New Work: Underground

Back in December I started working on this piece while at an art show - to demonstrate the process I use to create the abstract art I've been making these past 3 years. I put finishing it off for a few weeks over the holidays and picked it up again in spurts. After about 6 or 7 hours of work this past weekend I've finally finished it, and I'm really happy with it. I decided to stay loose and quick on this one, not getting hung down on every line being perfect.

I really love the PITT artist brushes from Faber-Castell. They last forever with a great point, great ink quality and they do amazing layering work. I wish some of the lighter colors didn't dry as dark as they do - but the tradeoff is the boldness and color fastness. They also dry really quick - which is a great help when laying colors over each other. For my blacks I use COPIC 100 or 110 brush markers. The black goes down first, and I can color over it with the PITT brushes without the COPIC's ink bleeding around. Sharpie's tend to bleed too much and lose their color faster than the COPIC.

Enjoy!

- Chris

The 1995 "Chris" Set

This is simply so good I had to share. So I'm working on a super-secret project, which required me to go through some old stuff. Whilst going through said stuff, I came across a bunch of hard plastic trading card cases. I pulled them out and I found a bunch of old hockey "cards" that I drew back in 1995, when I was 13 years old!

This was quite a set, a "who's who" of hockey in the 1994-95 NHL:


Doug Gilmour - Brendan Shanahan - Martin Brodeur - Theoren Fleury - Mike Modano - Jason Arnott - Chris Pronger


Wayne Gretzky - Pavel Bure - Alexandre Daigle - Mario Lemieux - Teemu Selanne - Guy Carbonneau - Eric Lindros - Brett Hull

I love that I actually tried to put some of my own style into the backgrounds: the simple two-tone color blocks behind each logo, the simple borders for names and position (and of course my "95 Chris" branding).

As much as I miss being a kid, finding stuff like this just hardens my resolve that when I have kids - I'm going to just give them a box of markers and let them go to town...

New Website Revision

Finally completed the latest revision to the website! This version not only looks better, but has better browser support and a lot more content. I've also added all of Sick Day, Stray Thoughts & my latest story Globe Fish to the website.

In the portfolio page, I've also added my latest work: a drawing of Carl Schurtz Park I completed last week.

www.chriskreuter.com

- Chris