El Rey: Eep Eep

ER on Wired Today

2007-07-30T15:25:00.000-07:00

Clive Thompson, bon vivant and scribe of the splendid Collision Detection blahg, mention me in an article about gaming and art on Wired today.

http://www.wired.com/gaming/gamingreviews/commentary/games/2007/07/games_frontiers_0730

These are the pictures he mentions.

Alyx, acrylic on paper, 22 x 30

Village Street, acrylic on paper, I forget how big.

There'll be more of these soon, and another possible massive project that's too iffy to talk about until it firms up a little more.

I am LOOKing-uh. For SARah. CONNOR!uh. Sarah CONNOR!uh!

2007-07-05T03:55:00.001-07:00

It's the Heat, AND the Humidity

2007-06-17T17:54:00.000-07:00

Now, it's a cool 85 here in HQ (seriously, at 7% humidity, 85 can be cool), so don't think I'm about to melt or anything, but look at this:

7% humidity. I was just pulling a print (huh huh huh) and man, the ink was drying in a few minutes. This is very different than San Francisco, where I used to live.

(Did I talk about this here already? If so, sorry.)

I work primarily in water-based media (printing ink and acrylic paints) because I am lazy and a slob, and this makes cleanup much easier. But you get so little working time here with water-based media here. I've started poking at oil paints, as fine-print readers of elreyart.com may have noticed; originally, the idea was that I could poke at paintings for more than one session.

But though I've always worked quickly (once I get started, that is), in this different atmosphere it feels more like speed-art, to paint or print before the ink/paint on the palette/ink-spreader surface congeals and becomes worthless. Which is good in its way.

Today has me thinking that maybe I wouldn't feel as rushed if I was all oil-based, everywhere. Maybe as I run out of ink and paint I'll restock with oil-based replacements.

Sylar: More Painterly

2007-05-12T20:28:00.000-07:00

I made this composite right after the show aired, but didn't want to post it immediately so as not to be spoilerific, and then, of course, forgot about it.

A couple of weeks ago, in the show Heroes, the evil Sylar got the power to paint the future. They showed his version of basically the same painting that "Mr. Esok" had done earlier.

Sylar's is the top one. So much more interesting!

Also, every show should have more Hiro and Ando and no Jessica/Niki at all.

Last Night's Objets

2007-04-27T13:04:00.000-07:00

I’m feeling the pull to do stuff that has a little more crazy to it:
http://jamesbarnett.net/past/alyx12005.html

I have a roll of wallpaper. Maybe I’ll get nuts on it and if something works, glue it to a board.

The Indignities of Modern Life

2007-04-14T16:51:00.000-07:00

Well, www.myspace.com/elreyart exists now.

Also, there's Flickr and Phoenix Art Space.

By all means, add me whereever. I'm stocking up on my THANKS 4 THA ADD!! animated glittery gifs as we speak.

House in Order

2007-04-14T01:06:00.000-07:00

There. All tidied up. Put the official headshots of recent paintings up on elreyart.com for sale sale sale! And I got a simple portfolio going over at jamesbarnett.net to spam galleries with. I think I clean up pretty decently, if you don't mind me saying so.

Feeling pretty decent about things.

Hats Make the Man

2007-04-03T20:59:00.000-07:00

Yet another series begun! 12×16, acrylic on wood backed by 1 x 2s.

I'm listening to the audiobook version of Michael Connelly's Echo Park while I paint. I don't like the reader dude much, and it's sort of wrecking it. It is pulling me into the "studio" more, though, because I want to hear more of the story.

Last audiobook-while-painting was Max Brooks' World War Z, with an actual all-star (for audioboks) cast (John Turturro, Alan Alda, Carl and Rob Reiner, Mark Hamill, Henry Rollins). Now THAT was a good listen.

Apropos of nothing at all, really.

Suburban Heroes

2007-04-01T04:17:00.000-07:00

That's what I think this series will be called, unless I think of something good.

Behind the scenes a bit

2007-03-30T17:15:00.000-07:00

Thought I’d go a little further behind the scenes, into quick and dirty Photoshopping territory.

This’ll be painted much less realistically and will be titled something like “Crimson Justice swings by his storage unit for a few things.”

Hero courtesy the the Korean City of Hero [sic] character creator!

http://www.rpglibrary.org/software/cohcc/index.php

There’s another 3 or 4 in this series at this stage, but I’m not sure what’ll make it to final painting.

The Sad

2007-03-30T16:47:00.000-07:00

The bottom one is before I put the colors on top.

The portfolio's coming along nicely!

An Evil Plot and A. Robot

2007-03-25T23:42:00.000-07:00

Two Lizards and a Request

2007-03-23T00:14:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Jack L of New York, NY for the request impetus!

New Pitchers

2007-02-11T23:09:00.000-07:00

Up at http://elreyart.com. The color representation on See is particularly bad. I don't know what it is with the reds and blues.

Bubble Bubble

2007-02-09T02:18:00.000-07:00

I Haven't Mentioned ConcreteTV Yet

2007-01-08T20:23:00.000-07:00

I try not to just post links to things here, but ConcreteTV popped into my head just a second ago, and it's relevant, I think. Concrete Ron chops the hell out of crummy cable movies, porn, and god knows what else and turns out an exciting slurry that airs weekly on public access TV in NYC. I was a regular watcher but moved away years ago now, so I no longer get exposed to it as much.

But ConcreteTV was very important to my brain getting rewired enough to do El Reys, which might be hard to imagine once you go to that link and watch a few episodes. But trust me. There are also episodes on YouTube, maybe unsurprisingly. It's perfect television.

Masonite: A Pain in the Tuchus

2006-12-13T15:23:00.000-07:00

I got a bunch of panels of masonite on my last run for materials and a showerhead at Home Depot, and it's warping, even though I've put a couple of coats of gesso and/or acrylic medium on 'em. I don't want to sell warped pictures. I think I'm gonna have to box 'em like I did for Batmonkey:

Annoying.

Any suggestions?

Back in the Saddle

2006-12-13T15:20:00.000-07:00

The Arteest is IN: just put a those bunches of pictures up for sale, along with a couple of new runs of prints.

America is OPEN for BUSINESS.

El Rey RIDES AGAIN!

2006-12-11T11:21:00.000-07:00

Damn, it feels good to be a painter.

Finally.

2006-12-07T00:16:00.000-07:00

New pictures.

Supreme Affordable Art Summit!

2006-11-23T13:31:00.000-07:00

Hey! I'm in a show next weekend hosted by the excellent Tag Art Gallery of Nashville TN with an inspiration of mine, Steve Keene, and an upstanding fellow, DAVe Warnke. Also Dolan Geiman, who I'm sure is a good sort.

Supreme Affordable Art Summit
Featuring Steve Keene, El Rey, Dolan Geiman and DAVe Warnke
Thousands of paintings for under $20!
Reception – Friday Night, December 1st, 6 to 10pm
December 1st – 3rd – One Weekend Only!
At Crystalwood Gallery, 514 Houston St. on the backside of the Chestnut Building

If you're in town, why not swing by?

A Holiday Greeting from Your Pal El Rey

2006-11-23T13:27:00.000-07:00

ER HQ has been successfully moved to an undisclosed desert location. I am thankful.

Era: Ended

2006-07-21T03:09:00.000-07:00

So ends my stay in San Franciso. HQ is off to Tucson, AZ with a brief layover in Scottsdale at Sis Rey's.

Thank you , all of you excellent folks in SF who made El Rey exist in the first place, and who came by HQ to buy things or have hot dogs, and who kept me going through the years.

Thank you very much.

When the new HQ is in place, I'll send word!

Meanwhile, on Planet Japan, in 1973

2006-05-11T04:17:00.000-07:00

Inside the sausage factory: Flickr favorites

2006-05-09T01:59:00.000-07:00

Alright, a little peek inside how my brain works, god help you for wanting to see. I started a Flickr account and am saving things that catch my eye to my favorites. I saved some stuff I'd come across recently, and right now I'm looking at the stream of pictures as they're being uploaded, plucking out what salmon look fat n' juicy, and hitting F5 to get the next batch.

This is kind of how I start; I get some pictures from the Web and save when I see something that I like, and might need to swipe from later for a painting or print or what have you.

I very much like random pictures one after the other. (And text--on my old, old Mac I had an After Dark screensaver called, I think, Nonsense, that spewed more or less syntactically correct sentences, but randomly put them together from lists of nouns, adjectives, etc.: "Mrs. Johnson instigated the azure suitcase." I loved that thing.)

I tried the Random Personal Picture Finder ^(tm) by Diddly.com, and various LiveJournal picture-scrapers, but the former gives you a lot of birthday party pictures, and the latter a lot of "What kitchen appliance are you?" Another trick I used to use was searching Google Images for "the" or "e" or other sort of generic bits of text, to get a wide range of stuff.

Anyway, I find a bunch of pictures to go through, and I pluck out the ones that resonate with whatever miswiring I've been saddled with; I have a big folder of saved pictures on my hard drive. When Odin says it's time to make a painting, I go in there and dig around and see what tickles my brain.

So now I'm sort of doing this with Flickr, in public. But! The added thing is I'm not just saving stuff I might use for reference for my own pictures; I'm also looking at it like I'm curating, like I'm assembling these photos in a group like a filmmaker might use found footage. So instead of, like, "Oh, hello. Look at one of the pictures in this album I've assembled. Isn't it nice?" I'm kind of saying, "Lookit lookit thing thing thing thing!" Which is EXACTLY how my brain works when I hit that F5 key. I get a little hopped up. Have you ever seen Concrete TV? It's the best thing ever. I want this to be like that, if you go look (thought with odd animal and half-sensical pictures instead of car crashes and strippers). Maybe the best way to think about what I'm trying to do here is to look at 'em as a slideshow, with the speed set as fast as possible.

So please, enjoy the group of pictures; don't think too hard about this one or that one. I certainly didn't; my enjoyment barely makes it up out of my lizard brain, and then only so I can function enough to click the mouse button.