This is one of my favorite fairies from this group. I'll eventually rotate it in to the PRINTS section. A friend in Ithaca has the original.

Computer art is interesting. I usually don't like it due to how slick everything can get. In a way that is probably what people are reacting to when they say they don't like it. It usually lacks appropriate texture. It's tricky because you can't use a technique just to use it. An artist needs to recognize when it's the right time to push it or reel it in.

I'm using the computer to work out the colors, but if I was to do computer art as a final I would try to find what techniques the computer tools are stronger for. It's a different medium that mimics traditional medium as a starting point. It allows people who haven't developed traditional drawing and painting techniques to put out something in their head in an efficient manner. I think a lot of accomplished artists with traditional techniques resent people who have figured out how to get the computer to do what they want because it seems like a "cheat".

In a lot of cases it is do to it's inherent ability to look like polished art in half to a tenth of the time of traditional (physical) art takes. There are people who try and take that medium past merely copying what traditional art and those are the true pioneers pushing boundaries. I like seeing something pushed farther.

My approach to using the computer is as a sketch. I learn a little more each time I do these and maybe in the future I'll begin to push the computer techniques. But for now...

Molly, my GF, had a great 2015 and topped it off with a successful book launch and tour of her book "Drawing Blood" from Harper Collins... no relation. In her mind she thought she was very difficult to live with this last year as she wrote her book and planned all the details around it to be a success. Truth, she wasn't any harder to live with than any other time! Well I wasn't going to argue as she wanted to treat me to a three day get-away to New Orleans... Come to think of it I guess she was a bitch!... and you made a mess in the studio! Is that worth at least a trip to Pittsburgh? HA!

We spent all three days going from food, to coffee shop, to more food, to a hookah lounge, to roaming all over the Bywater, French Quarter, and the Garden District. This was one of the doodles in my sketchpad at a coffee shop. We had the best time and I would even go so far as saying it was perfect. I love that girl!

I played around with it in Photo Shop a bit. I think it'll make a nice painting eventually.

I posted this on my Instagram (deadredfred) a few days ago. These fairies are definitely in an ambiguous area for me. I think of "fantasy art" as illustration. The gallery work to me is clearly art made for a gallery although on an abstract level it could be used as a companion to peak interest for a story or book cover etc. Like most gallery art could. Illustrations are clearly for articles. They might use elements written about to construct an image that might represent the ideas conveyed or pull a small part out to make the viewer interested to find out what the artist saw that would make them create that.

These fairy paintings are in the middle of this for me. I'm not creating them for a story but they are a known sort of creature that comes from fantasy art associated with witches, and dragons, and talking bugs, etc. They have this history, like baggage that you have to bring along or at least address. The gallery world doesn't seem to value this very much.

I'm very happy for the new-ish art scene that still doesn't seem to have an agreed upon name. Juxtapose, Pop Surrealism, Outsider Art, Lowbrow... I think it was germinating in the mid 90's. I wish I had been paying attention to it sooner! My first Lowbrow show I was in was around '05. I had a good painting that won "Best of Show" but I really didn't have a plan. My images were hit or miss.

This brings me to these fairy paintings. This is my launchpad for the next exploration.

Definitely letting my current study of James Jean art creep in. I guess I began looking at his work more closely because I was already noticing similar elements between my work and his and several other people.  These paintings are pretty small and also for sale for any people interested in transitional paintings.

This one isn't finished yet.