From The Vault - Aladdin 1994

Yes, yes, it's been a while since I even opened up the web page to even consider doing a new blog post. But, I finally felt guilty enough for being quiet these past few week that I thought the Friday From The Vault post would be a perfect place to jump back into it.

I was in Maine for a week (more on that soon) and was really enjoying just having my brain be quiet for a while. So much so that I just let it be quiet for another week after I got back into the studio. But, the brain has been buzzing lately so I thought I'd better let it out before it shook out of my head.

Welcome back.

This old piece was another painting I did for Marvel Comics back in the early nineties. During this time Marvel had set up a licensing deal with Disney to produce comic books of some of their properties so I got to paint a few Disney pieces. And, seeing as Aladdin was one of my favorite Disney flicks at that time this was a really fun piece to paint.

It's funny, I get so used to doing things on computer now for color that I forget how much work used to go into even a simple piece like this. Earlier this week I was helping a guy with some cut vinyl. It's a process where you put some art into a computer and a machine called a plotter then cuts it out of a sheet of vinyl. Then, the tedious work of "weeding" the vinyl takes place. You sit there with an x-acto knife and pull off all the parts of the vinyl you don't want to stay. A lot of times this means pulling vinyl off of a group of letters. It's a lot of work and the guy I was helping was complaining about it.

But, not me. I really loved it and it reminded me of doing old work like this piece where I would lay friskit over a piece, cut it out by hand, peel it off, and then airbrush. And, then do it all over again. So, for someone to complain about simply peeling off the vinyl made me laugh a little inside. He doesn't know how easy he has it.

Because, for someone like me, I remember in the old days when not only would you need to peel off the vinyl, you'd actually have to cut it all out yourself by hand as well.

And then do it again.

And again.

And again.

Kids these days. They have it so easy :)