Good Medicine

Here are some photos Alejo took when we conducted the healing ceremony for a forgotten spiritual site next to the Potomac River.

We used stone ground cornmeal and aligned our intentions with our Brothers and Sisters in Guatemala and around the world.

Who shall light a Peace of flame in their hearts
this New Year?

Happy New Year brothers and sisters.

PEACE WITH EARTH

In the name of JAH,
Lord, Creator and Sustainer
of all positive existence...

I and I
Pray the Creator shall awaken you.
That you may gather together
As ONE tribe
And you will live in harmony
With ONE love
For every living thing.

I and I
Pray you shall make
-Peace With Earth-
And receive her simple blessings

-To humanity

-From Rodger Perry

The beginning of the end...

...of the year has begun.

Happy Pre-Holidays

Medicine Circle Production Art 01

Bobby calls to the Western Kachina.

Full Circle

2010 is proving to be a year of transition.

Transition of consciousness, of health, of appearance, of attitude and now I'm making the transition into a new animation project...

I'm not going to go into all the details, but the general story is based on interpretations of the Medicine Circle.

Here are some initial character sketches for now.

"Bobby" ver.1 dimensions

"Bobby" ver.1 emotions

"Bobby" ver.1 Ink Trial

"Bobby" ver.1 tone map

"Spirit Kachina" ver.02 Character Dimensions

First page of the new sketch book for 2011-2012

...which I took out of the book to prevent damage (go figure)

-PEACE-

The Gathering Of The Peacemakers...

I made this poster/logo for Robert Roskind's

Gathering Of The Peacemakers

I did one of these this year and it was pretty uplifting...pretty soul enlightening. I spent the first few days in September high up in the sacred Black Mountains of North Carolina. I meditated upon the interconnected beauty among various groups of humans arcoss the planet. How the One Love vibe of Bob Marley's music was so strong, it reached out across the world and touched the souls of many. It revealed the inner spirit connections humans have with each other.

Oh well, I could go on all night about the conscious relaxation I had by the tranquil turquoise lake, under the willow trees where the warm brother sun makes the days comfortable and the glistening purity of the Tree of the Universe (the Milky Way galaxy) illuminates the cool sacred nights. We stayed warm by the Rasta Fires and danced to the rhythm of the drums.

Ridiculously delicious all natural Veegan Food

Did it hook you?

yes you should go

http://www.onelovepress.com/

Peace...

G and the Dream Dragons...

G. and the Dream Dragons.

Just to break it down, I had a cluster of profound spiritual experiences happen to me last week at a "Gathering of the Peace Makers." These experiences have really opened up my mind and heart and have given me some clarity of vision for what I must do next.

This Image is dedicated to G & N

May peace and love and blessings be with you always.

-RP 09-11-10

Information is data that is in formation.

home is...

Yesterday I drove seven hours to discover that you can never call a place a your home unless it has your heart.

Today I drove eight hours back to meditate over the amount of heart that is in my own home.

(100% cintiq+photoshop)

"soulfields of the spirits"

FloydFest2010

So last weekend I hit a milestone in my life and went to FloydFest 2010. It was the first time I have ever attended an event of this magnitude. It was the first time in 17 years that I had set up my own tent and slept in it outside.
My good friend deven came on down as well along with his camera and took the few photos I have here. The fact that there are no more photos than these testifies that we were too engaged in the beauty of the earth music to fulfill our "tourist" duties.
My life is changed...

It hit me around 1:45am on Sunday as the children of the earth were dancing around a campfire under the light of the full moon that we are all part of one big soul...we are all connected to this world and the few of us who are awake to this need truth need to do all we can to reconcile the relationship between our mother earth and the rest of her lost children.

I'm not fearful that humans will wipe out the earth, we don't have the power, but if we don't stop acting as a cancer on the planet, the planet's immune system will kick in and wipe us all out and replace us with a species that has more respect for the host.

I have seen Floyd, I KNOW we can live a sustainable Green life.

The chorus of Joni Mitchell's "Woodstock" comes to mind

"We are Starlight,

We are Golden,

And we have to get ourselves back to the garden."

Peace and Love brothers and sisters!

-RP

Star Field

For Maurice...

Musical Interlude

Hey, I ain't all business all the time...

Here's some highlights from a couple recent home recordings of me jamming out with my Roland FP-7. This is all pretty much improv...

I can be found jamming with others in an undisclosed warehouse in an office park near my house every Thursday night.

BP oil spill

I've tried to avoid making outright political statements on this blog (you can bet they are subtly implied through most of my artwork) but it's irritating to keep my thoughts on this issue bottled up inside...

When you have the "Cleanest/ most Eco-friendly/ Socially minded" oil corporation of them all create such a environmentally catastrophic event through their complete greedy disregard for any type of life and continue to epically fail in their response....

You get these moments where you tell yourself that your "progressive" views probably don't have a full rooting in reality, that your judgement of these global corporations is a bit biased... I mean look at BP, look how much money the give to land preservation funds and Eco-friendly groups! Now they can't be all that bad?

It's all a lie, they donate massive amounts of money to keep the environmentalists out of their business. They don't give a flying fizgig about you as a human... if a billion people have to die to turn a profit, so be it!

I'd rail out that this is all the fault of capitalism, but let's face it, if Adam Smith were still alive, he would probably be calling for justice to be granted to these corporate criminals.




Humans of the world unite! you have nothing to loose but your chains!

New Pencil Test

Here's a few seconds of the long 3 minute sequence from "MKT"

Ana's Story

So in late December 2009 I was asked volunteer some illustrations to go with a story written by a 12 year old girl from the area.

It was called Ana's Story

She wrote about how circumstances in her family situation had forced her mother, younger sister and herself out into the street.

She went on to write about the difficulties of moving around and trying to have a normal social life at school. What do you tell your friends when they want to have a sleepover at your house...

...When your house is a homeless shelter?

...or the street?

She also wrote about the things and people in her life that inspired her to persevere through the hard times.

Her family was fortunate enough to get into a transitional housing program and eventually move on to affordable housing.

In North Virginia, affordable housing has become a sad political issue. We have a very large population of people making less than 25K a year. These people need places to live, but the housing market in North Virginia is ridiculously expensive, what few plots of land that are left are generally turned into lots of high priced professional condos or "McMansions". This means employees in the service sector have to move farther and farther out of the area to find an affordable home adding to their transportation costs.

What's even more disturbing is local politicians and groups of local home owners have been working together to suppress development of affordable housing. They believe that a close proximity of affordable housing or rental properties near their wealthy neighborhoods will cause their own housing value to drop making it harder for them to sell off their properties for more than what they are physically worth when they decide to retire.

It's unfortunate that the greedy nature of these individuals creates such hardships for the lower income workers in the area. The lower income workers often work longer, harder hours in the foundation services that keep the higher end of the local economy afloat.

It is my hope that this book will bring awareness to the plight of the lower income workers and their families. These are the hands that truly built and maintain our communities and they have just as much right to live in the communities where they work as anyone else. If the current residents cannot comprehend this, then I hope their children can.

As Ana says about being homeless...

"It is not a choice
It can happen to Anyone
If we work Together, we can overcome Homelessness"

We are still working out how we will distribute this book, so I don't have a listing for where you can see the full story and set of illustrations at this time, however, I'll update this blog on that info when a decision is reached.

In the meantime if you are interested in Reston Interfaith and the critical and varied social services they do in the Herndon/ Reston areas of North Virginia please visit there website...

www.restoninterfaith.org

Sketchbook Update Feb, Mar, Whatever...

Yeah, I've been busy with stuff and have not had too much to add to the Sketch book in the last 2 months, I do still draw, but it's mostly when I'm cracking down on the animation which ain't gonna draw itself.

I worked on this slowly between February and March. I want to give it a real scan and color detail it when I get a chance.

Sendakesqe...

Alice In Wonderland

No this is not some movie review or fan art tribute, I have not even gone to see it yet...

nope, I got commissioned by a local ballet director to design a backdrop for an upcoming recital interpretation of Carrol's classic novel.

I've opted out of trying to paint the backdrop myself, it's about 30 feet long and 18 feet high and I just don't have the time or mindset to attempt something that large (let alone a studio big enough to handle it.

I also am interested to see how others will be able to render it out, I'll try to get pictures when it is done.

The Ax

In yet another delayed posting...

Following the rants of other artist who felt the cold betrayal of Mac in it's release of the iPad, I found a link to the Axiotron Modbook package and had to get one.

I got it last month.

Downsides: -Does not last very long on battery when running Photoshop

-Screen is not very that bright and has some polarization issues.

-Drawing surface is not the strongest, already got some scratches that I did not expect to get so soon (now I'm more careful with it)

Upside: It's a portable Cintiq dude... I can draw/color/ animate where ever I want (as long as there is electricity)

Definitely worth the money, but make sure you take care of the screen if you follow the same path. The revolution is not gentle and some things need to take a beating. The Ax is a very nice tool, but when compared to the pen and paper, it still has some evolution to go through. Climbing a mountain on foot and and hoping to fully render out a scene with the Ax, is just not that quite doable yet.

On Inner Inspiration (late snomagden observance)

Sometimes our minds are apt to imagine our souls in places..

Where our Earthly Body's do not currently reside.

ENOUGH!

Bring on the spring!

Siberia

So I got an e-mail from a good friend who just moved to Southern Thailand with lot's of pictures of tropical birds, decorative temples, exotic beaches...

Well I have all that too...

...Somewhere in a past life.

A frosty greeting to MF from sunny NOVA.

Sketchbook Jan.2010

It's that time again...

Some kids, some mud

some kids at lunch w\ randomness

Idea for a new "Read" poster

Samurai drawn while waiting for interview...

and the all popular potty pic.

Onward to February...

Lunch Box Update

I finally had some time to kick out the lunch box track into the computer so I could give you this update of Mankind Triumphant progress.

Some of these Pencil Tests are mine and some are from my student workers at VCU.

Echos of the Hexagon...

Continued practice with nothing but Photoshop on the Cintiq

Erich

Was messing with the Cintiq and did this portrait of my brother in the revolution.

-word

Chixilation

So I drove up to Richmond on the 1st day of 2010 to chill with my good friend deven and we got to theorizing on how a stop motion pixilation animation would look if we placed a motion stabilizer on a certain point.

We did some tests then looped certain sections to make the video above.

We'll see if this goes anywhere.

Happy new decade...

Hooray, it's 2010 and I'm back in the good ole office, cleaning all the class room projectors and taking stats on their bulb life, while re-loading the OS on a fried MBPro and burning some language CD's for ESL.

I wonder what fun new things this new decade will bring? Over the course of the last 10 years, I watched America get reduced to half the man it used to be.

Is it all up from here, or will we fall right back into the slime and be forced to re-evolve?