Reggie and Old Car

Here are two of my latest commission works, the car for my boss (its a xmas present for his father-in-law, who built the car) and the dog for a woman named Judy who bid on and won a certificate for one of my watercolor pet portraits at a silent auction at the youth museum in Mesa earlier this year. All proceeds went to the museum, and it felt good to do that, giving a little back and all, you know, for the kids. Its funny, it was the second miniature schnauzer I've painted on commission this year, the first one was named Archie, and this one was Reggie. like those chaps from Riverdale.The car was a bit of a challenge. I've never painted a realistic car before, not really my style at all. But I was content with what I put on the paper, gave myself a dose of realism, which everyone could use once in awhile.

Roots of the Turnip

This was painted this summer while talking on the phone for most of the night with my old pal Matt P. Its very, very deep. Very.
acrylic on canvas paper
5"x 7"

Pain...take one.

Here's a painting I did for a heavy metal band here in Tempe, but they didnt want it. It wasn't painful enough for them, apparently, or just too cartoony. I dont know, but I like it, and am glad I get to keep it. I dont normally paint in ultra-violence, but when I do its surprisingly very therapeutic, gets some of the angries out.

Seenoevil Hearnoevil @#$%noevil

This is an acrylic painting, my own little inappropriate twist on the "no evil" monkeys. It's somewheres around 4"x 9".

Sketchbook Project

Here are a few of the drawings I've put in my sketchbook for The Sketchbook Project Tour: 2011.
Heres their site:
I thank my sister-in-law Leanna for informing me of such a cool project. I just hope I can finish it by the Jan 15th deadline.Havent run out of ideas yet, so thats good. The theme I picked for my book is "science project gone wrong".

Claymation

Here's a couple of claymation tests I created to refamiliarize myself with the grand art of stop-motion. I plan to make some that are much better soon, but I still like these ones. They hold a certain amount of charm, short and sweet.

Kodamas

This is a painting I did a couple years ago for my friend Ryan. It shows kodamas (which are japanese tree spirits) playing in the moonlight. Its painted with acrylics on a canvasboard. I really liked painting this one. I learned of kodamas from the 1997 Japanese animated film Princess Mononoke, which is really great, probably my favorite japanimation ever. My kodamas look quite a bit different from the ones in the movie, and thats okay, because if I painted them to look exactly like the ones from the movie, I'd be an unoriginal jerk who deserves some type of horrendous pain. Besides, kodamas are actually from Japanese folklore, not just the cartoon, so its really open to interpretation (although my kodamas were definitely based off of the Mononoke kodamas). ps. thanks ryan for sending me the pics.

Errol and his Demon

black marker drawing (with just a hint of photoshopped highlights on the little demon fellow).

Red Ned and his turtle

a colored pencil/pen sketch found in a heap of disheveled drawings. I think the next few posts will bear the fruit of this aforementioned heap.

Brownard

This is Brownard. Depending on his mood, he may or may not try to hurt your feelings.

Hell Grub

Hell Grub
watercolor
12"x 18"
2009

Cephalopod by Moonlight

Cephalopod by Moonlight
5"x 7" acrylic on canvas paper

Rosemary and the Black Leprechauns

Rosemary and the Black Leprechauns
5.5" x 8.5" watercolor

The Early Worm Gets the Water

The Early Worm Gets the Water, a 16" x 20" acrylic I just finished the other night for Utrecht Art Supplies second annual art contest. I'm pretty happy about the way it turned out, I still might go in and add a little more shading, maybe a few more plants or bushes (with my paints and brushes), but I like it a lot. The "early" bird is allowing the "early"worm one more whistle-wetting before being killed and eaten, paying heed to that inspirational get-out-of-bed-now parable we all know and love, and wouldn't trees be so much better if they all came with drinking fountains? I like to think so.
The prizes for the contest are pretty sweet, the third prize alone is a 500 dollar gift card for their art store. Contestants could enter a painting, a sculpture, and a drawing, so I entered this one for the painting, bad mojo for the sculpture, and the sasquatch charcoal for the drawing. I'll find out Nov. 1st if I won of not, keeping my phalanges crossed for good luck.

A watercolor giraffe, enjoying a taste of the air. I like painting animals without a model or picture sometimes. It brings it all back home for me, that being the way I started. I used to never use references, thinking, "well that's not creative, your basically just copying". But soon enough I started using them, and really liked it. I realized how different the paintings really were than the pictures, how you can add so much feeling to, say, a cat portrait, and there definitely is creativity involved. I still think I like painting from my mind better, though. Its a lot more fun, not knowing whats going to come out sometimes.

KJ and Smokey

Here are my friend Katie's dogs, KJ and Smokey, in watercolor form. They're really cool canines, I'm glad I got to paint them.

I like Turtles!

9"x 12" watercolor of three turtles enjoying a campfire beneath a fingernail moon.

Wet Cowboy

Strawberry Banana and the Wolfish Wish

And now for something a little juicier than dirty dogs and cleaner cats. Here's a recent watercolor of a strawberry banana man finally getting what he's always wanted, the chance to become a werewolf. He stands there, offering up his elongated neck to the hungry beast, a peculiar little grin on his long unhappy face. The werewolf, being more than happy to oblige, is about to tear into the fruit-flavored throat with his horrendous teeth.

Now back to posting. I'll start with some of the watercolor pet portraits I've been working on.

Easterling

Bad Mojo

A sculpy creation I call Bad Mojo, done last year, using sculpy III, pins, hair, and acrylic paint. There is a small amount of cotton sticking out of one of his torn patches to make it seem as though he's stuffed. He's about 3 inches tall, pretty small but quite the conversational piece. He is a voodoo doll who is trying to kill himself because he doesn't want to be used to hurt people anymore. But by shooting himself in the head, he might accidentally kill the person he's trying stop hurting. We'll never find out, though, for he is eternally stuck in that tense and horrific premeditated position. This is the third (and best so far) Bad Mojo I've made. Sold the other two at the artwalk.

Blackwoods Graphics

This is one side of the Blackwoods Graphics postcard flyer for an online t-shirt shop ran by my brother Eric. If you'd like to buy a cool silkscreen printed t-shirt with a picture like this one on it, or a different one of your choosing that is equally if not more cool for only 15 doller bills, then come to http://www.blackwoodsgraphics.com/. I think there are four shirt designs up right now (two of Eric's, two of mine), but much more to come soon.
This design was originally a charcoal drawing done all the way back in 2005, and not only does it show an awkwardly creepy little basement-dwelling dwarf of some variety, it also has two cautious prairie dogs facing each other, almost nose to nose. Can you see them? Can you, indeed?

The hell of it was beginning to set in

This is a 5"x 7" watercolor from 2009, started in 08 on a camping trip near the salt river in Arizona. My friend Jayson caught about seven scorpions that night and morning with his bare hands. I think he had like three different types of them in different cups and water bottles, it was crazy, and therefore, I put one one of them in a painting

I don't condone violence on any animals, especially vultures, but this one was needing to be eaten by this weather beaten drifter, and the scorpion caresses its feather tips and softly hums it a death song as it passes into the clearing beyond the bird's eye view.

Redcap

And yet another digital sculpture, been spending a lot of time on ol' zbrush lately. This fellow is a redcap, which is a murderous goblin from folklore who dyes his cap in his victims blood. The background in the top one is a picture I took of this giant gnarly root we burned while camping next to a flash flood a couple years ago.

Blackhorn

Another digital clay sculpture done in zbrush. I absolutely love this program. This guy turned out creepier than I thought he would, and I like that.

Basset Hound Puppy

One of the many watercolor dog paintings Ive done in the passed month. Always liked dogs, but I dont think I ever really noticed their true beauty until I started painting them, such grand creatures. I've been advertising (with my dad's help) watercolor pet portraits around the valley, and on the interweb. I will paint yours, too. Just send me a picture of it at puppetlegs@gmail.com.

Ochre Bloke

White Devil

Sea Turtle

The next couple of posts will be of some watercolors painted in the last few days. They were all painted on the same page (18"by 24"), so I just took a few pictures of the ones I thought turned out the best.

Zbrush

This is a digital sculpture I made on ZBrush 3. I'm just starting to figure things out on it, but it's an amazing program, with endless possibilities. I actually started this one out with a model head and shoulders, but I tried to make it my own, morphing the features around, and adding color, hair and horns. Check out the gallery at zbrushcentral.com to see other peoples work who really know what they're doing, so awesome.

Love Liza

Here's another marker drawing I did a couple years ago from one of my favorite movies, Love Liza. Phillip Seymour Hoffman is on the right, and Jack Kehler is left, shaping some hamburger meat in his hands, I believe, talking about remote control boats. I will sometimes just pause the movie I'm watching at a random part and try to draw or paint whats on the screen.

This is a marker drawing I did in a guy's blackbook at the first friday artwalk in Phoenix. His name was Yolk, and he came up to my booth and handed me his black bound drawing book that, you know, graffiti dudes pass around and do their graffiti on, and I thought he just wanted me to look at it. He told me he'd circle back around to pick it up, and when he came back, he asked what I'd drawn and I was like wha? so he told me to take it home. All the other pictures in it were drawn by tagger guys, real quick style drawings mostly with crazy graffiti lettering. I don't really know how to draw cool letters or even do that style, so I drew a blue devil warming his hands over a candle from hell, orally making the sound of a scratched chalkboard. I ended up having his book for like three months.

happy happy Valentine's

Happy Valentine's Day, folks. I painted this last night for my wife, Meg. She's so great. I wish I could paint her a new house, a new car, loads of money, etc...but until I can, I'll just continue giving her pieces of my heart and soul in pigments and clay (gush).

Boyblue

Here is another recent one, done in 09. This was shortly after I started really getting a feel for watercolor, knowing when to stop adding so much paint so it wouldn't turn out all muddy. After adding the black ground over the red-orange of the sky, I turned it upside down and let the long streaks of black snake down by themselves (all of them getting just a little push for a head start, of course), and they all stopped right at the white clouds, because of the paper being dry there. I liked how it turned out, the black trailing to the yellow white of the clouds reminds me of a pint of guinness with thick head.

Beach Creatures

This is an acrylic painting (8"x10") that I finished late last year. I'd actually started this painting in 07, and kept putting it off, working on it here or there at my leisure, like I do most of my more detailed paintings. I really like how this one came out. The beach has an Alaskan feel to it, for me anyways, since I spent half my childhood there, and often think about the bluffs and beaches. The creatures are all familiar, but with freakish attributes, like the furry turtle shell, and the dolphin/whale guy's arms. The octopus is relatively normal, but with a cartoonish twist, which you will see in a lot (if not most) of my art.

Here is an artist trading card I watercolored a couple months ago. Its only 2.5" by 3.5", but I think for such a small painting, it holds a lot of feeling. The person relaxing by the shack may look comfortable, but he's not. He's dead.

Blogenstein

Hi, I'm James Douglas Johnson, but you can call me Doug. This is my art blog, where I will try to upload different pieces of my art frequently for your viewing pleasure. I've never blogged before, so I'm sorry if I'm a little blogtarded. Hope you enjoy, and yes, I do love you.