Unfortunately, I don't come here very much any more - I just don't have the time. Though I rarely leave comments any longer, I do look at the artwork on my friends list and continue to be amazed by the wonders you are producing and how greatly most of you have improved your skills. For others, your work needed no improvement and it is a joy to see the evolution of your art. All of you continue to provide me with what I came here for in the first place ... inspiration! Thank you all.

What happened to January? Finally getting around to posting a new image. I have always had a problem of reaching a point in my work where a piece is obviously done … almost. The composition is set and only going in and pulling out a few details remains. It is one of the most pleasurable parts of the creation. Adding a little extra emphasis to a curved line or two in a figure drawing, a touch of cadmium yellow to bring out the highlights of the eyes in a portrait painting, deepening some shadows in a street scene. Enjoyable work, but also for me the scariest part. I’ve ruined more than one piece by overworking it. Sometimes months of effort destroyed in minutes by my overzealous passion to apply the final coup de grâce and take a piece from good to … better at least. So, I’ve grown tentative when I reach this point. True, digital work is a lot more forgiving and almost any mishaps can be changed, up to a point – but I still have a difficult time calling a piece finished. I think it was Monet who in his old age could sometimes be observed in the museums and galleries of Europe, shaking brush in hand, applying one more touch or two to paintings he had presumably finished many decades before. Maybe this is my fate and the cranky old guy you will see around DA forever updating the images in his gallery will be me.

Anyway, the result of this unreasonable phobia is that there are now scores of images on my hard drive that fall into this “obviously done … almost” category. I think it is time to be brave, be satisfied with what I’ve done, finish ‘em up and post the damn things. But, if I could tweak this one just a little bit more …

Some observations on the occasion of recently passing the first anniversary of displaying my work on devArt for the purpose of being able to read this when I hit my next anniversary:

After my initial posting of scraps and existing works I managed to upload an additional 28 works which I considered completed – more or less (over the same time period, I’ve added very close to a thousand renders to my hard drives that either didn’t make the cut, I deemed as probably in violation of the TOS or are still in various stages of production). Not too bad for productivity, considering the pace I work at and the time spent on the borderline pathological research I often feel is necessary to produce these things with at least some degree of cultural and historical accuracy. I’m closing in on 2,500 page views and 7,000 viewings of my images – also not too bad and a little surprising considering I do very little networking here and am very selective of those I add to my watch list or as favorites.

My works based on scenes from Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles have by far been the favored images, not surprising considering the fan base she has. Pretty cool, since at the moment it’s still the work I enjoy producing the most. Although I must say, I probably wouldn’t have guessed that some of the individual works would have been favored over some of my own personal favorites. But, the artist always sees his own work with different eyes.

Likes about deviant art: Getting immediate feedback and seeing what others are producing in a multitude of mediums. Even after completing my formal art schooling, I often enrolled for additional courses at whatever art school I was near at the moment not only to learn new skills, but also to see how others produced work and how they reacted to my own … these are invaluable to an always learning and evolving artist, and here at devArt I can get that and don’t even have to pay tuition fees! The critiques I’ve gotten here – almost without exception – have been intelligent and in very many cases helpful. I’m a bit surprised that I haven’t really received any non-constructive feedback beyond veiled innuendo, especially since I know there are those still ignorant enough to consider 3D art “cheating”. To me, coming from a traditional art background, I consider it just one more tool to use in expressing creativity – if used as I think it should (i.e. not letting the technology overwhelm the creative spark), it is no faster, less frustrating … or … any easier than producing work in any other medium I’ve worked in. It’s all still a struggle to make an image of what’s in your head no matter what medium you use. But it is the medium I prefer and find most challenging at the moment. Tomorrow I may get bored with it and take up a brush again, who knows? Anyway I’ve been lucky so far – knowing there have been some nasty comments (not only about 3D art) floating out there made by rude, seemingly highly frustrated people hiding behind the anonymity of the internet – cowards all.

Dislikes: Well, those rude comments I’ve seen, but these idiots are everywhere. The biggest bother is knowing there are some works I can’t or shouldn’t post here. I don’t like ANY censorship when it comes to art – but when you’re in someone else’s house, you have to play by their rules. And in a public forum such as this, open to all the dregs society has to offer, censorship or even some self-censorship may not be such a bad idea … and I suppose I could post whatever I wanted on one of my own sites and may at some point do that. Oh, and the system they use here is slow, quirky and in general sucks big time.

If you got this far, you’re most likely the type that also reads the back of cereal boxes and probably have too much time on your hands, but thank you for reading it anyway. I’m really posting all this as a memo to myself to see in the future. And thanks also for viewing my work, leaving comments, favoring some and letting me do the same with yours. It’s been a very rewarding year!

I’ve posted a few more images than I usually do lately. Not that I’m producing more work, I’m just finishing up more of those that I’ve been working on for a while. I’ll continue to do that, but it’s really time to put inspiration aside and sit down and learn some of the software that’s been sitting unused on my hard drive. And hopefully be better able to use some tools that will help me take this a little closer to what I’m seeing in my head.

I’m also going to try to find a little more time to do some traditional art … you know with one of those thin, tubular things that fits in your hand and makes marks on flat, blank surfaces? Probably stuff from nature, which always seems to bring the old skills back up. I did do a bunch of figure study sketches this past summer and realized how much I missed drawing.

If any of you have any particular scenes from Anne Rice’s The Vampire Armand (or other VC novels) you would like to see … let me know and if I have one of them in development I’ll finish it up first.

Thanks to all that have been kind enough to leave comments … even those that are critical, because any input does help. Oh, and of course a big thanks for the favs … very flattering.

I have several works in the Armand series that are nearing completion so I thought this might be a good time to explain some of the motivations behind my latest macabre obsession before I upload any more of them. First and foremost, these works are based solely on the writing of Anne Rice and NOT the motion pictures based on her work. While “Interview with the Vampire” is a decent enough film on it’s own, neither this Tom Cruise vehicle nor the lamentable “Queen of the Damned” capture the broad, finely-textured scope of Anne Rice’s epic novels or the complexity of their characters. And … the blatantly obvious miscasting of Armand in both films would be comical, were it not that so many Vampire Chronicles readers hold him so dear to their hearts. So it is just sad.

Many of you who were kind enough to leave comments here have said that my depictions of Armand/Amadeo are close to how you’ve pictured him in your mind. Thank you for saying so. It is most gratifying to hear as I’ve spent many hours re-reading the Armand-specific text in all the novels, re-visiting my studies in art history and researching other visual comparisons so that my subject would be as close as possible to how Rice described him. Remember that Armand was first introduced thirty years ago and he has evolved over the course of the novels both in personality and visually. He is alternately described as a Botticelli angel, a Caravaggio cherub, a Verrocchio David – but these are ambiguous images – he can’t look like all of them, though he can and does reflect the spirit of these works. In the end, still taking all the previous novels into consideration, I choose to go primarily with Armand as revealed in “The Vampire Armand,” since it is written in his voice and is his own personal history. It is how he sees himself – and thankfully (with few changes) how I have always seen him. There is a very endearing, amusing and telling out-of-body experience scene in “The Vampire Armand” in which Amadeo sees himself and is almost overwhelmed by his own beauty (lol) – it is one of the keys to his self-image and personality.

It would seem Rice used two main points of inspiration for her characterization of Armand/Amadeo in this novel. The first is Early Renaissance painter Sandro Botticelli (1445-1510) and his sensual renderings of young angels. Specifically, his paintings “Tondo Raczynski,” “Madonna del Magnificat” and “Madonna della Melagrana” all depict choruses of angelic youths many of whom are apparently based on just one real-life model whose gestures, expressions, features, coloring and hair too closely echo Amadeo to be merely coincidental. These were lovingly painted by the Florentine master at a time when as Armand says, “it was fashionable for boys to be as beautiful as girls.” These paintings also appear to be the compositional (if not stylistic) basis for Marius De Romanus’ “Temptation of Amadeo” as detailed in both “The Vampire Armand” and “Queen of the Damned.” More on that when I post my own version of that fictional Renaissance masterpiece.

Rice’s second main point of inspiration for Amadeo is probably Gian Giacomo Caprotti –nicknamed il Salaino or Salai (little devil, in effect) – the mischievous and sassy assistant of Leonardo da Vinci from 1490 until 1518. He is described by Renaissance chronicler Giorgio Vasari in “Lives of the Artists” as a “graceful and beautiful youth with fine curly hair.” A portrait widely thought to be of Caprotti dated 1495 (when he would have been fifteen) depicts a smooth faced youth with long curled auburn hair, large brown eyes and the sublime expression evident in many Renaissance portraits of young men. Sound familiar? Sketches of a similar (the same) youth can be found in Leonardo’s notebooks. Among the twelve erotic drawings discovered in a private collection in Germany in the 1990s and now attributed to Leonardo is what at first appears be a study for his “St. John the Baptist.” But the subject of “L'Angelo Incarnate” is more youthful, with long curling hair, a leer on his face. The figure is nude and aroused. On the back is the inscription “il Salaino” crossed out. Whatever their relationship (and an intimate one would not have been uncommon or necessarily frowned upon in 15th and 16th Century Italy), it was substantial enough for Leonardo to leave Salai the “Mona Lisa” in his will (a painting of some renown even then, and said to be Leonardo’s own personal favorite). I feel Amadeo’s teasing, mischievous ways, as well as his quick, sarcastic wit on display throughout the book along with his tempestuous relationship with Marius is in part derived from what is known of the true life exploits of Leonardo and Salai - a Master and his rambunctious pupil.

So … that’s some of the story behind this series of works and what I’m basing my depiction of Armand on, and how I got there. Anne Rice is such a provocative and visual storyteller –reading her words is like watching the epic movie that can never be made of her novels. Beyond that, “The Vampire Armand” delves deeply and accurately into the art, history and everyday life of the Early Renaissance - a period of time I have always found particularly fascinating and inspirational. But being a visual artist I still feel a visual medium is needed to further interpret her novels – solid, tangible images that can be contemplated at our leisure. So this is my stab at it. I will try to make these works as true to the written text as possible … and I’ll count on you to let me know if I don’t.