Category: Artwork

Originals for sale, prints for sale, works in progress, techniques, tutorials, and thoughts about art.

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Big Change: Many More Prints, and Easier to Find

I’ve finally completed the new gallery page. Not only will you find a much more comprehensive collection of images, but I also list next to each image what size prints (or other merchandise) that image is currently available as.

This move not only revealed to me that a lot of artworks were missing in various (or all) sizes, but that there are a lot of originals I need to get back up after taking them down for shows. It also forced me to make the prices more across the board uniform, as each was priced according to my (then) current prices for prints. They have all been updated to reflect what good price shopping has done me over the year, i.e. I’ve dropped a *lot* of them in pricing.

It also provides for me a checklist of what I need to add in the future. Watch this space for jigsaw puzzles, refrigerator magnets, and book marks to return, as well as new t-shirts designed (as I am able to afford pre-ordering them in bulk). I aim to introduce a new t-shirt design every 2 months.

Also, April means I will be adding links to SKINS for each image, as I have finally found a provider of the damned things worth working with.

Lastly, I have removed most additional packaging prices from most every print, save for a few of the bigger ones. Many of these prices were remnants of the days when I offered only un-stretched giclees; Now that I have switched to the greener, less expensive model of shipping them rolled (though the option for stretching and mounting remains) additional crating and packaging prices need no longer apply in most cases.

I have, for the most part, returned to the easy, no-nonsense flat rate shipping: $5 shipping for the USA, flat rate $14 for Canada, etc.

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First Flight

Myke Amend - First Flight
Myke Amend - First Flight

An alternate version of the promotional piece done for Dexter Palmer’s brilliant and fantastic novel: “The Dream of Perpetual Motion”, published by Macmillan/St. Martin’s Press.

( http://us.macmillan.com/thedreamofperpetualmotion )

This is the scene as I first imagined it, not the actual piece for Macmillan’s site.

In the novel, the main character is rather un-phased by his flight; This one however is a more dramatic piece, and is as I would imagine the reactions of the *other* children. I also used the demon with the scarier first-draft visage I imagined (in the book, the mechanical demons aren’t meant to be all that frightening).

There are 25 limited edition giclees available, printed in high quality 200-year archival pigment inks upon fine high white-point fine art rag paper for the best and most vivid representation of this piece. The printed area is 11.75 x 11.75 inches, and the extended white border extends it to just over 13 x 13 inches.

They are, of course, signed, dated, and numbered in the margin in pencil by me.

They can be purchased here: In the Store

They are *also* available as are open edition prints, printed in high quality 200-year archival pigment inks upon fine heavyweight metallic professional paper for a beautiful and lustrous representation of this piece. The prints are also coated with a UV resistant, moisture resistant, scratch and fingerprint resistant protective luster coating.

The printed area of the metallics is 10.75 x 10.75 inches, and the extended white border extends it to just 12 x 12 inches. They can be purchased here: In the Store

Thumbs of the other three images from this series are below, which can be viewed on the book page for “The Dream of Perpetual Motion”. For the triptych, you’ll need to right click:view image (it is a bit scrunched on that page). I’ll add these others to the site gradually over the next month – I am refining each of them to be printed well at full-size – here or there as I have time.

There, you can also view the image of the above scene as it was intended to be, with Harold as the main focus, mildly amused and otherwise un-phased by his flight.

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Mankind Has No Time (Desktop Wallpaper)

Mankind Has No Time 1280x960 Desktop Wallpaper
Mankind Has No Time 1280x960 Desktop Wallpaper

This image was the cover for the upcoming September/October issue of Gatehouse Gazette, an excellent dieselpunk, pulp, horror, sci fi, steampunk mag if you aren’t already reading it. It was originally done for the magazine in pen and ink, as per their black and white specifications, but I decided to complete the piece with color after the publication date.

This is the finished result… very vintage pulp in its look and feel.

What I was going for was a very retro sort of Neon Genesis Evangelion sort of concept…of course what it translated to, especially with the 1940’s technology looks very “War of the Worlds”, both of which made it an enjoyable and fun piece to do.

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Some New Artworks

Gatehouse Gazette 10 Cover Remixed
Gatehouse Gazette 10 Cover Remixed

The drawing for the Gatehouse Gazette was ink on Bristol. I decided it needed some color, so I broke out the acrylics and got to work on it. This is the finished result… very vintage pulp in its look and feel.

What I was going for was a very retro sort of Neon Genesis Evangelion sort of concept…of course what it translated to was looking very “War of the Worlds”. I’m perfectly okay with that.

Also – I made the below engraving the other night. It is a throwback to my darker and more minimalist style.

A quaint moonlight ceremony on a cozy cobblestone path, surrounded by stone, lit by flickering torches which lend light the reverse side of the tree.

The Path
The Path

If you are interested in Prints of “The Path”, they are at ettadiem.etsy.com for now. If however you are interested in prints of The Gatehouse Gazzette piece, watch this space tomorrow (Thursday). I’d get them up tonight… erm.. this morning.. but I am beat.

Thank you for dropping in,

Myke Amend

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New Desert Shadows Wallpaper

Cropped from the full-size piece to feature the airship only to make for a more up close, boldly detailed, and vivid view of the work (available as 18×12 metallic prints, and as 36×24 giclees on canvas in my store)

This desktop is 1800 x 1200, but can be resized or stretched to fit your needs.

Enjoy!

Desert Shadows 1200 x 800 Desktop
Desert Shadows 1200 x 800 Desktop
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Shades of Things to Come

A month back, I did a cover image for the Gatehouse Gazette, my second cover for them. The Gatehouse Gazette being a black and white publication, with a standard of using line-art for the covers, I decided to do the piece in pen and ink.

Though not exactly an expressive and creative masterpiece by any stretch, the piece made me happy looking at it, as it reminded me very much of the sorts of things I used to draw at my desk behind a makeshift wall crafted of several propped up books and a huge overfilled backpack. It also threw me back to the days of hoarding strange fiction pulp comic books, cyberpunk or dungeons and dragons manuals, and sci fi books – which I collected primarily for the artwork and imaginative worlds within.

I tend not to see works which simply look ‘neat’ or communicate a scene as art, more I see them as concept art or illustration, as such is typically the purpose of these works. No underlying meaning, no personal expression, no sociopolitical undercurrents or overtones, no mysteries contained within… just a scene from a story, a character or item from a book.

In this, as much as I looked at my line art piece, and desired to see it at its very-most complete, I thought it would be best to push on to other actual artworks – but this what rather hard to do, as the piece was continually, incessantly calling to me – so, in order to remove this distraction, I took to it with several tubes of acrylics and have been working at it a little each night.

I can’t say how oddly happy this makes me, as I work on it, and as I look at it at the end of the night – running my fingers over its surface as I know I shouldn’t – fascinated by the results because in all my time looking for that perfect surface for me – I never really gave bristol or illustration board a serious try, especially when it comes to paints. I like to at least have the illusion that my work will last forever and am forever trying to find more time tested and durable media to work on, to print on or to paint in. Though bristol has a high archival rating, I always think of all the things that could possibly happen to a piece over a few hundred years – and shudder to think of it.

The trade-off however – very nice. No tens of layers of gesso and sanding. No fighting/working with the grain of the wood or the texture of the canvas – a nice smooth surface which is easy to draw on before painting, and handles the paint rather nicely once a base coat has been applied.

It may not be an historic or ground-breaking work of art in the art world – it is however ground-breaking in mine. Not only have I found a new surface to love, but I have reminded myself once more that all art is self portraiture – as even though not intended, it unavoidably communicates the loves, interests, desires, fears, fancies, and soul of the maker… in this case maybe only my love for strange pulp fiction horror/sci fi, or perhaps a little more. I may never know, but I certainly won’t know until it is finished.

Well, enough of my musing… I now return you to your regular programming.

Oh… some progress piccies:

Gatehouse Gazette cover - pen and ink
Gatehouse Gazette cover - pen and ink
Gatehouse Gazette cover - acrylic on Bristol W.I.P
Gatehouse Gazette cover - acrylic on Bristol W.I.P
Gatehouse Gazette cover - acrylic on Bristol W.I.P
Gatehouse Gazette cover - acrylic on Bristol W.I.P
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This is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things!

Cover art for Gatehouse Gazette 10, my second cover for the popular Dieselpunk magazine.

Issue 10 will be released less than a day from the time of this posting, and can be found at ottens.co.uk.

Magazine Cover for GateHouse Gazette

(click the above image to view in larger sizes on Flickr)

I put it up for sale on Etsy, but I’ll likely pull it down if it doesn’t sell in the next day or so and paint it up with some acrylics for an upcoming show. If you would like to buy this piece, or would like to see what Bethalynne Bajema and I have for sale there, please go to Ettadiem.Etsy.com

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Desert Shadows – Now Available (in my store)

I reached the point where I *wanted* to add “just a little bit more”, but typically, as one learns over thousands of years of banishment to Earth, this is the point where one more brush stroke equals “overworked”. I waited about fifteen minutes just staring at the thing, and was happy with my decision.

Taking photos of paintings in artificial light don’t tend to yield the most spectacular results – there is a slight color shift seen from one edge to another (especially visible on the full shot). I’ll be getting it professionally scanned while I am away, proofing it when I return on the 29th, and since my printers are local – I’ll be able to start shipping these around January 11th.

They are however available now, in large limied edition metallics, limited edition giclees on canvas, and medium-sized open edition metallics (18×12 inches).

A bit about the painting:

I wanted the sphynx to be foreboding forgotten monolith, but I also wanted it to look “alive”, so I decided to put the tentacles emanating from the portal in the sphynx, putting the one winding around the back in the position a cat’s tail would be in were it thinkiing about ‘pouncing’.

In the shadows of this painting, are a night sky – something to dress up the dark spots, and to fulfill the need I had to make a starry sky out of my cloudy lightning-filled sky.

Desert Shadows (photograph of painting)

These weird shell things- I wanted rocks, but did not want them to be boring old rocks, I also wanted the desert to look almost as if it were a dried out ocean… so these fossil-like shell-like patterns in the stone served to fill these needs.

The lightning field – The way I wanted everything to be lit, required that lighting was coming in varying levels from many angles. I also love lightning. The floaty cages are a throwback to back when I did purely surreal artwork… and I thought they would add a nice ‘living’ touch to the landscape without ruining my desolate scene with actual plants.

ert Shadows (photograph of painting)

Lanterns everywhere – this one in the netting and reflecting off the portal window. A view of the coal bin, lightning field, floating cages, and propellers as well.

Oh… the nautilus. The nautilus-like submarine from “the Rescue”, now beached in the middle of the desert. Why??? … umm… Don’t tell me how to run my painting! It was a whim!

ert Shadows (photograph of painting)

Gondola – and lots of netting. More fishnet than a goth club on a Summer night. It serves well as extra cargo space. Ladders and doors for a sense of scale.

ert Shadows (photograph of painting)

The whole painting. Please forgive the obvious color shift from right to left, it is the result of uneven lighting on the painting when I took the shot.

ert Shadows (photograph of painting)

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Peeky peek

propeller and wings - a tiny glimpse into the current painting in progress.
propeller and wings - a tiny glimpse into the current painting in progress.

More images at flickr.com/photos/mykeamend (many images from start to this… nearer to finished state). I still have a way to go… once it *looks* finished is when I *really* start working.

This piece will probably not be complete till just before the holidays, and I will hopefully be through the proofing stage by mid-January. Afterward, I’ll be finishing up a book cover for someone I can’t yet name. Here is hoping the coming year will be spent more on art for the sake of art, more on illustration for authors, and less on programming/technical/web design work for others.

Clients: don’t take that personally.