Animal Parameters at Valkarie Gallery!

http://www.tomsarmo.com

For the third year in a row, I'm excited to be part of a fall show at Valkarie Gallery!

Animal Parameters is coming soon, and my works will join the amazing art of

http://karrieyorkart.com/

Karrie York

http://www.mikiharderart.com/

and Miki Harder 

Please click on their names for links to their sites and more of their art!

Here's a little preview of a few of my works which will be in the show:

http://www.tomsarmo.com

For folks who like fantastic creatures, here's a Lava Monster! A few illustrators and I were discussing how to create a stone creature who oozed lava from cracks in its hide, so I tried my hand at this fellow.

http://www.tomsarmo.com

I love owning sketches by artists, so I make many of mine available to collectors. And I gotta have a few Cranky Birds in every show.

http://www.tomsarmo.com

My animal works are most often images that spring from real animals but end up imaginary creatures.

http://www.tomsarmo.com

And dragons are animals, right?

http://www.tomsarmo.com

So I hope you will join us for Animal Parameters!

Here are the particulars:

 And be sure to check out Valkarie Gallery's current show Elements and Curiosities, featuring the works of Valerie Savarie and Sharon Eisley!

http://www.tomsarmo.com

Also, Innate Tapestries: The Endless Stage--a 96 page book full of my paintings and sketches--will be available for purchase at Animal Parameters. I hope you will grab a copy!

 Thanks for reading, and for supporting us artists!

Origins and Processes

 

http://www.tomsarmo.com

 A Meeting, detail crop. 

Toned paper, plus (in order of use) Verithin colored pencil, Pentel Brushpen, Uni-Ball Signo white pen, Maica Pilot Hi-TEC-C pen, transparent acrylic inks).

Visitors to my studio often ask from where my ideas come. They come from many sources; books I have read or am reading, past and current experiences, conversations with fellow illustrators, and dreams. This one definitely came from a faceless voice--in a otherwise forgotten dream--that exclaimed "We meet ourselves!" Kept hearing that in my head all the next day

 so I started sketching the alligator-like creature, and the rest of the drawing emerged. And yes, I know that the image is weird as all get-out.

http://www.tomsarmo.com

Didn't take the time to take many in-process shots, but you can see

 the red Verithin pencil under-drawing here. At that point I put the drawing away.

http://www.tomsarmo.com

Had a bunch of acrylic paint that I'd used for a previous painting. Not wanting to waste it, I sketched out a similar image onto a cradled hardboard using charcoal. Refined that using a brush and black acrylic, then painted this version (detail crop).

But the previous drawing kept calling to me, so I returned to it and finished it after a lot of cross-hatching :)

http://www.tomsarmo.com

Here are both artworks for comparison. Other than creating pieces based upon a dream-exclamation, I'd wanted to explore the effect of light shining from within. In this case it was coming from within the creature-tail. 

They're each 8" x 10", and will be among many works for of a three-person show at Valkarie Gallery this October! More about that soon.

Thanks for reading!