The Metal...

Watching 80s Hair Metal bands on YouTube can be addicting. You watch one video and see another good one in the corner and then two hours later you could host your own VH1 special...

Lazy Saturdays are great.

.... and then you find Beavis and Butthead... tee hee hee :)

... and the best-ever-live-video-ever... ever ever! RAWK!!!

New from the Saint camp...

(UPDATE) - since I posted this, someone had complained about the tags that my Dad had used for the search engine on eBay and the original auction had been taken down. He edited the auction and put it back up on eBay. Where this post reads "URAL ON EBAY" is the new link to the auction.

Repost from my Dad's blog...


First, thank you Wes for doing the feature on me & the Ural, very cool. If anybody hasnt poked around his site, youre missing a great spot. I was tickled to see a bunch of articles that indulged me for hours, including a wonderful shoot of Shinyas MV Agusta out in the sunlight.Check them out. Hell For Leather

Also, its on, the Ural is on Ebay. I have nooo idea what will happen here, but I hope its good, I need it right about now. Its a very unique bike to say the least & has gone viral in a few days, very cool & thanks to LeContainer, MotoLady (tumblr), Deus Machine, Return of the cafe Racers, some Russian sites I dont know how to say, Pipeburn, BMWcafe, ismeretlenblog & many other for putting my stuff up.

He ya go, everybody sit down & eat popcorn the last hour of auction with me. URAL ON EBAY

Some Random Projects...

Here's a few older projects of mine that range from the years 2004-2010. They're each a little different, some are pretty awesome and I love them, others are the kinds that I can't stand and was just glad to have them done but lots of other people liked them.

This is the "Big Hands Mural", it's about 7 feet tall by 4 1/2 feet wide. The trick was to tape a pencil to a stick that was three feet long, hold the end of the stick like the pencil, and as you move your hand the length of the stick makes your movements gargantuan and exaggerated. It was fun, but pretty tedious. I may try this again at some point but I'm not thinking about doing it anytime soon.

This is the "Dragon Skateboard". When I was younger, dragons and monsters were things that I would draw a lot. I was always into mythology and comic books as a kid, so doing odd animals and things along those lines I guess came as no surprise. I got into art classes in high school and started doing more traditional things but also liked doing abstract, pop art, expressive things, like skateboards and tattoo designs. The dragon was just an attempt to get back into that swing of drawing whatever I felt like and making art that didn't have to be this long, drawn out study of how something realistic looked. Not that I'm knocking traditional art, nor the importance of learning the fundamentals and doing studies as a way of progressing, I just like being able to goof around and have fun with it.

A vector of myself. One of the first things that I learned how to do with Adobe Illustrator. I was very excited to learn about the 'live paint' tool, which made this little piece quickly turn into four pieces with different color schemes for each face. I guess that aside from learning the program, this was more an attempt to study colors and their interactions with one another.

Playing with Photoshop can be fun. Just a picture of myself that I had used a few different filters on and also tried digitally drawing and painting over for different effects. A few people have told me that this is something that they really like, but it still is kinda on the fence with me. This is just a study and an experiment.

This one is something that I'm proud to say I made. There is a particular technique to freehand digital drawing and painting in Photoshop that I'm trying to get the chops for but haven't quite yet. After several attempts at this I tried to just draw whatever came to mind and then add things around it. I started with the eyes, then began adding the black and red in the background and played with different blending modes to see what would happen. I wasn't sure where to go from there and then left the project to sit for awhile. After watching "Kill Bill" and noticing the artwork on the cover of the dvd "The Number 23", I got the idea to do a tear away near the bottom and write a short monologue. It turned into kind of a dark, moody piece when I was done with it, but for one of my first tries with freehand painting in Photoshop, with no tracing or cut-n-paste images, I was thrilled :)

There's more of these things all over my DeviantArt profile (that's why some are watermarked). You can see other projects @ zenangel13.deviantart.com or if you're interested in buying something that's way more awesome than a Bieber poster from wal-mart, check out the Etsy store! www.ZenAngel13.Etsy.com

Thanks

I should really take some time to thank a few people who have been spreading the word about my artwork and supporting the little dudes like me. Whether it be motorcycles, skateboards, paintings, photography, or just a cool story, these guys are all about it...

***

The guys at Lowside Syndicate are awesome. They've all got they're own personalities and everyone takes their motorcycles and artwork pretty seriously, but with a comfortable and friendly attitude. They were nice enough to help out Jeff and Matt from Saint Motor Company with articles about the yellow BSA Cafe Racer and the long Honda CB750 Chopper. The photos from the Cafe article were done by me, which is really cool and weird at the same time to open a magazine and see your work in for the first time lol.

Everybody is really helpful and fun to hang with, we'll be seeing them again soon and hanging out a bit.

***

Return of the Cafe Racers is another blog that does a lot of different stories. One of which was about the Tesla project that's been hibernating in the garage and is being carefully pondered by Jeffy, and another cool thing was a post of theirs that was about some of the Motorcycle Series paintings that I had done for the Timonium show.

***

The guys at Le Container have done nothing but post some of the most amazing photos, videos, articles, art, etc, etc for the past few years. The members in the group have their own niches, so you can almost guess who posts what. The mix of art, bike, people, art, architecture is all great and just meshes a lot of seemingly unrelated fields together with finesse. I love this website, and I'm really happy every time I see photos, art, or bikes from myself, Jeff or Matt end up on here. It gives me that "little kid in a candy store" kinda feeling, all warm and fuzzy :)

More Sexy Ural Photos!

I know, you just can't get enough of this motorcycle :)

Let's take a look at some more sexy sexy photos then, shall we?

Again, I like to play with color modes... hence the next two pictures are the same minus the snow look in the second one.

So apparently the carburetors that originally came on the Ural didn't work the exact right way. So Dad (or Jeff-fuh-fuh) used a second set of carbs... then someone told him to use a downdraft setup, and so he did. I believe that these are carburetors for a VW Beetle lol

"Forced Induction" Stacks with these cool little manifolds running into the head, and the sweet 180 degree bend slash-cut exhaust pipe :) Very nice!

When the ignition is on, the little green light shines in the middle of the top tree. It's the "GO" light. There's a nice high beam indicator light in the headlamp as well, pretty convenient.

Color modes... I like them, don't judge.

Just give the bike a hug, you know you want to! :)

More Ural Photos

More photos from taking the Ural out today. Note the lovely SMC van in the background.

Sometimes I like to play with different color modes and see what happens :)

Here's three of the same picture, I couldn't decide which I liked best so Pick Yer Poison...

The Ural Photos

My Dad, my little Brother, and myself all took the Ural out to day to get some air. Here's some of the finished pictures. I'll post up more as I get them done.

Here we see the elusive Jeff-fuh-fuh trying to keep a straight face. You know, like those hardcore bikers in the magazines? Well, he can't do it, he's just too giddy :)

Back to Work

The past week or so since the bike show in Timonium has been a basic "getting back to work" kinda week. Monday through Friday is back to the day job, while Wednesday nights I'm in school. Between work and school, I'm finding little pockets of time here and there to get a few more paintings done and get out to do side jobs.

The other night my Dad and I had taken a few photos of the Ural that he had built. I'm not sure what category it falls into, street tracker maybe? It's an odd little motorcycle to be sure. The photos that I had done last night were already up on www.LeContainer.blogspot.com this morning. Which is always nice, those guys are great and the things that they post are uber cool, so it's always good to see something I was involved with end up there. :)

The Ural should be up on Ebay in the next few days and getting bid on like crazy! Now if you'll excuse me, I have homework... blah...

Bike Show Survived!

We all survived the Motorcycle Show in Timonium, MD this past weekend. There was a very mellow crowd and some great people that came. Thank you so much to the friends, family, new acquaintances, and the gnarly old bikers for supporting us, our bikes, our art, and making this such an awesome experience! We'll be back next year!

Here's the skateboard that got done at the Bike Show. I was very happy with how this turned out, and there will be more to come :)

The clear coat that I'm using to seal the bottom effected the lighting in the picture, but I thought it looked nice and made the grain of the wood "pop". The top of the board will most likely remain blank as it is now, but will still get the same stain and clear coat treatment using a nice natural wood color and the lacquer clear.

Hopefully I should be completely done with this thing by the weekend, that is if I don't wet sand it and buff it. That all depends on how smooth the finish is before sanding. If it's cooperating then I'll leave it, however if there are a few bumps or rough patches, it get the sand paper and a buffer wheel :)

Enjoy!

Motorcycle Series, continued... four more