St. Pat's Hangover

I'll post pictures from the St. Pat's gig at Ross's later on. Everything went well and it was a lot of fun being able to spend a day performing genuine Irish music on St. Pat's. It's nice to be able to cut through a lot of the plastic Paddyism and general ignorance that surrounds the holiday and give people a wee bit of my own culture.

One of the surprise outcomes of me working on St. Pat's is that instead of being terribly hungover yesterday, I was just really tired. So I put a few projects on the back burner for the day and went over to the West End for a sammich and cigar, accompanied by a few beers. Of course, I wanted to get a little something done, so here's an oil pastel sketch I did of some of the old timers at the Celtic Cottage here in Long Branch.

Happy St. Pat's Day!!!

Hey, kids! A very happy St. Patrick's Day to you all. I hope to see a few (or more) of you over at Ross's Dockside this afternoon in Sea Bright. Settle in for a few pints and listen to me belt out a few old rebel and drinking songs. My aim is to keep the whole thing as Irish as possible and to steer away from all the plastic Paddyism you see run rampant today. I want everyone to be exposed to bits of Irish culture they might otherwise not be, all while having a helluva time. So, if you like good food, waterfront views, drinking, and singing at the top of your lungs, you should definitely swing by.

In the spirit of the holiday, I give you a little photo sequence of the last 5 days of my life. My friend Mark is turning his basement into an Irish Pub, and asked to me throw a mural up on the wall. It's based on the one in the movie 'The Boondock Saints'; from the scene where they load up on all that fine weaponry. It really shouldn't have taken me as long as it did, but I was going for a bit of a faux finished look to give it that worn, rustic feel. And, being that it was my first time trying something like that, and that I'm a perfectionist, and that there was a lot of friggin' letters, it took me a long time.

Well, I'm off to drink a pint and dance a jig. Not because it's St. Patrick's Day, mind you. That's just what I do on Monday mornings. Slainte, all.

Eli's Great Escape

This is the first step for one of two Eli Manning Super Bowl pieces I'll be working on in the next two weeks. It's the rough for a 36"x24" painting of Manning escaping all those Pats defenders before making the pass to Tyree, now known as "The Greatest Play In Super Bowl History". The other is going to be a colored pencil job of Eli pumping his fists and screaming in triumph, very similar to the Tyree piece that I did. It's a nice pose and a rare bit of heated emotion from Easy E.

I'll be posting updates as I go. Also stay tuned for some pics of a nice Irish mural I'll be doing this week as well.

Autographed Giants Super Bowl Art

I finally got those Tuck and Tyree pieces autographed this Sunday. They're currently up for sale at my Etsy.com shop. Throughout the next week or so, I'll be putting all kinds of artwork up for sale there. Some of them will be quick sketches that'll go for about $10, and on the other end of the spectrum you'll have some large paintings autographed by famous people that could go for as much as $1500. There'll also be plenty of stuff in between. If I think it's good enough to hang on someone's wall, and I don't mind parting with it, I'll put it out there. Beer ain't free, you know.

Please, head on over for a look-see. Even if you have no intention of buying anything you might see something a friend would like, and then you can do your old pal Craig a favor and e-mail that friend a link to the product. Your friend gets a nice piece of art to hang on his/her wall, you get praise for thinking of your friend, and I get money. It's win-win-win.

Below are pics of those two Giants pieces with details of the autographs and pics of them signing.

Down Goes Brady

Here's the "Justin Tuck sacking Tom Brady" piece I posted the rough of earlier this week. I finished it off in oil pastels. On Sunday I'll be heading up to Rahway to get this and a "Tyree's Catch" piece I'm currently working on autographed by both players. The two autographed pieces will then go on sale at my new Etsy.com shop.

T-Shirts and More!

I just renovated my Zazzle.com store with a bunch of new t-shirt designs, including one for St. Pat's Day and another honoring David Tyree's a-MAZ-ing Super Bowl catch. Check them all out at zazzle.com/craigmahoney* I'm hard at work on my Etsy.com shop, from which you'll be able to purchase original art. Hopefully, that'll be up by tomorrow with my new website making its debut at the end of the week.

I'm Back, Suckas!

Wow. Sorry I've been away from this blog so long. I had good reason, though. There were a few different things going on in my family that needed to be taken care of and kind of distracted me from my work a wee bit.

However, there is news. You can see, and more importantly hear, me at Ross's Dockside in Sea Bright singing a ton of Irish songs on St. Patrick's Day. I'm working on some new pieces (like the sketch of Justin Tuck sacking Brady you see below), but first I have to get a couple of commissions out of the way which I can't post yet since they're gifts. Finally, my new website will be up by the end of the week, as well as my shop on Etsy.com, from which you'll be able to purchase all kinds of original art, from finished canvas paintings to quick concept sketches.

I'll be back with more throughout the week.

Football, Baby! - Big Ben & SB 42 Giants Art

I finally finished that Roethlisberger piece I've been posting about for the last month, and, I must say, I'm more pleased with it than any other painting I've done. In most of my previous works, I concentrated solely on the subject; the main figure of interest. I generally blew it on the backgrounds. What I ended up with was a pile of canvases that showed I could render the human form well enough, but hadn't a clue as to how to compose a finished painting.

Which is why I'm so happy with this one. It's the first that fully occupies the canvas and doesn't seem half finished or not-thought-out.

One of the first things I thought about when applying the paint was how I would use color, and, very early on, I decided to use a very muted color scheme for the background, while going with a bright, slightly saturated look for the foreground. Essentially, my thought process was that the background was a painted landscape and the main figure was on HDTV. Also, as I moved further from the main subject I became less interested in accurately depicting details and took a more expressionist approach to the painting.

You'll notice the defenders arm rendered in complete detail because that is a part of the main center of action, but, the further the figure is away from the center of the action, the darker the color scheme gets and the looser the painting technique is.

Below, are a couple of diagrams to show my thinking about the composition. The two most important things to me when doing a piece, especially a sports one, are line of action and composition in the frame. Doing a scene with multiple figures I wanted to make sure that the composition of the piece was balanced, that the figures in the fore, middle, and background all complimented each other and helped to emphasize the main subject, and that the painting gave you a good sense of the action and kinetic movement going on.

The first pic shows the two competing lines of action and the second blocks out the composition to show you the balance amog the fore, middle, and background. I don't know if I've gone on too long. I just hope that some people might find it interesting getting a li'l behind-the-scenes on the thought process that goes into a piece like this, and maybe somebody starting in art might learn something.

I plan on writing up something on my feelings about the Giants perfect Super Bowl win, but, for right now, I just wanted to give a little sneak preview into what i'll be doing the next month and a half. The short version of the story is that I'll be doing a lot of Giants Super Bowl stuff, and I thought one way to make it interesting for myself, and to learn something, would be to do a few of them in some different mediums; including some I've never tried before. Below is a color test for an illustration I'll be doing in marker of Osi Yumeniora sacking Mr. Bundchen.

New Demo

Man, have I been away for awhile... Here's the deal for those of you that missed me. The Giants won the greatest Super Bowl ever. I spent last Monday hungover and reading just about every newspaper, sports site, and blog article on the game I could find. Tuesday morning I watched the victory parade, and then...

I essentially locked myself in the studio until I finished that Roethlisberger painting and then the band's demo.

Then on Friday I babysat my nephews.

Now you know.

So, here I am fresh as a daisy on a fine Monday morning with all sorts of great new things for you, my loyal readers. First off, is the band's demo. You can click here and listen to all 3 songs at my MySpace profile. I'll have them loaded up on craigmahoney.com by next week. Below is the artwork I put together for the cover.


I'll have the finished Roethlisberger up later in the day, with a little breakdown and analysis of the piece.

Big Ben IV: Progress Is Made

I'm in the homestretch now on this Roethlisberger joint. It's amazing how I always underestimate every new project I take on, and then, once finished, immediately forget how hard it was and how long it took.

The biggest pain in the ass when doing illustrations of football players is the damn helmet and mask. When drawing or painting any other type of sports figure you can be a lot looser and try to get a little bit of expression and kineticism into the piece, but once you tackle that helmet and face mask, you enter the realm of technical illustration. And, of course every bit of it casts shadow and reflects light. I always find that, once I get their heads out of the way, illustrating football players becomes a lot more fun.

Overall, though, I'm very happy with how this piece is turning out. I've always been good at rendering figures, but (with my paintings, mostly) I never knew what the hell to do with the background. I never want the backgrounds to be too realistic or busy because: A. It will distract from the figure in the foreground; something I really want to stay away from in sports portraits, and B. I don't see the point in rendering an entirely realistic canvas from top to bottom. You may as well just get the photo.

In this piece I think I've struck the perfect balance between abstraction and realism that places the figure in a specific time and place without distracting from the figure itself. My original intention was to go with a dark, muted color scheme in the background so that the foreground figure will really pop right out at you, and I think this achieves it wonderfully.

Working on this piece, and finally getting to this point with it has left me very excited to do more of these paintings now that I have a better idea of where to go and what the hell it is I'm doing.