Santa Monica Mountains Recreation Area

There is some art that I do for myself and for an audience, just for the sake of doing art.  There is some art I do on spec or for cost.  But sometimes there's art that I do, free of charge, in order to further my experience.

A few years ago, I created a youth booklet for Hawaii State Parks.  It was mostly a coloring book-style activity pamphlet for kids of various ages.  It was an interesting experience because I got to work under a council of elders who oversaw my drafts and made sure that everything I was doing was properly representing the Hawaiian culture and environment.

Recently I was approached by rangers at the Santa Monica Mountains Recreation Area, part of the State Parks system in California, to help them update their Junior Ranger program.  Personally, I perceive this as a much easier task already because I'm far more familiar with the ecosystems here than I was with those of Hawaii!  I've since sent them my first set of sketches, some of which you can see above.

It's always an interesting challenge to pick up projects like this here and there.  I think commissions like this really push your abilities...AND force you to work under constraints like time and material availability!  But all in all, it's FUN.

Untitled in Progress

Here's a canvas sketch of the mixed media piece I'm working on now.  It's never a dull moment - I actually pulled this sucker out as I was setting up for the P!ay Showcase, being well aware that this particular piece is a little too risqué to show at that family-friendly venue.

Updates to come over the next few weeks (months?  Hopefully not) that I'm working on this one.  As of yet, it's untitled but I'm pretty sure I know where I'm going with it.  Who knows?

It's Personal: Wedding Boutonnieres

So I'm gettin' myself married soon!  That's right - I found some guy who's not completely terrified out of his mind by the prospect of waking up next to me for the rest of his life!  How fortuitous!

One of the things that my Dear Fiance is super duper obsessed with is comic books.  It's kind of his thing.  I let him nerd out about that, he lets me nerd out about my bug collection.  It's a fair exchange.

At any rate, I wanted to give a little nod to his love for comic books without letting them overwhelm the day and turning our wedding into "that comic book wedding."  The solution: comic book boutonnieres!

Here's where they are now: little comic book roses, constructed out of old ("but worthless" - his words, not mine) books with some hot glue.  I've made six of these suckers and have since added a couple of very discreet and suuuuuper tiny silver rhinestones to them at random, just to give them a little extra wedding sparkliness without someone being able to look at them and say, "HEY THAT'S SPARKLY."

The string they are tied with in the picture is just temporary, to hold them in place.  They will ultimately be paired with a little sprig of baby's breath and tied with some thin twine.

Art!  It's useful!

An Old Bedtime Story

Private Product

2012

(in progress)

Concept art for a children's story...I know what you're thinking: what kind of f***ed up children's story is this?  Personally, I have this weird fascination with black widow spiders.  I am simultaneously awed and terrified of them.  Seeing one - for realsies or on the internet - literally gives me the creeps, making my skin crawl.

The children's story represented here, however, is actually kind of adorable.  I'll share more about the plot once the concept art is finished, but it's for a direct-to-video release pitch.  The goal for this piece is to portray a feeling and theme that will encompass and represent the entire production in one shot: gloom, trouble, inspiration, triumph!

We'll see what happens!

Character Concept

"Auroura"
2012

sketchbook

Concept design for a character of a fantasy comic/book series.

In Progress: LA DIA DE LOS MUERTOS

DIA DE LOS MUERTOS means "day of the dead." It's probably one of my most favorite holidays. For anyone who is planning to visit Southern California, I strongly recommend visiting Olvera Street in Los Angeles that time of year.

This is the final sketch for this image and it will be done in watercolors, ink and marker.

Has anyone noticed that I super duper like mixed media? It's the best representation of life - there is nothing uniform about the world.

I am not certain if I will be selling this one yet (I actually may be donating it for charity), but I WILL be mounting it in a very special way before it is done.

ALL DREAMS update

No pictures today, sorry...I opted to exclude the regular photo or scan because the piece is very close to being finished and posting it now would negate the grand reveal.

At any rate, I'm kind of excited about the way it's coming out. It hasn't been a typical piece for me...rather, it's been very exploratory, which I think is a celebration of coming back to doing art for myself rather than for business. The color scheme is nothing like what I'm used to and I have been forcibly limiting myself to the supplies I find at random rather than waiting and seeking out the supplies I feel like I "need."

The colors are very muted, very indiscernible at times. I used dried up glitter glue that I mixed with a little measure of paste and water and re-stuck (it gave it this amazing chunky texture that was incredibly organic, contrasting with the extremely inorganic feel of the material...awesome!). It was my first experiment with masking, which I only had a toothpick to use to apply. All in all, I was stretching my boundaries and learning to laugh at myself. And, surprisingly enough, the piece was not ruined! It just looks like a beautiful, all-over-the-place, colorful sketch gone awry.

I have decided to finish it up with a few oils (something else I haven't touched in a long time, acrylics being my preference) and I'll hopefully have something to grandly reveal to you in the next couple of days.

"Dreams" In Progress

Some examples of the masking and watercolor-over-the-masking so far. How this will actually work on the cheap-o paper I'm using, I really, really don't know...but that's okay!

The Art is in the Process (otherwise known as, "I destroyed my painting.")

I have this problem when it comes to making art, where I focus on the end result and how to get there. This goes against everything I believe art should be, which is completely process-driven, with the end result being a secondary happenstance. Art should always be in progress, always in flux.

With one of the current pieces I'm working on, "All Dreams Come to Pass," I slapped myself on the wrist before I made any stupid plot notes and decided to just run with it, knowing full-well that this would probably result in the complete destruction of my painting.

It has, so far, and I kind of love it anyway. The ink is bleeding all over the place, the colors really didn't turn out how I envisioned, I have no idea what I'm doing with the masking paste and everything is a complete mess. But the more it got screwed up, the more fun I was having and the less serious I took my expectations for myself. I don't recommend this approach for every aspect of life, but for yesterday it suited the moment and was really very liberating.

I love my painting. It's like a My Little Pony farted all over my paper.

A Million Billion Things

"All Dreams Come to Pass"
by Dani Selvaggio
2011

in progress

Oh, man...sorry for the radio silence, folks.

There was a while there that I was locked out of this account, for whatever reason. This morning I was finally able to gain access again.

I hope to updating this blog a lot more frequently now. I have so many new projects in the works. Some I'm being paid to do (rocks my socks) and some I'm just doing because it's art.

Here's a little teaser of something I'm working on. You can totally see my sketchy notes if you look close enough. I'm hoping that it will be one that I can introduce in a local show sooner or later. The main part of the design was taken from a thumbnail version of a logo I was hired to do - I maintain copyright for all logo design until a final logo is approved and purchased, so when they chose a different version of the logo for their business, I jumped on this one. It kinda just popped off the page for me (and I'm super glad they didn't use it).

The words on the bottom part of the project are from a poem I wrote and have yet to publish. The unfortunate thing is, in the form the poem takes in this image, it would defeat the purpose of the piece to publish the poem now. Why? Because in the soon-to-be-painting, the poem is scrambled. In the actual poem, it's...er...not.

Ahhhh, art...I feel like I'm breathing again.

In progress: KILLER

Here are some parts to my upcoming piece KILLER. I'm hoping that this will be finished by spring 2010!

I had enormous fun constructing the raven, although using scissors to get a clean, straight cut on miniscule pieces of black paper was certainly a pain. However, I'm incredibly happy with the result. A lot of its detail is completely lost in this image, so you will have to keep checking back for updates. :-)

Have I mentioned that I hate digital cameras?

Recompense

"Recompense"

by Dani Selvaggio

in progress

commission

The title "Recompense" is an little bit of a joke. The person who commissioned this piece had been competitively bidding on another piece of mine, but lost and were vocally bummed out. I agreed to make them a personal piece that to make up for their loss. Nevertheless, take the title to mean what you will!

I decided to do a single image that tranlated onto two pieces of canvas. Considering that I didn't know how large their display area was, I decided to use two smaller canvases so that they didn't take up too much space. The size of the original painting in question was my reference.

Because the original painting had to do with what I like to call "confined nature," or an instance of man displaying nature in his own constructed habitat, I decided to do something similar here: twigs in a jar of rocks.

In Progress: PHOTO PROJECT

What follows is a hint at what I'm hoping my photo project will continue to look like. I'm ridiculously happy with how this series is coming out (thanks to my first two models, Devi and Erica). I'm hoping to capture various stages of life that one might not consider stereotypical, but which are things that every human being must go through.

Here is Devi at Leo Carrillo State Park. Hers is actually meant to be the last photo of the series. I picked out a white dress for her, which ended up being a REALLY great contrast to the sand. As for the divided, florally lit pathway we found...that was just luck. The angle is probably my most favorite thing in this photo - it really makes everything just flow perfectly.

And here is Erica. This photo was taken in my hometown, which is the perfect stage for this shot. As gorgeous as she is, and as much as she deserves to be at the forefront, I was glad to have this shot come out with the flowers being what is in focus. I chose a sepia tone for developing the photo, but I also want to post the original colors as well, because the costume I pulled together was so vivid; it really gives a different sense of the scene:

Really, there is a lot more to it, but I don't want to give it all away just yet. My biggest issue right now is whether or not I want this project to focus solely on photography - which was my original plan - or if I want to take the next step forward and turn it into a collage project. I suppose I can make that decision once I get all of my photos together.

All photos for this project were taken with my trusty ol' Canon Rebel film camera. I hate digital cameras so much...I do take digital shots during the shoot as well, but those are mostly establishing shots to show the model as we go. Film...it just comes out so much better.

Piece in Progress: KILLER

Although I have a number of paintings that I'll eventually be moving over from myspace, I thought I'd start with a piece that's currently in progress.

This piece is called KILLER, and it's meant to be a religious statement. I never go into detail about what my pieces mean because I'm of the mind that art should reflect the viewer's opinion.

That said, I hope you enjoy.

I started out with the background, which is simply acrylic on canvas.

This was followed up by the second layer, two watercolor images - one of the goddess Kali and one of the goddess Pele, both in aspects not typical to their mythology.

And, finally, I began to arrange the second layer onto the canvas. The positioning seen here is not permanent. Soon I will add the third and final main layer; afterwards, I will be able to go back and add the mixed media detail.

I certainly hope that future photos won't need to be edited. The edits you see here were done for myspace and facebook. But with blogspots "adult content" confirmation option, I'll be able to post my artwork here free from threats of removal.

After all, it's art.

Thanks!