Black and white painting of James H. Lacey

I did this painting from a photo I found in one of my ten thousand or so, airplane books. Just a cool looking pic and I thought it would be a good challenge for me.

P-51 Pilot

A little fun to keep me motivated on the day job. I did this sketch from a
photo I found on the internet. It was a good excuse to try some of the watercolour, wash brushes from Corel painter.

Exerpts from books that never happened.

Like the title says...I've often wanted to just publish a bunch of stupid / funny pages from book ideas of mine that are either half baked or too ambitious for my lazy butt to actually finish. I love this one because I'm a huge fan of high stakes stories around cute and fearful characters.

painting detail

I thought this was neat because you can really see the difference in detail from the foreground plane to the distant one...I tried to use a larger brush on the distant plane to keep my details lower and add some depth.

Black and white version

Thought I'd post this as well. To check my values and balance, I sometimes convert the painting to black and white....helps me see mistakes...anyway...I almost like this better than the colour....which probably means my colour sense sucks. Yay.

Ferocious Frankie. Is it done? I think it's done...

So I'm thinking this is finally finished....at first glance, it doesn't look like all that much was changed since the last version but I've done a fair bit of fleshing out. I don't know if the vertical set up was much of a success...I keep wanting to widen the canvas and paint in the foreground plane....I won't though because the whole point (besides try to get better at painting) was to try a less than common set up.

Ferocious Frankie detail.

Here's some closer detail...

A bit further on this P-51 Mustang painting

I'll keep this short...I've done a bit more...lengthened the cowl of the foreground plane....the rough prop arc guides are visible fro the two rear planes...so I'll refine that down the road...massaging the clouds...some details...yadda yadda.

oh, one more thing...the colour here is closest to the original painting..the one below had some levels adjusted....Not sure what I like yet....this one seems to have more atmosphere...so much for keeping things short....crap.

Smrt Dog Dum Dog.

Here's a sketch for a show idea of mine. what the heck I'm ever gonna do with this....I have no idea...but I've been trying to change the way I draw characters for the last while. There's so much great stuff out there and I tend to be stuck in a rut of sorts...I like the big dog, Spencer...but the Chihuahua blows. I'll fix him.

Mackenzie turns 10 !!!

Yep, it's true. My super awesome daughter is turning ten! I love you squirrel.

Valentine's card

I was playing with some digital pastels. I like the result....It's a bit cautious..but overall I think I'd like to continue with this sort of feel..and maybe down the road it would be cool to do a book in this style.

Grumman AA1B.

I Chose this plane because it's the one I used to own. Like all my paintings..this one isn't completely done. :) But I wanted to post it. Again, I'm not entirely happy with this but I feel like I'm learning. I've switched software for this one and I'm liking the results. And even though the software shouldn't matter, I find it easier to get the feel I'm looking for with this one. On the right is the full painting as it stands right now. I've got to do some work on me (the pilot) and refine the clouds...as well, I need to put the call letters on. They were there in an earlier version but I decided to darken the plane considerably and so I just went right over the Id. Too big a pain to paint around them. The second image is a bit of a detail of the airplane. In reality it's about 30 inches wide so this gives a bit of an idea of the printed size. Anyway, more to come....
in about a thousand years.

Merry Christmas !

Hey there. This was a complete blast to do :) One of those rare times that I have an image in my head and the end result feels pretty dang close! I've always wanted to do a Christmas card. Maybe this will be the beginning of a yearly tradition for little old me. Oh yeah, the two dudes on the hill are our cats. Roundy and Zoom.

Anywho, Merry Christmas folks, dudes, and dudettes. :)

Awesome animated golf show, "Kill Golf"

This is a page from the pitch bible of, "Kill Golf," a show Blayne Burnside and I created a few years back...sheesh...long time no do anything.

Anyway, it's the funniest show ever!.......... Really. It all takes place on a Golf course...but really has nothing to do with Golf at all. There will be no crappy jokes about, Mulligans, the 19th hole or how some guys Grandmother can drive the ball further than some other guy.

There will however be insanity, stupidity, drama, gratuitous violence, several brushes with death and of course, an entire episode dedicated to bigfoot( maybe two). By the end of the first season the biggest, most diabolical and fiendish plan ever hatched on a stupid cartoon will be revealed and Golf's future will hang in the balance.

Freakin' gold people..................Freakin' gold

"Uh-oh, My Cat is a Super Genius! " Got my first proof of the book.

Hey! I got the first proof copy of the book. It was exciting and a little weird. It looks pretty good but Somehow when I looked at this thing....it seemed odd. I put it amongst a bunch of other children's books and it looked strange to me.
felt like anyone who looked at the pile of
books would be able to pick mine out as
the one that didn't look legit. I think
maybe that's because I've been so close
to it for so long.



So there's a bunch of little problems. The colour isn't right on some of the pages...and though the cover looks quite blue here...it really seems rather purple when holding the book...so I need to do something about that. Also, there's text I need to shrink for a better fit...some of the words get lost in the binding too. I'm working on finding an editor right now...so some fresh eyes should help. Have a look and throw me some comments. :)

Soapstone Fish

Hey there. So I just got back from a week at a cottage with my family and during little moments where we weren't eating, swimming, kayaking or sleeping we would sit down a do a little soapstone carving. I did this for the first time on another cottage trip last year and I liked it so much I picked up some tools and stone so I could do it whenever I caught a second.

So anyway...here's my fish. It's in Brazilian soapstone. I posted two picks because I wanted to show the scale and colour a bit better..the orange/brown version is really the true look of the
piece...but the photo in my hand is without the
flash and it shows the detail a bit more I think.

Soapstone is one of the coolest things I've worked with in a long while and I highly recommend it. It's relatively cheep to get into and pretty relaxing....unless the thing breaks on you...which this did....the fish should have been another 3/4 inches in length but the tail broke early in the carve...so after much crying, I shortened the sucker. I think it turned out okay. :)

Fw-190 engine detail drawing

Trying out some sketching in sketchbook pro. Found this photo in a book about the Focke-Wulf 190 fighter from WWII. The ground crew guy was on top of the engine cowl waiting for the front armour flange to be installed. The dude didn't look happy.

I think I captured his scowl pretty well. Made me wonder what the back story was....did he not like having his picture taken?..or was he mad at the photographer for some reason?? Who knows....Either way...I'm sure in about 2 days I'll hate this drawing no matter what the guy was thinking.

neat photo of the front of my favorite German fighter though :)

Book! Book! Book!

The book moves ever closer... I'm final assembling the last of the pages. Just did this one the other night...I've still gotta get a edit/proof reading done...'cause my wordses-es and grammers sucks.

Horse for Mackenzie.

Wow....like 3 months since I posted anything...I was getting sick of looking at that crappy chick sketch I did....and I was doing some quick paintings for my daughter's room. I think this one is finished...I don't know what I was going for...I drew this from a photo and I wanted to add something to it...so I took a few liberties....

girl...I don't know why i did this

Just a sketch I did ...and I really don't know why....I guess I'd like to do more stuff like this...never get a chance to experiment with people....or how to draw them in a lose and fast way and after seeing some gorgeous work on a couple blogs I guess I found myself doing this...it hardly compares...but it's a start.