypsy" and "Imagine" paintings. Here, Lennon has glasses instead of shades. (More in the 2005 Archive)

"Cactus Flowers" was awarded first place for January Artist of the Month, at the Los Gatos Art Association.

Yes, I am still sketching with digital stylus. This is unfinished, but I like it so far...

Different software produces different results. The easiest way for me to explain that is to create something and show you. These prints of two still lifes made using Photoshop resemble watercolors. 17"x22" on fine art paper.