Merry Christmas!

...and happy holidays! I hope you have a wonderful season and pray mother nature hasn't undone all your travel plans. See you in 2010!

Mr. Fox

I went to see Fantastic Mr. Fox the other day and highly recommend it. If you get tired of formulaic, dumbed down, predictable movies (*cough* Blind Side *cough*), this is for you! Part Raising Arizona, part Royal Tenenbaums, part Wallace and Gromit. I am always so happy to see such creative, original, quirky movies and am glad people are sticking their necks out for such uniqueness. Mr. Fox lies right in that not really for kids, but not quite for adults sector. Perfect for the creative minded adult who never really grew out of childhood (or rather, never fully gave over to 'adulthood'). Wes Anderson has such a personality about him, and his movies are so specific, mix that with awesome stop-motion animation and you have a wonderful film.

A word of warning, it is different, if you know what I mean, but if the thought of an awesome animation doesn't make you excited, go see Blind Side.

Meet Mortimer

Mortimer is the frog who stars in many adventures that are told to a couple of kids by their very imaginative father. Included in the stories are Mr. Beaver-the builder, and the princess Raccoon. I did this painting for a good friend who is trading a snuggly hand-knit baby blanket for it. A fine trade, exclaims Mort!

Also, I've missed illustration friday lately, so here are a couple images for that. I have SO many music inspired paintings, I can't believe I missed the week it was the topic! The first two are for "music", and the last picture is a page from my upcoming book called "ZISHE - The Superman of Strength" published by Kar-Ben publishing fall of 2010. Zishe used to crack nuts and drive nails into boards with his bare hands. So here we are:

A little Christmas and a cartoon

I love doing a new Christmas painting, something I do every year. Something about the magic feeling, something bigger than us, but smaller somehow that draws inspiration from me. This year I thought I'd try a new color scheme and get away from the usual 'red/green'. I knew I wanted to use gold leaf, but after painting it, I thought the orange/rusty copper leaf would go better with the blue/greens. So here it is, "Adoration".

Also, I've done another small stop-motion animation so I'm posting that as well. This is my second 'video' and they are so fun to do, I love picking music to go with the art. On a side note; I'm not actually left handed. I had to shoot the video upside down, then when I flipped it over, it played backwards. Anyhoo, give it a look-see.



P.S. can't believe I missed Illustration Friday the last couple weeks, so I'll post another couple pictures this week!