Anatomy and Art

I already posted this a long time ago, but what with today being Valentine’s Day, I felt like digging it up again.  Thank you Hard ‘n Phirm for making this…

Next week I will arrive at having put in my first month at the new job.  For those of you that don’t know, I’m working for Sapling Learning.  We do online homework and ebooks, and goodness what we do here with Sapling is leaps and bounds beyond anything I ever had to do online with any of my classes.  My first week down here, I actually ran into some chemistry students at a bar and they all knew Sapling and loved it.  A fair bit of my graduate project was in education, and it’s really great being a part of something that is so clearly an educational benefit to so many.

I can’t say that I’ve been doing a lot else in the realm of either anatomy or art lately.  It will probably take me a while to settle in enough with the new place to start painting again.  I have found that I am one of those finicky artists when it comes to personal projects.  Right now, I’m still looking for where to put all the paintings I moved here with.  Much love to the people who bought art from me before the move down here.  In my last week in Chicago I was able to sell my two most recent paintings.

Running in the Moonlight

Feel

I’m not sure if I’ve been getting especially better over the past few years, or people simply like things that are new, but it seems like my newer pieces keep selling even though I still have some that I’ve carried with me for years now.  Come to think of it, I suppose last year was pretty much my decade mark for getting into painting as a personal endeavor.  I took classes when I was a kid all the way through high school, but then I stopped for some years when I went off to college.  It wasn’t until 2001 that I picked up a brush again and went for it.

Well, this has been a bit of a meandering post.  My apologies for being such a scatterbrain tonight, but I intend to blame moving for at least another couple weeks as far as such things are concerned.  You may think that’s just a slack excuse, but I am a firm believer in the principle that one’s surroundings influence them.  Everything at work is so nice and uncluttered, and I have been a right bastion of focus there at times.  Home, not so much, not yet.  I do a lot of walking around in circles when I’m home, going from one thing that needs doing to the next.  It’s like that.    And that’s exactly what I’m going to get back to now.

Thank you for reading!

I’d intended to speak here about motion graphics and 3D modelling, but instead I’ve gotten distracted with this little bit of awesome…

Seriously, how cool is that?!?  Artist, Lisa Nilsson is making these out of old guilded edged pages from books and Japanese mulberry tree paper.  This is some really great work.  You can click on the artist’s name to see more of her tissue series.

Hello readers!  I am writing to you from sunny Austin, Texas!  I am at this point two weeks in to a new position in digital education.  I’m trying to minimize my computer time away from work for a little while, due to a little over-taxing on an old shoulder injury, but I wanted to pop in and say that I have not forgotten this blog.  And I may even be able to share a fun little clip of video here that I’ve been working on before long.  And regardless of what happens with that, there will be more words and fun images here soon.

Ok, so I’m posting a picture I grabbed off of Facebook circulation.  It may not be cutting edge journalism, but it feels right the night before I start my new job…

I mean, come on!
I’m gonna teach some people some SCIENCE!!

Heeeeelllllooooo Internet!  Feels like we’ve been apart for ever so long!  So here I am, picking back up in Austin, Texas.  It’s been over a decade since I last lived here, and I still haven’t quite shaken the feeling that I must just be visiting again.  But no, this time it’s a move.  I have an exciting new job with Sapling Learning that starts on Monday, and a whole lot to get done towards this move before that happens.  Fortunately, what would have been a week and a half wait for internet connection services has been facilitated by friendly neighbors who were willing to share their wifi password with me in the interim in exchange for delicious beer donations.  This is especially important, as I’ve been wanting to access some more Cinema 4D tutorials before I start the new position.  My experience has all been with 3DsMax and Maya, so I’ll have a lot to learn with the new software before I can get to the very important business of impressing people with my technique and artistry using this new tool set.  So yeah, you can expect some Cinema 4D posts to come.  After all, they say that teaching is one of the best things that one can do toward learning themselves.  But for now, I’m fast to sleep.  My office can get set up in the morning, and my posting will become more frequent when it can again.

Well, I’m packing up over here for the big move to Austin next week, and I keep coming across all these materials and notes and sketches.  It’s hard to know what to keep.  Just now I found a small stack of scrap pages full of scribbled thoughts.  Most of them seem to be about the balance between eternity and this present moment.  It’s hard to throw things like that away.  And so, I keep folding more boxes to hold more stuff.

Finally finished this last painting of 2011.  It’ll be glossed tomorrow, and I can start packing up my paints without that loose end hanging.  And I’m happy with how it turned out.

By the way, if anyone in Chicago ever wanted to buy any art from me, right before I have to pack things up is always the best time to get a deal!

Well, I know it’s been a little while since my last update.  I’ve been very busy.  And I have exciting news to share.  I’ve just signed the agreement on a new job!  I’ll be moving to Austin, Texas to work as a 3D Artist/Animator at Sapling Learning.  They create online tools for education in math and sciences, and so far everyone I’ve met over there seems just great.  These are exciting times, and I’m looking forward to getting back to Texas again.