Cycloctopus (LIVE Painting Installation!)

Live Painting 11/03/2011

Joe Melanson has curated a couple of fantastic exhibits this year at No Egrets Tattoo Studio here in Clarksville.  The venue is great because it's an open warehouse adjacent to the shop and we pretty much have free reign to do whatever with the walls constructed inside.  Joe really put us to work this past week with his new project, The Installation Show.  Upping the ante with local artists, Joe asked us all to paint and decorate a portion of the walls to hang our work on.  This ONE-NIGHT Only Exhibit was held  Saturday, November 5th and featured several local talents!

Last Thursday morning, I got some devastating news about my dear friend Ryan passing away.  Ryan was one of my best friends and it shook me up as to call out of my day job with my boss, who was understanding.  After many phone calls and online communications with friends about what had happened, I realized I was also scheduled to paint my installation at No Egrets that evening.  I channeled my energy and went through with my plans to freestyle a gigantic octopus, who would hold up the panels I had recently mounted with watercolors and illustrations for the show.  It was the right decision seeing as what turned out was off the chain! Check it all out in this brand-spanking new time lapse video!  The installation took about 3 hours but you can ride along here in just 3 minutes...

Here's a slew of pictures of the process AND the ONE-NIGHT EXHIBIT!

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Live Painting with Chad Spann

I hung out and got some painting out of my system last night at Spann Manor.  I've been having the itch with our Southern Pop Surrealism sessions lately and figured I'd get some practice in for our next one this coming Sunday.  Chad and I have painted together more and more frequently over the years.  Here's what we tuned in to create last night....

Our buddy Nathan dropped by to hang out during the process and it was his birthday so the painting immediately found a fitting home- happy birthday Nate!

Chad Spann can make a stencil out of ANYthing!

First Layer

Chad got straight to mixing in his High Life- he's gotta pour one for his homies on every painting.

Miller High Life and Yellow Spray Paint

No palette?  Use a brick.

Chad Spann

Illustration Friday: Money for All

Acrylic and Spray Paint on Wood / 2007

"Swell" is our model for artistic outlet this week on Illustration Friday.  The term makes me think of our swollen greed here in America the beautiful.  When is your cup full?  When is enough enough? When will we squander all of our natural resources, leaving a desolate concrete jungle to be re-inhabited by nature when the lights finally go out?  Keep on driving, keep on buying, keep on living the dream and rocking in the free world because all that matters in Capitalism is today's dollar. 

"Did you find something
You were looking for
Freedom has its price now
Wanna buy some more...

Wipe your nation's shame from you
It's not where you're born
It's the things that you do."

-Nine Horses, Money for All

 Click HERE for a stream of all my Illustration Friday entries!

The Birth of Nineopus

"The Birth of Nineopus" acrylic, ink and spray paint / 2011

My most recent project involving paint is for The Skateboard Art Show at Octane Gallery inside Kustom Thrills Tattoo in East Nashville.  Drop by Sunday for the opening reception or when you're on that side of The Big Nasty this month!

I'd never painted a skateboard before this bad boy, so I was pretty stoked at the idea of the project.  I've never really hesitated to paint anything that's crossed my path.  Ironically despite playing with found wood, vinyl toys, records, tables, walls, license plates, signs and even bricks- I'd never gotten around to covering a deck.  I liked the idea of painting an old used board that had character.  Something like this should be re-purposed since it probably will get hung, not rode.  I made a call via Facebook for anyone with one they could part with and followed up to some prints for not only this deck but my next project now.. a very retro surfboard!

I honestly had no idea what I was going to paint on the deck.  I just knew that I needed to cover the hokey skull with wings which occupied it's finish before.  The surface was already beat up thoroughly enough to skip sanding her down.  I got started with some spray paint.

After musing my running base colors for a couple of days, I kept seeing tentacles so that's where Nineopus was conceived!

What came first, The Nineopus or The Egg?

Illustration Friday: Exclamation!

"Layer" is the theme for this week's Illustration Friday.  In all forms of art, it's all about the layers.  As artists, we start with blank canvass, panel, or paper and build our way up with our medium.  As you've seen in some of my process posts, a drawing can be more involved and have more layers than you ever expected.  Painting is no different, especially in when it comes to low brow, in which we often mix our mediums.  This painting, "Exclamation!" is from 2007.  For a few months, when I was staying with my buddy Nick after moving back to Clarksville, I had an assortment of scrap panels my friend Al was bequeathing  me from the shelving company he works for.  The panels needed some sort of priming so I went wild with spray paints and stencils before layering over it and touching things up with brushes.  Most of the art I created in this short time was very free and loose, being away from the tight confines of my usual illustration style.

Nowadays, with a busy illustration schedule, I rarely get to paint unless it's for a specific project.  What do you like better?  The low brow paintings or the tight confines of the illustrations?

(Click here to see all my Illustration Friday weekly entries)

Young Blood Gallery's Day of the Dead Exhibit

This month, Young Blood Gallery and Boutique in Atlanta will be hosting a Day of the Dead themed group exhibit where over 70 artists will be painting and working with miniature coffins crafted by the gallery for their exhibit.


When I read about this exhibit a few months back, I knew I had to get in on the action. What a neat concept! Tracy at the gallery was nice enough to work with me and get a coffin shipped out several weeks back. I did my coffin up DREGstudios! style over this past weekend. Here are some pics of the process start to finish...


The coffin was completely raw when it arrived. I used some wood filler to smooth things out before I got to painting...






After getting my coffin prepped, I laid my base colors down and accented my roses for the inside with spray paint...




And now to work on the center-piece for the coffin which is a 2"x3" illustration to go inside a frame I got to hang inside!


Now to get everything together and decorated! Aurora lent some beads from her jewelry-making stash and we dissected some flowers I got...






Let the candle burn for a minute for effect...




Sketching the pattern of skulls and hearts for the outside of my coffin in pastel. I painted these on tonight when I got home from work to finish things up!



What a great show and concept. My coffin will be in back in route to Atlanta this week for the exhibit which opens Saturday night, October 30th at Young Blood. Make sure to check out this unique exhibit if you're in the area! You can get all the details here on the poster including how to drop by the gallery that afternoon for a lesson on making your own sugar skulls before the show!

I'll also have work in the upcoming Day of the Dead exhibit at Kustom Thrills in Nashville! Leave a comment and let me know what you think of my coffin for the Atlanta show!