Mike's XJ/Gandolfini

Recently completed a painting of my nephew, Mike, with his 2001 Jeep Cherokee. It's based on a painting I had done a few years earlier of his father with his car, parked in the same driveway from 1985. Both photos were taken in my parents driveway; a landscape I know all too well, even with all the changes over the years. The biggest would be the light blue lumber yard pictured behind my nephew in the distance, a place I had worked at for 9 years; Clearly nonexistent during the time my brother's photo was taken. Both pieces are shown below and can be found on the Brush Page.

Also added to the site is a sketch I had done last year of the late James Gandolfini, which can be found on the Fan Art Page. As a huge fan of The Sopranos, I had been quite shocked by the news of his passing back in June. While searching online news stories and trying to learn more details about what had happened, I had been sketching from a reoccurring picture of the actor during those few days. The result was a nice surprise for a doodle; a decent likeness of the actor who captivated us all as a New Jersey crime boss Tony Soprano for so many years.

AtariAge, Star Castle Arcade

As the holidays are just around the corner, it's quite simple for me to associate Atari with this time of year. The website atariage.com has another video game cartridge label contest for a new version of an old classic. Star Castle Arcade brings more features of the arcade version to the Atari 2600 console over 30 years later. As a 5th time participant, it's always fun looking back at retro gaming while designing an entry. Below is my label for this year's contest.

Happy Halloween!!

Even with signs like post season baseball and much shorter days, the fact that Halloween is almost here still kinda snuck up on me. If my wife didn't make it a point to go get pumpkins this year, I surely would've forgotten. I decided to go with a more classic route this year, for some reason, and paint Herman Munster...with that in mind, I tried to pick a taller shaped pumpkin as my canvas.

Wooden Steelhead

Happy 2013! This past December I finally completed an ongoing project for an old friend just in time for Christmas. After a very successful fishing trip to upstate New York for steelhead, James Capes of Autumn Brook Angling and I came home with dozens of great pictures of these amazing fish. With the amount of really good reference photos I definitely thought about doing a painting, but I remembered something James had mentioned during the 5 hour drive up. Apparently back in the day some enormous salmon were caught in the area we were going to in huge numbers. Since they were only meant for food, they would record the sizes of the largest ones by tracing the outline against a wood plank and cut out the silhouette. With this idea in mind coupled with a few years of high school wood shop under my belt, I decided to go for the appearance of a mounted fish. Although challenging at times, combining wood carving with painting worked out really well for this piece, especially after spraying it with a high gloss lacquer at the end; this made the fish appear wet and more lifelike. As a strong first attempt at something like this, I could definitely see doing another one now that I have a system in place.

AtariAge, Space Rocks label contest

Updated the Design page with an entry from an Atari cartridge label contest for the game 'Space Rocks'. The website AtariAge is one of the most extensive archives of Atari hardware and software information on the internet, and even produces new games for systems that have been extinct for years. To breathe new life into these old consoles is a very cool idea to me, so I try to submit a label whenever these contests come about and have at least one horse in the race. Although I learned my label didn't win I still wanted to add it to my Design page, as I have a previous entry for the game 'Incoming!' up there now. These have been a lot of fun to do, so I'm sure when the next label contest rolls around I'll have another entry to post here.

Happy Halloween!

It's been years since I've painted a pumpkin, but when the only other option on a boring Sunday is a House Hunters marathon, you paint a pumpkin. Decided on the Joker from The Dark Knight; maybe a few years too late but I've always dug how creepy they went with the character.

Why so many seeds?

TSKstudio Updated/Site Map

After having the same basic website for roughly 6 years, I finally decided(had the time) to redesign TSKstudio. It's been long overdue, no question, but I'm really pleased with the way this version turned out. From the logo design down to how images are displayed on a mac/pc, tablet, or smartphone, I think this version could last another 6 years...unless some other device comes out during that time and forces a necessary update. Not only is the layout new, but I've added several new pieces; some are actually new while others are just new to the website. Regardless, there's plenty of room for additional works...new or old.

For the past few years, I've been painting portraits and focusing on web design on a regular basis. With this thought in mind, I broke down the pages for the site accordingly.

- The Brush page has commissioned paintings and illustrations of original artwork.

- The Pencil page are graphite/color pencil drawings from original reference.

- Graphic Design and Web Design are now grouped together on the Design page with several examples of each.

- The Fan Art page features renditions of characters and works for my own personal collection using a variety of mediums.

- I've added a Commissions page to give a basic price list of my work with a few examples.

- The Artist page is a short biography about my background in art.

- One of the biggest experiments of this new version of the site is using the Home page as a blog to stay as current as possible. My plan is to use this space to mention any site updates, new artwork, works in progress, or links to art I enjoy. Check back soon and thanks for visiting!!