Sit right back and hear a tale of tiki isle...

Well this is it, one of the biggest projects I have ever undertaken on my own. I have always wanted to own a mini golf business, but I lack the capital needed to start it so I figured I may as well start small...literally. What I am working on is a tabletop mini golf ; 9 holes of tiki tropic island themed mayhem that will fit on about 8 banquet size tables and can be rented out for parties and events. I have started working on hole #1 which you can see below is basically a piece of carved out styrofoam with some layers glued on each other. The ship model is there for figuring out the scale of the layout because it will go on the final hole. The story is that sometime in the late 1800's a ship crashes from a storm at sea onto a uncharted island. You are one of the crew and explore the island as you go through the holes until you reach the finale and the natives make you test your skill against the volcano god. The first hole represents the crashed ship on the island. The theming will be polynesian tiki throughout the course.



On the first hole you will putt the ball through a gaping hole in the side of the shipwreck, and to get a hole in one up a small hill which will then drop the ball down a ramp into the hole. You can see some of this on photo #2 and the little wooden balls I will be using for golf balls once painted. The arrows on the mound under the ship indicate which way to carve the mound into a hill shape.


On photo #3 you can see some progress on the sculpting of the clay over the styrofoam. I will be sculpting out the entire hole in non-drying clay, then casting a latex mold to make the final out of. I am doing this for a few reasons; on the final I will be using sculptamold which is very lightweight and durable, and these need to be as light as possible for easy transportation. The other reason is if any of the holes get substantial damage that cant be fixed, I can make a new casting from the mold so will always be able to easily replace damaged courses. At this point you can also see on the right a little plastic tiki shotglass I will be using for lighting (I will fill in detail on that in just a bit).
On photo #4 you can see some details of the ball ramp, I ran into a bit of a problem on this after testing; I had to make the back wall higher than anticipated to keep the ball from flying off the course (of course once it is covered in the "rough" that should help with that as well). I didn't realize that making the ball go up the small hill where the ship is, and then up the ramp required a hit hard enough to send the thing flying right off. The back wall SHOULD help with that, but I may have to make this section more of a covered "cave" to contain the momentum of the ball. If I do have to do that I will have to sculpt a seperate "hood" piece to go over the ramp. Right now on the tests it seems to do okay, once it hits the back wall it drops down to the speed ramp and rolls down.
Photo #5 shows some of the detail that will be in the final piece. This is a tidal pool of starfish and sea anemone on the upper wall. The rocks that make the walls for the course will look like beach area with tidal pools. Once the casting is done and painted I will pour clear liquid acrylic over the tidal pools to simulate water and protect the smaller pieces in the pools from over eager hands. I may end up using real starfish shells in there if I can find some to scale.


Photo#6 shows a close up of the tiki shotglass I am using for the light. I want these courses to have lighting like a real mini golf course for ambience but also because I know from experience that a lot of places that rent things like this out don't have proper lighting. So each hole will have one of these tiki shotglasses with a hole cut through the bottom and a christmas light placed inside so it glows and illuminates the course enough to play but also create atmosphere. If time and money allow I plan on putting in fiber optics throughout the course as well for more lighting and magic. I will probably put a small light on top of the putting ramp in the back as well.



And so that my friends is a small peek into my large project. Once I locate where the heck I put the sketches for the course holes I will put those up too. Until then see you next time on tiki isle, and smiles everyone! smiles!

s'mores and campfire fun (work? hardly!)

This last weekend I had a caricature gig with campfire USA at Camp Namanu, surprisingly not too far from my home and I never knew it! I had a lot of fun it was like going back to my childhood camp I even got to make s'mores by the campfire. Campfire USA was having a fund raiser and needed a caricature artist so enter the tiger (me). I got there early so I took some pictures around camp it is really a beautiful place, though I still kick myself for not taking my camera around later as I found after the event these awesome treehouse cabins... we are talking about cabins that you sleep in built UP IN THE TREES! How totally cool is that??? Maybe I will get invited back next year, and then I will get my chance to take those pictures again. I did take some pictures of something else uniquely nifty to the camp: a star watcher tower (seen below) where you climb stairs to a elevated platform that has art of zodiac signs around it and watch the stars at night. You can also see my little encampment for my caricatures below. This was a really fun event, I drew around 30 people (lost track after a while, might have been more) and I got free eats as well... barbecue ribs and cheesecake baby! Does it get any better? (okay well real s'mores over a real campfire came darned close). Hardly seemed like work at all, I loved every minute!

split personality cake or two for one

Well I was roped into doing the cake for my niece and my great niece but they wanted two different things and we only had one cake... what to do? I guess the only thing to do was to split it down the middle so thats what I did. My niece is really into the Hannah Monatanna thing, and my great niece since she is much younger loves care bears so I did sunshine bear on her side. It had been quite a while since I had done any real cake decorating and I discovered our equipment was showing its age but still serviceable with some patience. So here is yet another confectionary for the old blog, I am starting to get into the tv show "Ace of Cakes", and am really itching to try my hand at using fondant, until then I guess it's gotta be butter cream icing. Well enjoy!

a very late Easter!

I know I havn't posted on here in a while so I figured I should finally put up pics of my Easter eggs. No, I don't mean a hidden dvd bonus... real Easter eggs. I did mention I was late with this right? Well my nephew's children came out for one of our first real Easter's together so I wanted to make it special. I decided to try something I had never done before, (and thats special because I think I have artistically done everything known to man on Easter eggs over the years). Since I love pen & ink using my old croquill pens I decided to give a shot at "inking" an egg. All in all it didn't turn out too bad, but I had afterthought worries over India ink getting on the actual edible part of the egg and what that may do to people's tummies so not sure I will repeat it. The coloring inside the lines was done with crayon, and the whole shebang dipped into the traditional vinegar dye coloring mess. Holidays, especially artistic ones seem to be a big deal at the Guiher household (just look at the crazy gingerbread Christmas cookies in the first post). I don't know if you have ever tried to draw detail on a rounded surface before, but suffice to say it was an interesting challenge. Even more challenging was photographing the buggers, they kept wanting to roll around no matter what I did. Out of 15 shots I think I may have gotten 3 useable ones. Ah well, 'twas a happy Easter and the kids loved the eggs, they even asked me to find a way to preserve the art. I ended up having them carefully shell the art off and then dripping a thick seal of candle wax on the backs which satisfactorily preserved them.
1) (top row) First there is Alice falling down the rabbit hole.
2) (top row) Then that crazy Tigger saying "Halloooo!"
3) (top row) Johnny Depp as Jack Sparrow for the picky pre-teen.
4)(top row) Ariel and Flounder under da sea.
5) (bottom row) Cinderella on purple for my sister the Cinderella fiend.
6) (bottom row) My own characters which you may recognize from a previous post: Cluehouse Kids.
7)(bottom row) Bilbo from the classic Rankin Bass "The Hobbit" 70's cartoon, holding aloft sting.
8)(bottom row) Spiderman for the young little Spiderman nut.

Step by step Haunting

A pretty long post this time kids, so settle back grab some snacks and a drink because this is a real step by step haunting (painting on that is).
Well while I was cleaning off some of the stuff on my computer, I ran across a painting I did inspired by the Haunted Mansion attraction at Walt Disneyworld. This is probably the only painting that I have ever done where I took photos of the steps along the way, so I thought it would be fun to post the progressive steps that it took to paint it. Below is the first step, it's just pencilled out on the canvas and I barely started to paint the flesh tone. At this stage you have to be careful because you are laying the background colors that will subtly show through the other layers and if you screw this up there is really no turning back. Both beginning the under painting and pencilling took about 30-40 minutes, because the pencilling has to be pretty darned exact.
Next I continued the under painting, and started putting in the highlights and midtone shadows. Because this is an underpainting, the colors will be much starker and brighter than the top layer in order for them to show through to some degree. However, I still do not use pure whites and browns I mix just a bit of the flesh tone into each because it will look too sharp and contrasted though the layers unless you do a lot of over painting, which sort of makes the under layer a moot point.
I then continued to add a bit darker shadows with dark umber and browns thinned down with water (this is acrylic paint) and used it almost like a watercolor. I just barely began some of the shadows on the facial features such as the eyelids and upper lip, where the darkest shadows are, and at this point it has taken about an hour and 15 minutes total with the majority of the time used on the sketching.
Now I started to fill in some of the very basic details such as the eye color, lip colors, and roughing out an undercoat for the hair. You will notice a slight crinkle in the corner of the mouth that is entirely too dark at this point.
The second biggest underpainting block out comes next; that of the suit he is wearing. I used a very dark naval blue, that is close to how dark the top painting will be. This gives it more velvet darkness once I put some much darker almost black shades on top of it. The rest of the suit nearly the same sky blue I used for the eyes. I am making up names for the shades of color that I think people can relate to, I almost never use the exact shade directly out of the tube or bottle I tend to mix most of my own colors. This can sometimes get me in trouble if I don't mix enough of the exact same shade as it is extremely difficult to get the exact same one again, this is particularly true of skin tones. Luckily, I had enough for the hand.
Now came the Largest area to block off for the underpainting; the background. On the surface this may seem that the poor fellow has a giant flow of lava behind his head because of the absolute brightness of the orange red color. This was taken care of later when I blended in the browns over top of it as you will see. I also started some of the shading details on the hand and suit. After this stage I had to take a rest to let it dry before I began to work on the details. This took quite some time to dry, probably because of the thick layering I was using. The labor at this point took about 3 hours, maybe slightly longer I tend to lose track of time when I get in the "zone". The drying took around 4-5 hours which is pretty long for acrylic, good thing I wasn't using oils, it would have taken weeks. Because of the inordinate amount of time it took to dry I called it a night at this point and continued the next day.
So a bright new day dawned and I started working on it again. After looking at the thing from fresh eyes and a different persepective I wanted to make sure this unholy fire background was going to indeed work as planned. As I said, under painting is tricky business and generally you can't really correct it if its terribly off once the over painting is started. I carefully mixed up some brown umber with just a shade of the fire orange mixed in. I started painting from the edges to get a sense of how well it was going to blend and if it was truly going to tame that beastly lava orange down.
I wasn't really happy with it, still was too bright so I had to go back and tame down the fiery orange with a slightly less magma shade. Luckily I had put saran wrap over my paints the night before and the color was still wet. So I repainted over the entire background again with the slightly less retina pain inducing shade, and then used the brown umber and went all the way around to see if it work at this point.
Finally, I added more dark tones overall to the piece and put more depth and dimension into the shadows. I could have taken it farther to make it more realistic, but the original Painting in the Haunted Mansion really seems more like it's between a cartoon and realistic portrait. The entire project took around 15 hours from start to finish if you count the research time (and don't count the time for the paint to dry.) So there you have one of the chestnuts from the really old art in my computer files. I hope you had fun reading this, if you did my name is Jesse Guiher, if you didn't my name is Michael Eisner.

The kids are alright!

I am working on a package of comic strips to send to syndicates, the story is sort of a Hardy Boys detective thing with some supernatural elements called "Cluehouse Kids" (no, not Scooby Doo, much more realistic). Every story arc will have a theme, and this first one is Pirates, specifically making comparisons between modern digital pirates, and the swashbucklers of yore. My point with the strip is to sort of give out questions and let people answer them themselves; for instance what exactly makes a person a pirate, and why do they seem to be more villianized than say... politicians. So with this in mind, I am making promotional little paintings to go with my package and that is what you see below. There will be one painting for each of the three main characters, showing them as a pirate persona, and showing them in scenes that will happen within the story arc. The ones you see here are of Jay (the blond headed kid), and Scott. Jay is sort of the leader so he wound up as the Captain. Scott is a bit of a computer hacker/genius, but tends to stay out of the lime light so I made him a gunner below decks. The story despite being more serious than Scooby Doo, does have its light hearted moments, in feel I would say its something akin to the old 1980's show "Moonlighting". These characters are very near and dear to me, as I have been drawing them in various incarnations since I was about 9 years old. I even published a series of 5 mini comics about them when I was in High school. It was a difficult task to revamp something that I was that close to, but I knew if I was to be able to get this syndicated that it would have to be done. I am almost done with the syndicate package so here's hoping something comes to fruition out of this. It was a lot of fun to put the kids through their paces again, and especially fun to paint them. It's been a long time since I was able to put the kids in a new adventure and its been a blast.

The Return of the Son of the Day of the Triffids!!!

Well I am almost finished with the new design. It turned out a lot better this time, I dropped the entire corner piece of the blind man, its an integral part of the movie storyline but it just clutters up the boldness of the image. I redid the entire thing in a much bolder style once again using only brushes, I ended up with something where it looks like I was trying to channel the spirit of Wally Wood I think. It really reminds me of the old EC science fiction comics, probably because of the deep dramatic shadows. On this not quite finished version you may notice her foot is screwed up. I am correcting that right now by cutting and flipping pieces of it in photoshop. I did the title and cinemascope part by tracing diligently in Illustrator, although I am not sure if they will be able to use the words "Cinemascope", or "Eastman Color" they may be trademarked or something as one of my art buddies pointed out. I can always make them parody names, my art buddy suggested "Enemascope", at which point I cracked up with the glorious mental imagery that evokes. Sorry for the watermarks, I normally abhor using them but figured since this is for a company and possible employer I better use them, as well as make the image a bit lower res. I am still going to play around with the placement of the titles I am not sure I like it overlapping the image, and I think I may make the image more prominent. Plus I am going to add the original poster tagline at the bottom: "BEWARE THE TRIFFIDS... they grow... know...walk...talk...stalk...and KILL!". Having never seen the movie I am not sure how weeds on chickenwire can talk let alone kill... HA HA gotta love those old B movies! I will definately have to find this one to add to my B movie collection. Okay back to work, later!

RUN! Its the Day of the Triffids BLAAAARGH!

Okay so I am up late trying to make a piece of art for a possible job. I am applying to this company that distributes old B movies, and are looking into making B movie art for t-shirts (cheesy flicks). The company gave 6 movies to choose from to do a try out on, so I chose the classicly bad "Day of the Triffids" movie. Now mind you, I have never seen this movie in its entirety before, just clips so had to do a lot of google research for movie stills. Well I just finished the art, but somehow I just am not pleased with it particularly knowing the venue its to be used in. Because its going to be a shirt, I think I better make the images bolder and seperate the elements more so they stand out. I decided to use brush only with ink, which I have never done before I always use a combination of dip ink pens and brushes, I sort of like the style but think it needs to be more refined. So what am I saying here? Yep! Its back to the drawing board. I think I will keep the deep shadows as it does give off that 50's black and white B movie feel, but I think I need to eliminate the little crosshatching stuff since its going to be printed with white ink only on black, those fine little details will end up fuzzing out too much. The other problem is how to interpret the "Triffids" themselves since they look like weeds on chicken wire in the movie itself I decided to make a cross between whats seen in the actual movie, and what was on the misleading but wonderful movie posters from the time period. Big thing is, I think its important to not simply do a drawing that is just a collage, it needs its own mood and atmosphere that is inspired from B movies. Well I guess I will hit the sack for a while and begin all over again, ah well sometimes when I have to start over I end up with my best works. Look below for the classic movie poster I based my Triffid design mostly on. Alright I am about to fall asleep on the keyboard so later for now!---Jesse

Sushilicious!

My friend Krissy has her birthday on New Years, so for that day we went to Todai restaurant. If you have never been to Todai, its this great buffet sushi place and they have these incredible sculptures made out paper mache on the walls and hanging from the ceiling. Very artistically inspiring to see what you can do with just paper, paste and paint. Take a look.
These pics are quick snaps off a friend's cell phone camera at the end of the night we got a little goofy, so we started taking pics next to some of the wall sculptures. Here are a few with me in my winter gear (note the scarf) by the cool shark, and weird (but cute) fish with a japanese fans.


I will have to go back sometime and get pics of the unbelievable huge octopus sculpture that hangs from the ceiling above the crab bar. I tried to take some this time but the lighting was too dark for a cell phone camera. Next time I will use my more professional digital camera. It seems you find inspiration in the strangest places. Until next time, ciao.