Earlier this week, I had the pleasure of contributing to a public painting project called Paint For Peace in downtown Albuquerque. Spearheaded by the fine folks at OT Circus, the project aims to liven up the drab and desolate-looking Central corridor after a majority of businesses closed as a result to the Covid-19 outbreak. Windows and doors have been locked and boarded up for months, especially after tensions escalated when a peaceful protest turned violent, resulting in broken windows and damaged properties.

In an attempt to reclaim some of the overall visual appeal of downtown Albuquerque, a collective of local artists were recruited to make some lemonade out of life's lemons. With approval by the city and consent from the owners of each business, we were each urged to lay claim to any of the plywood boards affixed to the building and do what we do best. Some of us even made it onto this week's news report! https://www.kob.com/albuquerque-news/artists-create-murals-on-boarded-up-downtown-storefronts/5786615/?fbclid=IwAR0DZZKJS5s_KcGMEUhZsfE1dhum9rtifQVMJK7z5sIB0ezsFqBCR5ZFXuA

Needless to say, I'm ecstatic to have been offered such an opportunity, as developing the large-scale mural and public art aspect of my repertoire is one of my priorities as an artist. Of course, it's a pleasure to have something up alongside some of the other dope artists from around Albuquerque for such a good cause, but if and after our nation regains some sort of normalcy beyond this pandemic, the boards will come down and the art will be auctioned off. I'll have more info on that as things progress. In the meantime, if you're in or around downtown ABQ and have about ten minutes to spare, do yourself a favor and take a cruise down Central Avenue for a free art show. You won't regret it!

Shout outs to: 
OT Circus
Jennifer DeSantis
Victoria Van Dame
Jessica Nicole
The Paint For Peace artist  team
​City of Albuquerque
All the business owners who gave the green light to us artists

I must once again apologize to the folks who have been anxiously awaiting tattoo designs, drawings and paintings from me. A pretty epic art show suddenly caught my attention and sounded too damn good to pass up. I have been putting in work on a skateboard deck over the last few weeks and today I finally finished the thing, right on time for the deadline.

Because of my late participation, this piece was challenging. For the first few weeks, I had no idea in which direction I was going to take it and I was seriously second-guessing the first few layers of paint, especially my sudden decision to jump mid-way from acrylics to oils. Luckily, oil paints play real well off of acrylics, (but not the other way around) so I just kept pushing it until the image slowly started to reveal itself. I'm really glad I kept going because it turned out better than I had hoped.

I've uploaded a sequence of photos, stages from start to finish, showing how the painting evolved. Haven't figured out a title, yet, but I've been bouncing between 'Iron Galaxy' (a nod to Cannibal Ox, a favorite hip hop duo of mine) or 'Galaxy Knuckles' (one of the many self-acclaimed aliases of the hilarious hip hop blogger, http://bigghostlimited.com/)

I've also uploaded the flyer for the show, which cusps the last day of May and the first of June. To date, there have been over 300 submissions from artists around the globe, so it's going to be pretty huge. In addition, one of my all time favorite LA graffiti artists, MEAR ONE, has not only submitted his own piece, but will be at the opening event painting live. This all happens at Refuge PDX.

If you need something to do on the last Saturday night of May, swing by and check it out!

Thanks to ArtDeckCo and Future Shock for the last-minute opportunity and for the board to paint on.

Thanks for reading!

This is, more or less, a short documentation of the developmental process for my skateboard deck piece "Panacea."  I made sure to take pictures as best I could along the way to show the progression of it to completion. I might start doing this for more of my pieces..maybe even some video. 

I really didn't know how to approach this project which, to be honest, was spurred solely by a call-to-artists post I found on craigslist for an all skateboard deck art show at a local coffee shop. I was juggling the potential mediums with which to start working and really had no idea what the hell I was going to do until I started doodling with my Prismacolor pencils.

Without any further delay, here is a glimpse from start to finish:

I obviously had to have a flat surface to work on, so I disassembled the hardware from the deck and started sanding off the graphics and grinding the nicks down with an orbital sander.  Meanwhile, the trucks, wheels, nuts, and bolts all aspired to a greater calling in life...

This is my usual method for referencing things like finger placement and muscle structure. There is no body that is better to study than your own..

This is how the preliminary sketch looked; I used a color that wasn't too bold for the outline and mapped out the overall composition. And, as in the photos above, I used my own wincing face for reference.

Adding brown tones for definition, shading and volume...

I started to add Rose to the cheeks and pads in the hands and fingers. I believe there are also touches of yellow, but it's hard to see in this picture.

Here is where I started working on the octopus and filling in the flesh, both blue and beige. The best thing about using Prismacolor pencils is the ability to blend the colors and push the pigments around when layered.

The development of the octopus' texture was achieved using small, painstakingly applied circles..

I wasn't sure how to treat the perimeter of the drawing, so I went ahead and started laying down some graffiti-style arrows and worked my way around, not too heavily, until I got to the top. To ensure that the weight of the border remained on the bottom, I merely shaded in some of the wood grain pattern above the shoulders that seemed to lift up toward the halo.

The tentacles hanging beneath the shoulders was an interesting way to close in the chest and give the figure a sort of rib cage.

The finished product!

"Panacea" 2012 Prismacolor on wood.