Thursday, April 08, 2010

I Hunger


Somebody stop me if I'm repeating. I hunted around and did not find this one in the archives so here we go. Anytime I'm asked about favorite classic arcade games I first think of Sinistar. There was a tiny arcade across from my art school in the 80's where I would play Battlezone, Joust and especially Sinistar. The idea of a skull-shaped, ravenous doomsday machine just speaks to me for some reason. This was my submission for the first I Am 8-Bit gallery show several years ago. Sinistar's catch phrase was "I Hunger" so I decided to depict him as a demanding baby.

Acrylic 6X12

--Starchie

16 comments:

Craig said...

Love this! I was about 10 or 12 when Sinistar came out, and my brother worked in an arcade on the Avalon boardwalk in Jersey. My friends and I dumped so many quarters into that beast.

Oriol said...

I love your work=)

The colors and the brush strokes.

Unknown said...

Yeah, I remember well those Sinistar days...

Unknown said...

You could probably do a fun series on supervillains as kids. Vader on his bigwheel, Donkey Kong on top of the jungle gym, etc

Caveat Production said...

Love this painting. Someone already bought this right?

Starchie Spudnoggen said...

Caveat Production--
Many years ago.

Unkiedev said...

OUTSTANDING!

Charlie Gavin said...

Hey Steve, when you're painting in the acrylic, wash-y light style, do you use masking fluid to mask out your subject when you paint a wash across the background?

Starchie Spudnoggen said...

Charli Gavin--
I don't mask anything. I want there to be a uniting color that peeks through the subsequent layers of paint. And when I wash over the top I like that the wash can help pull the other colors together as well as settling in between the strokes like a patina.

Charlie Gavin said...

Thanks for responding! I've got 3 more questions. Sorry, but I would've ended up spreading these in later comments anyway.

1) When you do paint in that style, are you using watercolor brushes for the acrylic paint?

2) You mentioned a while back that you'll photocopy pencils onto bristol board, if I was understanding that correctly. How are you printing on bristol board?

3) Do you ever get problems with buckling? And if so, are you taping the bristol down onto a board?

Again, thanks Steve. Awesome work.

Starchie Spudnoggen said...

Charlie Gavin--
1) I like to use soft flat acrylic brushes to block in wide areas - about 1/2 an inch to 3/4's wide. I use small round brushes (about a #2 Windsor Newton) for small details.
2) I would just put Bristol in the manual feed and the copier would print on it. But the lines are not sturdy and can rub off. If you get a wash over them they will stick around. It's just as easy to do your sketch right on the Bristol but I would copy sometimes if I thought I might try a different color pass.
3) Sure, the paper will buckle. I don't tape it down because I like to be able to rotate the art as easy as possible as I work on it. I just live with a certain amount of buckling which means I'll have to clean up some shadows when i scan the piece.

Charlie Gavin said...

I've just recently found that taping bristol down to a piece of foam-core makes a dramatic difference in preventing buckling. Plus, you can still rotate it pretty darn easily. But I'm sure you've experimented with such things.

Thanks so much for answering my questions!

LunaVorax said...

This painting is sooo cool. I thought it was something to do with spaceship first, haha.

This is really neat !

The Highway said...

Hey, cool, this came out on my birthday! This is now my official "birthday image".

Arun Kumar said...

Oh man the colors are AMAZING!

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