Thursday, March 29, 2012

Life and Changes.

      Hello my friends. The great thing about writing a blog is that it gets your fingers limbered up so you can paint! I am done with the Mark Farner portrait, and I have to admit I have been feeling the pressure I have been putting on myself to do the best I ever have on this. It means a lot to me for several reasons. The first is because I am getting to do something for someone who has given me years of great rock and roll and the others we will talk about later. I don't mean to be evasive, but lets just take this one step at a time. Once you know all the reasons, I am sure you will understand why I am putting so much pressure on myself to do the best that I possible can at this point in my career. Career? Is that what you call an Artist's life? Actually I would think Journey would be a better word for it. Here it is. I will hopefully have a better photo of it next time, but when the paint is still wet, it reflects light and I haven't figured out how to stop that. It's not from a flash. The original is 18 x24 on a stretch canvas. An yes i do commissioned portraits. You can write me at nixonjohnsart@gmail.com if you are interested.


     I have made a decision that I believe will make some of you happy. I walked away from doing "Dark" work, but I have decided to continue my painting of the fantastic, namely fantasy. Fantasy is my first love, and I got away from it because of all the "dark" things and people that surrounded me in the first decade of 2000. I would guess that my art takes on the mood of whatever is around me and for 10 years is was bad and dark things. I am by no means blaming others for what I went through. Looking back and being more mature, I understand that I put myself in each of the situations I was in. My problems with my step-father where my own fault. I should have never contacted him again after putting him out of my life for 20 years. My fault. I knew better, people do not change. Lesson learned. But I do wish him well. We just see life on different terms and I can not hate him of think badly of him because of that, or others that have crossed my path and where part of my life for a time. Like I said, I have grew up and the only thing that matters any more is the future and the positive things I can do with it. So after saying all of this, I will be returning to my fantasy roots other than portrait work. I think the "Sexy" women paintings are going to take on a fantasy element from here on out.
    I am very proud of myself for a lot of reasons these days, and I know there are things I need to keep working on as well.  My health is doing great compared to 2 years ago, but I  still need to improve on it with more exercise. I am taking my art much more serious than I ever have before. I spent 2 days a week just working in my sketchbook.  Learning and practicing anatomy. I hope to master it in a few years, maybe more, but my goal is to be able to draw any pose and paint it and make it believable with very little to no reference. I have been very inspired by the work of Frazetta once again. It is like an old love has come back into my life, and I am happy about it. lol. The bottom line is that I am more inspired and working harder than I ever have before.
   I will be opening a E-bay store next week to once again start selling prints and originals. Although, not many originals will make it to market. I intend to keep them scarce and leave them for my heirs and their children to benefit from. I am going to make damn sure that my will and wishes cannot be challenged as they are in the Frazetta case. That is one huge mess, and I don't want my love ones to have to go through that once my time comes.  Hopefully, my work will have some real value in the future.
   Something new I am going to start doing with the next blog is this, I am going to include a short video with each one that is designed to encourage, motivate, and help you along your path. I am going to try to keep these to under 5 minutes each. You don't have to watch them to enjoy the blog, they are simply a new dimension I am adding to speak to you face to face sorta.
    I pulled out a old painting that I started a year and a half ago, but never got past the pencil work. I have decided to finish it now. You can still see the old Nick Rose signature in the bottom left corner, but that will be painted and Nixon Johns will be added when the painting is done, hopefully by the next blog.
  Until next time my friends. Love each other and be at peace. Hugs.
    

Sunday, March 11, 2012

"From the Ashes"

       Hello my dear friends. Hugs. I hope you are all doing well. You don't know how much it has meant to me that you have hung in there with me through all the changes. Most people wrote me off when I decided to leave the Nick Rose image behind and reinvent my art and use my birth name. But you believed, and now everything is starting to come into the light on levels I could have never dreamed of before.
        We've talked about the reasons I wanted to leave the horror world behind, but to sum it up again. When you work in a genre such as horror, or any specific subject, you are VERY limited to what, how much and how far you can take your career, especially as an artist. 
       This may sound selfish, and I give my apologies if it is, but I want my work to be seen by more people. I want to do the kind of work that people would be proud to hang in there office or house, just not break out for a Halloween party. I want to be part of a gallery. As far as I know, you don't see that kind of work in galleries. Another thing is that I have gotten past the "Dark" years. All the people that where responsible for that are nothing but distant memories now. I am happy and I want to do happy things. I want to bring joy and love to others. I want to help my brothers and sisters. I want to share with them all that I possibly can. I want them to know the joy that I do. To this end, I have started my own You Tube channel.
      Madison got me a very nice camera last month and I am finally starting to figure out how to use it. I should, I read the manual 4 times. lol Not only will the camera take photo's at 300 dpi's, which is very important for me to make prints of my new works, since they are on canvas. Scanning doesn't work well with canvas at all, but also the camera shots 30 minute HD videos. The quality is unbelievable, and this allows me to make art lesson videos. I am loving doing this, and the response I am getting from people is just plain joyful. Madison says I am a natural on camera and a natural teacher, and heaven knows I have years of knowledge to share. This will probably go on for as long as I live.  I am not doing this for profit, or accepting any money for it. I am doing this because I want to. At the bottom of this page I have a donation thing set up, so if you feel inspired to share you can. The money will go to the Shriners Burn hospital for children. Every cent of it. If people donate, then we will give the money to the hospital once a year, and I will share all the information with everyone here so we all will know how much we helped. Hopefully through the years, it will be more and more.
     If you will notice across the top of the page, under the header, there are now tabs. Each tab will take you to either my artwork or my You Tube Channel. More will be added as needed for different things as they come up. Getting back to the subject of this blog though, people honestly thought I had lost my mind when I gave up Nick Rose and all the 1000's of fans that went with it. But I knew then what I know now. I wanted to start anew. I didn't want to try to convince all these people to like the new work and direction I was moving into. I wanted to start fresh, all over again, and it is paying off in ways I never dreamt of. 
    One of my dreams was to always work with famous musicians. The ones I listened to every day and where a big part of my life and childhood even. I didn't want to work for the record companies, but the artist themselves. I wanted to do paintings or drawings for them in an attempt to let them know how much I appreciated them and the music they have given me and you. The songs we all sing. The songs that where always playing at a very special moment in our lives.
   I was 12 years old and had never really kissed a girl before other than the quick little peck. I was at Leanne Summers house, helping her wash dishes. Her parents had left,  her and I where by ourselves. I think she was around 14 and on the record player she was playing "Gimme Shelter" from the album "Survival" by Grand Funk Railroad, and she walked into my arms and told me just before she gave me my first real kiss, that as long as she had arms, she would always be my "Shelter"  From that day on, I bought and played every album Grand Funk ever made. I became a huge fan. I remember when they had there very first number one hit "We're and American Band" I was glued to the radio listening to Casey Casin's Top 40 radio show on AM radio in the early 70's.
    I am honored to be doing 3 paintings for Mark Farner, the former lead singer and guitar player for Grand Funk Railroad. There is a ton of news to go with this announcement and I will share it with you all over the next few months. I have done many awesome things in my career, including working with famous movie stars, being interviewed almost 20 times, and the list goes on and on.  But to me, this is the greatest honor that I have ever had. I cried when I found out that I would be doing this and working with Mark.
    If you would like to watch these paintings in progress, then you will be able to see the video's on my You Tube channel and you will be able to see step by step photo's of the paintings as they progress on my FaceBook like page. Go Here for that.
   So, as you can see, "From the Ashes" rises the Phoenix. Every day, incredible new and wonderful things are happening because I decided to take the chance that I could do more with my art than just try to scare people. By doing positive things with it, and doing all I can to encourage and help my brothers and sisters, wonderful things are happening. As I said, for the first time in my life I am truly happy. I have never been before, just confused and looking for any release from the pain that the people I loved caused me through my early life. My friends, do things that make you feel good on the inside and good things will come to you. It is the basis of Karma, and it is reality. You get what you give. 
   I love you all. Hugs. I'll be back with more great news soon and new work.