H.R. Giger

Hans Rudolf "Ruedi" Giger (/ˈɡiːɡər/; February 5, 1940 – May 12, 2014) was a Swiss surrealist painter, sculptor and set designer. He was part of the special effects team that won an Academy Award for Best Achievement in Visual Effects for their design work on the film Alien. He was named to the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame in 2013. I was sad to hear about Giger's passing a few weeks ago and decided to put an homage piece together for him the minute I heard of the bad news. Like many artist, his work was a great influence and source of inspiration for me. It is not an easy feat to be original in this day and age, but Giger was able to transcend the norm and be a real pioneer in his art form. He inspired outside of his genre, everything from film makers to graffiti and tattoo artist, to architects, and the list goes on. On 12 May 2014, Giger died in a hospital in Zürich after having suffered injuries in a fall. In a New York Times obituary, Timothy Leary, a friend of Giger's, was quoted as having praised the artist by saying, "Giger's work disturbs us, spooks us, because of its enormous evolutionary time span. It shows us, all too clearly, where we come from and where we are going." Giger started with small ink drawings before progressing to oil paintings. For most of his career, Giger had worked predominantly in airbrush, creating monochromatic canvasses depicting surreal, nightmarish dreamscapes. Giger's most distinctive stylistic innovation was that of a representation of human bodies and machines in a cold, interconnected relationship, he described as "biomechanical". His main influences were painters Ernst Fuchs and Salvador Dalí. Giger suffered from night terrors and his paintings are all to some extent inspired by his experiences with that particular sleep disorder. He studied interior and industrial design at the School of Commercial Art in Zurich (from 1962 to 1965) and made his first paintings as a means of art therapy. Apparently he must have thought curing his night terrors would include giving them to someone else, mainly his audience :) He is most known for his work on the movies Aliens and Species, and being the father of the "biomechanical style of art and tattoo style. Below is my homage to this amazing talent followed by a picture of the artist, and some of his incredible timeless work. My condolences to his family and friends. May he Rest in Peace. His work will live on forever. Thanks for stopping by, Enjoy!!!!!

Exploring Old Ruins

This piece started out as an experiment in technique. I knew I wanted to do some kind of "Look we stumbled upon a new discovery", piece, so that's what I set out to do, but as always I like to try out new and interesting ways to start the drawing and spark some happy accidents along the way. I did some random blotchy shapes to get an initial composition going, then I started to paint using a textured blocky brush as my smudge tool (photoshop cs6) It yielded interesting results, so I pushed further from there. Once I got to a certain place, I then switched to my own brushes and pushed forward. I was loosely drawing inspiration from the Ridley Scott film, Prometheus, but mostly from an article I read about a cave that was discovered recently in VietNam, called Son Doong. Supposedly the biggest discovery of it's kind yet. You can read about it Here. I titled the piece novo inventus, which means new discovery, find or invention in Latin. The only thing I did not think of, was were and when this is taking place. I'll leave that up to the viewer:) Thanks for stopping by, Enjoy!!!

Biomech Creepy Critters

As always, I am exploring different techniques to generate concepts. Here are a few bio-mechanical concepts that were conceived from a few scribbler too sketches. You may recognize the shapes from some thumbnails in an earlier post. These designs were inspired by the Ridley Scott film Prometheus and the concept art for the film Battle Los Angeles done by artist Paul Gerrard. www.gerrardart.com I also want to credit and give a shout out to artist Miguel Lopez http://devilminercom.blogspot.com/ He was kind enough to share some of his goodies with me and inspire me to explore another avenue to generate more art. If your not familiar with his work ,please do yourself a favor and check him out. Miguel is very talented and I am sure we will hear more about him in the near future. Oh and lets not forget the Godfather of Bio-Mech design: H.R. Giger:) Gotta give credit where credit is due:)

They should run

Inspired by John Carpenter's The Thing and Aliens. If I were these guys, I would turn around.

Today's Warm-ups

some of todays warm-up doodles while watching Poltergeist, and Legend starring Tom cruise. I love that Darkness character (Tim Curry).
Very quick and sloppy, just wanted to keep the marker moving. They are not pretty but always a learning process.

Digital Sculpting

So, I'm starting to get somewhat comfortable with Z-brushes sculpting tools. It's hard to put the Wacom styllus down once I get going. This program is allot of fun. I'm hoping to improve my z-brush skills as I experiment with it. This Devil head reminds me of the Darkness character from the Ridley Scott movie: Legend.