For the Love of Art

I'm super busy, but I didn't want to neglect the blogging entirely, so I thought I'd write a quick post about another one of the things near and dear to my heart.

Yesterday, I got to go to NYC Comic Con for all of three hours, which was the only way it ended up fitting in to my schedule. It was huge and there was tons to see and do, but I only had a few things I hoped to accomplish. One was to buy a book a friend asked me to pick up for, but the other two related to art. See, I collect fantasy art; I've probably spent right around $10,000 on original fantasy art over the past 6 years or so (most of it on one painting that I'm still paying for, but more on that later.) I had to pick up a commission (which I wasn't able to, dammit) and the other was to hang out with Echo Chernik, an awesome artist whose stuff I love.

So, in honor of the nice day I spent doing these things, I thought I'd give a quick tour of some of my art and favorite artists. :)

I've already mentioned Echo Chernik, who does wonderful art-nouveau inspired artwork. My favorites are her two rocket girls:


Because her works are digitally colored, originals are a challenge, but I've got limited edition canvas prints of these two, and I bought a concept sketch of each one, also.

Stephanie Pui-Mun Law is the artist who first inspired me to collect art. Her stuff is beautiful. Sketches by her were the first originals I ever bought, and I try to get at least one of her pieces each year. My favorite (that I own...) is this one:


Until pretty recently, the most expensive piece I had bought was by Wayne Reynolds. Wayne does awesome oil and acrylic paintings of fantasy-type things. A few years ago, I saw one of his that I LOVED while I was at a convention, but I simply didn't have the money. The following year, I decided that if he still had that piece, I would figure out a way to buy it. He did, and I did:


I've never bought anything big and fancy by Doug Kovas, but I buy something small every year cause I dig his style, and he's a nice guy to boot. No scans of any of the ones I own on his webpage, unfortunately, but here's one I've thought about getting:


Then there's Andy Hopp. He's a really awesome guy with a different and interesting art style. I love his illustrationso f the periodic table of elements, but sadly I can't find any scans! I want to buy the sheet that includes iridium, it's got dinosaurs getting hit by a meteorite...

I could talk about a lot more artists (I knew I'd immediately think of at least one I shouldn't have omitted, Laura Pellick, in this case...). I always buy my art at conventions, which means that I always buy directly from the artists, so I get to speak to them and to know them, and I really like so many of them, that it's kinda hard to pick! But I'm out of time, and I've saved my most awesome owned piece of art for last.

In 2009, at Gencon, I saw the work of Omar Rayyan for the first time. Hanging in his booth, he had a painting that I immediately fell in complete love with. I asked him how much it was, and he told me it was $5,000. I asked about down payments and payment plans. We talked it over, and I knew I had to wait, but he told me that if I wanted it, I should get in touch before November, when he would next be showing it at a show. I pondered it, and tried to scrape together the $1,000 down payment, but I wasn't able to. Despite that, I outreached to him and his wife Sheila (who is also a fine artist, same link as Omar) and asked if I could give a smaller down payment, and they let me start with just $200. I've been paying them $200 a month ever since then (plus some extra out of my Christmas money), and in less than a year, it will be mine! When I saw them again at Gencon this year, Omar told me that someone asked about buying the painting at the convention in November, so I really did only barely get it, and I'm so glad, cause I love it so much:

My favorite fine artist is Rembrandt, and I love this painting so much, I think, because it really is like a high-speed collision between Rembrandt and the fantasy art I love to collect and hang all over my walls. :)

I'm sure I'll be doing more posts about fine art in the future, but that's all for now. At some point, I'll also be adding some links to pages for my favorite artists to the side bar of this blog.

In other news: it's been a month since I started this blog. Wow.