Once I did that, the piece really clicked for me and I then got rid of the rigid square border and added the more fanciful circular shapes. I didn't have any justifiable reason for it other than I thought it just looked cool. I then tried to add some other color outlines, but none of that worked well with the mostly black-and-white I had already.

I had accidentally left a sharp edge on one of the circles, and I liked the sharp edge amid the round shapes. So I started adding those shafts of light coming in from the top, until when I was done it did sort of look like some weird dark forest. I dug it mightily, it worked well with the figure, and it doesn't look that much like all the other ones I've done.

DotGirl - Another one of my fashion-type exercises. Leaving any detail off of the shirt but adding the blue outline really contrasted well with the busy background.

I like Dot Girl a lot, I feel like it has a nice, happy energy. Don't you agree?

FireGirl - Not too much to say about this one, except I like(d) the slightly more muted colors, the faded background, and the overall feel. Could be that exact moment when time stops and you catch the eye of someone and you have to scramble to think of something to say.

Thematically, I guess this is the Omega to Scarf Girl's Alpha(below)--the first piece done in the dead of winter, the second just as Spring is approaching.

Goth Blue -I did this piece with a definite goal of doing something rougher, less refined. While I like my "regular" style just fine, I'm always looking for ways to expand it, twist it, and see where it goes.

So after finishing it and taking a good look, I found I really liked it. The subject still looked alluring, but also more hard-edged. Blue and white is not one my usual color schemes, so I was especially happy that I got to combine several different approaches with one piece.

Lightning Bolt - This piece started out as nothing more than me just goofing around, looking to create Something. As happens frequently when I'm goofing around, elements that seem to come out of nowhere show up and just seem so right.

As I started to work on this, I found myself removing all the detail I could. I didn't know what I was going for exactly, but the more sort of porcelain she looked the more I liked it. Eventually I was left with just her basic features, and then I added the non-sequitir background. I still don't know what the lightning bolt pin or emblem on her collar is supposed to mean (is she a superhero of some sort?), but I just knew I liked it. (and if Ispot hits are any indication, it's my most popular piece)

New Morning - A client of mine informed me that he was having an exhibition at an art gallery that he owns, and asked me whether I'd like to participate. I thought about the type of picture I might want to do, and sat down to work. I combined a printed-out version of the woman at left with a hand-painted background, and while I thought it looked good, it wasn't quite how I imagined it.

I reworked the woman and the painted background, and tried again. While this was closer, it still just looked off to me, and I couldn't quite put my finger on why. Not long after it dawned on me that I needed to do this piece like I did in the old days--all original, no computers. It would be a challenge, to see if I could try to do my portrait pieces the way my ancestors did--by hand. Cut, cut, cut, glue, glue, glue. The next morning, I had what's at left.

Doing the piece totally "live" gave it a vitality that I think it (both the subject and the larger concept of an "original" itself) really needed. It was sent packing to Michigan, and soon after being put up, it was sold to a kindly gentlemen who said it's going to hang in his office. Cool!

"Orange Gina" - This piece was born out of frustration. I was having a rough day and was feeling very mopey. I laid around a lot and took a nap in the middle of the day, leaving me feeling even more mopey and sorta miserable.

I finally decided to kick myself in the butt and work on something--anything--just to get out of this funk. I had wanted to work with some of these new paper patterns I had bought, and see how they looked incoporated into my work. So I put this together, originally thinking it would be another paperback book cover. But as soon as I got to this point I liked the way it looked as it was--I thought it was cute and bubbly and happy--definitely sexy but not sleazy, so I ditched the whole paperback thing and stopped right where I was. I really liked how it came out, liked the pattern, and how it mixed with my style.

Afterwards, I felt a lot better. Art therapy!

The more pieces I've been doing without a rigid surrounding box-shape, the more I like them. As you've no doubt guessed, his one is one of those!

ScarfGirl - This is Scarf Girl. I was looking to do some more muted, relaxed-looking pieces--I was fearing that all my stuff recently was RED! BLUE! YELLOW! BLACK!--all eye-gouging bold color, and I wanted to prove to myself that not all my colors needs to be 100% saturation (ah, printing humor).

Anyway, it didn't take long in my color experiments to know I wanted her sweater to be one flat color, to provide a nice surrealistic contrast to the (relatively) realistic features. In between trying different colors, I noticed that good ol' White looked really, really good. I filed that tidbit in my head (next to my thoughts of the next Batman movie), and tried other colors to see if anything looked better. Nothing did--white gave the whole piece a nice feeing of openness, cleanness, like the subject was outside on a clear day.

I then worked on the backgrounds, again going for the same muted feeling. Not getting too intricate, I found that the shapes I had created made it look like a mountain range, which of course fit in quite well with my little Scarf Girl, bundled up in warm clothes as she is.

This one, thankfully, turned out well I thought. I had a fashion art 2006 calendar, and as I took it down I looked over the pieces and remembered I had really wanted to try one with a rough, hand-drawn sort of feel, but had never gotten around to it in all of the year!

Putting together the portrait was fairly easy, but I tried a few different rough-edged outlines, all with different colors. Black looked best, and the simple colored backgrounds I thought worked very well as contrast. It's a very happy, fun looking piece.

Spirals - I've had some work displayed in a couple different art galleries (the Art Dept. in Manchester, MI, and ZonkArts in Center City, Philadelphia) so I work on an all-paper-and-paint piece every now and then to have some new work to display and, hopefully, sell. This piece is called Spirals because I'm too unimaginative to come up with something less obvious.

I'm not sure what this is supposed to mean or who this woman is, exactly, I just started messing around and when I got to this I told myself it was Done. If pressed, I'd say the piece is maybe from a guy's POV when he's spotted a beautiful, sexy woman at some club where there's constant movement and noise; and in this one moment the background fades away and they're just looking at each other eye-to-eye. Maybe. Either way, I think it's more "cool" looking than a lot of my other stuff.

A year or two later, I was asked to donate a piece for a charity auction, and since digital printouts wouldn't bring much, I donated this. While I didn't get an exact figure, I was told the piece did sell, and for a nice amount. So I'm happy the piece now has a good home, and was used for a worthy cause.