The largest painting that I have done so far...

This is a repost of something I had previously written a couple months ago...

I thought I would blizzog about this painting because it is the largest that I have done so far, but also because the material comes with a bit of a story...

My wife used to work for a property management company downtown... one day her maintenance guys were cleaning out their storeroom and came across 3 big panels of masonite with odd stripes of tan paint randomly placed here and there with some black marker 'tags' scribbled over the top of some of the paint. Each masonite panel had been drilled in each of the 4 corners (for hanging, I assume), and all of the corners were all banged up and some were broken. It turns out that the panels had been a 'gift' to one of the previous employees from years before, and they had been left behind, unwanted...

Well when my wife saw the panels she instantly thought of my paintings so she saved them and asked me if I could use them. The next time I was at her office she showed me the panels... I looked at them curiously and began to lay them out on the floor side by side until I could make out the pattern of the stripes in order to try and understand what the 'artist' was trying to do. It ended up being graffiti... I guess... I hesitate to call it that because I am a HUGE fan of graffiti as an art form, and I absolutely HATE to see it poorly done. The 'artist' had used tan paint on brown masonite board, applied it very sloppily in thick random stripes, and THEN with a black marker they had done little 'gang-style tag' signatures here and there all over the pieces. I enjoy graffiti in many forms & styles, and this was pretty lacking in every way... needless to say it was going to be thrown out anyway if I hadn't claimed it for material purposes.

So I took the panels home and they stood against the pole in my garage for months til I was finally ready to start something so large. Because of the size of it I knew that I wanted it to be well done and not just thrown together. I had also debated about whether I would paint 1 piece across the 3 panels as the original 'artist' had done or if wanted to do 3 individual pieces on each of the 3 panels. Well I eventually decided on the latter choice... I laid the panel out on one of my biggest tables and primed it with white to try to help cover the previously applied paint.

Once it was primed, and I had settled on a basic theme, composition & color-scheme, I started the piece... I did the planet textures, shading & highlights on the 1st night and then let it sit for a couple days -- I knew that the rest of the painting would take a little while and I wanted to make sure that I had plenty of time and wasn't rushed. And a couple days later I started again... I finished out the atmosphere, the mountains, & the foreground relatively quickly, definitely sooner than I had expected when I started that night.

As far as the finished product... I ended up being really happy with the piece. I wasn't sure when I started it... I figured I'd either love it, or consider it just another space painting and add it to the pile. But instead I ended up cherishing it. Because of it's size I dont know if it will ever sell -- at least not until I can get it into a gallery or large venue (larger than my usual gig anyway)... but I'm happy just having it for myself - and it's definitely a great size to have at shows because it really gets ppl's attention!

Here's the painting (below), althought the image doesn't really do it justice... now that I'm happy with the 1st panel I can't wait to get started on the others! Perhaps the next panel will be a landscape!

"Untitled - 10347" Reclaimed Masonite, approximately 34x60

I wish it would snow... somewhere else!

Man... I pretty much hate snow... yeah I know - it's hard for a lot of ppl to believe that someone would hate snow - but yeah, I hate snow. And that fact makes living here in the Midwest even more unfortunate. If it were possible to relocate I'd want to live somewhere that's warm year round... I remember many years ago when I was younger I visited southern CA for about 2 weeks in the middle of December... when I left here it was a snowstorm and when I arrived at LAX it was in the upper 50's - in the middle of December. Now that's the kind of weather I'd like to have during the most miserable 2-3 months of the year!

My very first Live Show (reposting from another site)...

This is an old entry that I have posted on another site - but I feel that it belongs here... it's from back when I was first starting out with this art form...

June 12, 2008:
This past weekend, June 7th-8th, I had a booth at a festival called The Good Ol Days. It's an annual event that brings thousands of spectators. My wife and I usually go to the event - this is the first time being part of it. There was approximately 450 vendor booths, a few live bands, food vendors, and other live performances. I was originally given a booth in the middle of a row, but once the chairlady found out what I did she 'upgraded me' to one of the best spots in the festival. She said she realized that I would be more of an attraction than just a regular vendor. Yeah - no pressure there for my first live show! :p

But unfortunately it ended up being one of the windiest Good Ol Days in the festival's history, and I only got to paint once out of both days. It was so windy that some of the vendors' ez-ups were getting ripped apart or broken up. Vendors were losing their crafts and goods to the wind, and some vendors even left the show a day early because of the weather conditions. My family and I spent a majority of the weekend holding down our display so it wouldn't fly across the street! I had cinder blocks on all 4 corners of my ez-up and there were a couple times where they still lifted off the ground. It was nuts! And I had a couple of paintings fly off of my display boards and jack up the corners here and there.

Early Saturday afternoon I was hiding in my booth and I realized that I didn't have a sign for my stuff, so i crouched down between my tables with the intent of making a quick 20x30 sign with a planet, mountains & trees on the right side and then my name on the left side... I started doing the planet, looked up and realized there was about 10 ppl watching me. I kinda smiled a half smile, and started adding stars... looked up and there were a few more ppl... then I started adding mountains & water - still just kind of halfa$$ working 1 side of the board... when I was ready to add the text on the left I looked up and there was close to twenty ppl crowded into my ezup and staring down at me. I kind of made a joke about how I was just making a sign for my booth and there were a few smiles... but I liked the fact that I was finally painting - so I added another planet on the left side w/ more mountains, water, stars etc and blended the 2 sides into each other making one unified painting. Then the wind picked up my booth and blew a couple of my paintings off the table - I jumped up to grab my stuff and everyone kind of dispersed. BUT about an hour later a guy and his wife came back around and asked to purchase the painting that I had done in front of everyone, and they also bought an 11x14 'cross' painting to go with it. That was my first sale for the weekend. =)

Oh and also by the way - we started the festival with 2 walls up on the ezup to help block the wind, but it actually made things WORSE and turned my ezup into more of a big sailboat, so we ended up taking the walls down.

Anyway - all in all I sold 5 paintings: (3)-20x30 paintings and (2)-11x14.

Here's some pics of my booth...

blogging just for the sake of blogging...

It seems that nowadays EVERYONE has a blog and they're blogging about EVERYTHING. No matter what topic you might be interested in chances are you can do a simple search and find thousands of people blogging about it. Granted, some of it might be absolute gibberish or nonsense - but a huge portion of what you find might actually be useful... or entertaining... or at the very least not a complete waste of your time by reading it. In a sense, I too have been adding my 2 cents to the online world of commentary - but to officially call it a 'blog' -- now that's taking 2 steps forward. So here I am -- officially calling it what it is... a blog. Hopefully it will be useful to some... or at least entertaining to others... or at the very minimum perhaps not a complete waste of my reader's time. Please feel free to contact me through the site and let me know if you'd like to see a particular direction or train of thought and... we'll see how it goes. Check back often! ~munden

A bit surreal... but not too bad...

This one's just called 'Helicopters' and a lot of times when I show it the initial reaction is "Why is it called that?"... Some people aren't always the most observent when it comes to art. =)

This is also 20x30, painted on white foamcore.

Military painting...

Here's one of my most recent paintings... finished about a month ago. It was originally a commission for a co-worker -- she said that her significant other wanted the painting to look like a B&W pic from the Band Of Brothers series. Yet when I brought it in to her the first statement out of her mouth was "Where's all the color?" Needless to say I didn't sell it to her and this piece, one of my favorites, is now up For Sale.

It's 20x30, painted on white foamcore, using black and gray, painted to resemble a Band Of Brothers-style picture.

So i'm a newb

New to this and just filling space to see how the layout and blogs will appear and be presented. I'm wondering if this format will work for my purpose.