Well the class I'm teaching is posted on the internet....can't back out now.

http://www.vmfa.state.va.us/springclass2006descrip.html




[87] Fantastical Drawing
Paul Ballard
4 sessions, April 3 - 19
Mon & Wed, 4:30 - 6:30 pm
Center for Education & Outreach, Studio A
Grades 6 - 8
$80 (Museum members $70)
Enrollment limit: 12
Did you know Fantasy Art has roots in religion, mythology, and folklore from all over the world? VMFA gallery walks and drawing exercises explore the universal language of images that depict the mystery of life and forces unseen. Create your own version of reality through pencil, pen, ink, pastel and watercolor. A materials list is sent to those who enroll.

Boy, does that sound cheesy. But a cool Inka Essenhigh pic.

Archibald Knox (1864-1933) silver mirror for Liberty & Co. 1902

Call of Cthulhu Eldritch Edition is out now. I did a couple of cards for this set.


www.cthulhuccg.com

Beneath the burning sands an ancient evil lays dormant for untold millennia, biding its time - for when the stars are right, horrors not of this earth shall rule again... Eldritch Edition introduces the messenger of Azathoth himself, the Crawling Chaos Nyarlathotep. This dark god has a thousand forms, many of which are represented by individual cards in this new set. Eldritch Edition will also deepen the CCG play experience by introducing new cards and concepts for the game’s seven factions, opening up new possibilities for deckbuilding.

I'm lost in hedgerows at night, the further I go the more I get lost. Till eventually I'm in a dead end of thorns and briers. Even the way I came is grown over. The hedge comes alive and a majestic woman rises up, she just keeps rising until she stands above me nearly 8 feet tall. Her body made of twisting vines and thorns, alive fighting each other to reach to the moonlight.
Indignantly she looks down at me and says:
"I am the Queen of Thorns"
At that same moment the branches around her head snap to attention and quickly form a magnificent crown and then just as quickly unravel to continue their mission pushing upward.
"I have a sister who is made of glass, you will meet her soon."
Then in slow motion her long fingers reached down on my shoulder. I noticed little details,like bugs moving in between the vines that made up her arm.
"She will cut also, but be gentle"
As her hand touched my shoulder I could feel the thorns.


I awoke to my cat, clawing into my shoulder.

Ryan McGinness

75 days

Obi-Wan never told you

I don't know what's weirder, the fact that someone named a breed of Iris after Darth Vader, or the fact that I want to plant these around my apartment.

The Darth Vader Iris


There is also a Skywalker Orchid and a Darkside Iris, apparently flower breeders are big Star Wars fans, who would have guessed.

I've been a big fan of illustrator James Jean. Sometimes it's a little too obvious in my pictures, I need to tone it down a bit. Here's a two page spread he did for Best Life magazine, about a guy that was obsessed with Star Wars, no it wasn't about me.

We all see death before our eyes

Polish artist, Zdzislaw Beksinski found murdered.
Multiple stab wounds

"We all see death before our eyes," Beksinski said at a recent opening of his work

Odd Nerdum, Giger, and Beksinski are the only modern painters that when I first saw their work,I saw my nightmares. As if they had propped up an easel in my dreams, voyeuristic, surrealstic.

With my computer being down, I had been planning a return to oils. Just last week I was studying Beksinki's work. Owing a lot to Friedrich, Dhurmer, and Knopff yet being subtle and original.

Not many people know of Beksinki's work, so here is a mini gallery. I remember many of these dreams, perhaps you do too.

Click for larger version

RIP HAL 9000

Well my hard drive is dead. I bought him in 2001 and kept with a HAL desktop theme for years. I've lost so much stuff....Remember kids, backup files..blah.
Daisy...Daisy.


A really moving Muppet film, well worth checking out.
Click here


After a lawsuit about Ford misleading the public on the safety of SUV's, the settlement led to a campaign with cg and mechanical monster called esuvee...just odd.
http://esuvee.com



I can see future commercials in the series, with this nasty looking Muppet on steroids guzzling gas and then polluting the environment with it's emmissions.

and finally...

So my home computer is down again. I wonder how many times I've said that on this blog.

In the mean time, enjoy a still from yet another weird Japanese McDonalds commercial


And click here to see
Tim Burton's Corpse Bride Trailer.

Telemarketers get really confused when you try to sell them art

My version of engadget, retro style

1929 AEG Vampyr
Leave it to the Germans to come up with a vacuum cleaner called The Vampyr.
"I vant to suck your dirt".
Apparently a modern version of this model is still being made.

More cool pics at:
http://www.dhm.de/lemo/html/weimar/alltag/rationalisierung/

The weird thing about a blog is, you are never really sure how personal you want to be about it. To be truly interesting it should be personal, but do you really want to write about all your fears and doubts in so much detail that it lays there dissected on the table for anyone to see? It's a dilemma.
So when my grandfather died, I didn't feel comfortable writing about it, too personal and affected me in a way that was more difficult than I would imagine.
But then Kelly Freas and Will Eisner died and I felt the need to write about two people I really didn't know. It's safer. I'm just glad I knew my grandfather and can remember all the fun times I had. He will be missed.
Enough of that....
When I was young my parents would go to this little hole in the wall bookstore in Alexandria. They would spend forever there. To pass the time I would look at the old sci-fi paperbacks, studying the covers imagining the stories held within. So many of those covers were done by Kelly Freas. It's no stretch to say he was one who made me want to do illustration. He passed away the other day. He will be missed.



I came late to discovering Will Eisner. I missed The Spirit when it was popular. But when I was first starting college I discovered Comics and Sequential Art, the book Will Eisner wrote on the secrets of sequential narrative. It opened a whole new world to me on how to read comics. It led me to reading Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics and made me dream about making comics. He's the only person I can think of that has an award named after him that someday I want to win. He passed away the other day. He will be missed.