Fun in the sun!

I recently went on a team building session with the staff of Ateneo's School of Science and Engineering. We went on a 4 hour drive and settled in Coral View Resort for 1 and 1/2 days. It was refreshing to be able to get away from work, do a little bonding with the other staff members and enjoy the water! I won't be boring you with pictures of me and my herculean physique in swimming trunks though... These are what I have to show: :P

No pictures for the first day coz we mostly did the team building session but on the morning of the second day I woke up early and was treated to a view of the distant part of the coast covered in mist and the mountains on the horrizon was cool blue with the base ending in mist. So I grabbed my handy dandy sketch pad, sat in on of the cabanas and sketched on while drinking coffee... ah... my idea of a great morning. :D

Those were taken when we were preparing to leave the beach. Goodbye to the tiny crabs and sea urchins that made our stay so memorable. lolz Oh and let's not forget to mention the frogs that only came out at night and went diving into the pool where the crabs joined them afterwards. :D And Meann too who captured the heart of the guys who went on the trip. Sadly nobody wanted to go to prison so no one took pictures of her. hehe...

Office mate: "Ilang taon ka na ba?"
Answer: "17 po"
Office mate: "Anong trabaho nang tatay mo?"
Answer: "Pulis po"

Nuff said. lolz

After reaching home in semi conscious semi drunk on caffeine state I took one look at the Librarian in progress and well... 2 hours later this was what I had sitting on my desk:

I guess that's all for now folks. I've been getting enough inspiration lately that I think I'll be posting some more digital artworks pretty soon. ;)

Fan Art?

Dark Angels Librarian on teenie winie sketchpad.
Done with super cool rotring mechanical pencil contraption!

The last time I made fan art was in highschool, but I suppose this one falls in that category. I keep a handy dandy mini sketch pad in my bag and while waiting for La leona de los Velazcos last saturday, I decided to doodle an idea I had for a miniature. Its based on art from Codex: Dark Angels. I spotted a teenie tiny terminator standing in line behind Azrael and I thought: "What if I made my librarian look like that?" So it was that while I enjoyed a Latte at Coffee Bean Gateway last saturday that I began doodling my idea. No reference except what I remember of terminators (and I've done lots that I think if I suffered amnesia it's the last memory to go).

A funny thing happened once I reached makati(I stayed at coffee bean for 20 or so minutes). When I got tired of roaming around the mall I decided to sit down in one of those comfy benches and continued doodling. Before I knew it there were kids flocking behind me and some were calling their mom's to show my drawing. lol Prior to that some girl from across the bench was eyeing me with a wicked grin on her face. No I wasn't dreaming... that was my spidey senses warning me. Four years earlier I would have gotten off my seat, sat beside her and started making conversation but that day I was waiting for the woman who captured my heart, with a wicked cool gift in tow. It was a our 3rd year anniversary. :)

p.s. will post the miniature sculpt soon. it has a slight variation with the drawing. particularly the torso.

A second wind perhaps...

It's been awhile since my last post here. That's the newest fig I painted. I definitely have no future in photography. lol and apparently my future in miniature painting is becoming bleak as well. haha!

Anyway blame it all on the fantastic(i hear people gasping...) Dark Angels codex and the proposed system of codices coming out from GW. I'm in high spirits again about 40k. Local prices going down also helps. ;) I think GW is doing a good job of bringing the sales and the rules in line with each other. Not to mention the nice rumors I've been reading in forums lately about the cuts on chaos supposedly to make it more balanced and the upcoming rules patch for Blood Angels. There's definitely a lot of good stuff in the near future.

For the meantime I'm hitting the painting table again. I figure it's time to get some work done on the Deathwing and Ravenwing... not to mention my painting commission backlog. In the middle of all these though... I've been missing the wacom... I'll get to see about posting some new works soon and maybe finish some old ones.

Summer is almost over... I'm coming out of hiatus. :D

la leona de los velazcos

I stood in the middle of a busy alley, a corner of the mall lined with home made soaps, expensive jewelry and signature clothing. I looked left and right for a certain someone, worried that she could be bored waiting. A woman in the crowd caught my eye. Tall and slender, fair and graceful. She saw me and she waved with familiarity. I froze where I stood. My heart skipped a beat from time to time. When she stood inches from me, I knew then. She's the one. The one I've been looking for. The woman I love who loves me back. I must've done something good in the past to deserve someone like her.

Signs of Life

It's been about a year since I've gone back to painting after a really long hiatus. For the greater part of the previous months I've been considering carefuly if I should finally switch carreers to start doing something I truly loved doing. It wasn't until I spoke to an old friend that my decision was finalized. I will no longer be going to Art School to study Fine Arts. I think that I've spent the greater part of my years after college in Systems and Network Administration that it would be a waste of time and resources to switch carreers at this point. So instead of going full on FA I will instead reinforce my I.T. knowledge to hopefully fetch a better wage... and with that decision I finally put the final nail to my romantic self and embrace the pragmatic. A soldier of life can not, afterall, win his battles if all he has is heart and passion. What good is the brain in your head if you ain't gonna use it eh? hehe... This of course does not mean that I will abandon art and painting. No sirreee... not to be arrogant but I think I can learn what I need to learn without having to go to school. So with that said here's a quick update on the current piece:

Very messy. This is as close as it's going to get in terms of the likeness. I've yet to work on the hair. I'll definitely make it and the skin a little darker. The good news is she already likes it and it definitely looks like one of her one hundred faces. :P

On another note, I've been a little preoccupied playing Super Powers 2. It's nice to see your country get out of foreign debt even if it's just a game. Being able to modernize the AFP and create a few nuclear ICBMs (for protection!) was definitely a plus too! ;)

I also made a few updates on the links section. Check it out sometime.

Hello Mr. Tree. Will you pose for me?

I've been working on the background of this piece. I've left the girl untouched so she's pretty messy. I've also painted and repainted the tree leaves about a hundred times and took several reference pictures while walking around ateneo. lol it's a nice place for doing tree studies. :D

I'm seeing anatomy issues. grr...

click the picture to enlarge

************updated February 6, 2007************

Dump and Run!

here's some progress on the current piece...

here's a lil speed paint. forgot to put in a few things. maybe no one will notice. :D all in all it's about 30-45 minutes :

Wacom in Sick Bay

I've been in sick bay for 2 days. I had a serious case of the shakes last monday morning so I went on leave. lolz

I managed to get some painting done but not much progress. I know I shouldn't be going down into the details yet but I wanted to get the face presentable before I proceed with everything else. I'm working on getting the likeness back as I think I'm losing it a bit. The painting needs more contrasts too.

++++++Updated January 18, 2007++++++

Quickie updated. I'm trying to get the likeness more. Still have to stregnthen the colors. Someone noted that it's becoming abit classical in approach. Maybe I should nudge it in that direction... hmm...

++++++updated january 19, 2007++++++

Fixed a ton of things. I am now getting complaints that she's too beautiful. Can I help it if I see what they can't see when I look at that young woman who calls herself my "girlfriend"? Is it my malfunction if I see beauty wherever I look? :P I did a portrait of my father when i was 14 and everyone said he was too handsome in the painting. I kept thinking to myself... "Have you people seen my father?" lol

Yes. My eyes were made for beauty...

------Updated January 24, 2007------

I'm such a loser. lolz

hmm... gawa kaya ako nang isa pang portrait... kaso wala namang picture na maganda na nasakin... hmm...

Okay so it really doesn't look like her. What the hell... I'll finish it anyways. Hmm... I'm renaming this piece "The Nobleman's Daughter". There! That seems appropriate. :D

Sunday Shmunday

I woke up unusually early on a sunday. I got to do my laundry, had breakfast then cleaned my room. By the time I got to work on this my hands were hurting a bit from the laundry ->

Still some minor issue with the arms and hands... also quite possibly the legs. I'm learning new stuff as I go and the humongous collection of reference photos I've acquired last year are proving useful. They will be my crotch till I learn to do figure drawing with my eyes closed. Figuratively speaking :P. I'm still thinking if the pose is enough or if I need to fix it some more. I had to stop before detailing the hands last night coz my right arm was hurting so bad. I won't be posting this piece on cgtalk till I'm done and it's printed. Yeah! No criticism on this one. Atleast not before I'm done. ;) I want to do this on my own to see where my skills are and what needs more practice.

So all that's left is to check the arms, hands and legs plus see if the pose evokes what I want it to evoke then see if the anatomy works. When all that's done I can get to the painting part. I think I'll skip turning this into a grey scale work and get right to painting. Maybe I'll just do a tiny tonal study.

********************Updated January 11, 2007********************

Okay here is where I'm at right now. I am the embodiment of "slow". :P I've put in the background though that might change later. I've half a mind to let go of the hands and run with what's here... unless I find a way to correct her left arm and hand. Other than that it's mostly just the creases on the dress ... and the dress itself.

Dropped by Fully Booked yesterday looking for a good book on figure drawing. I ended up examining two books. The first one had a more illustrationish appeal. His figures were loose and his lines were really flowing beautifully. The second one centered more on drawing live and extreme realism. I ended up buying a TV tuner for my personal computer instead. lol

I don't know... I just couldn't find what I was looking for. I just want to achieve a good balance between painterish and realistic appearance in my paintings. I guess developing your own style is something you come across on your own.

That's it for now. Next post will be in colors! :D

Greeting the Year with a Complete Set of Fingers!

I had a close call this new year. Fearing for the safety of our hands and everything else my family including myself refrained from purchasing fireworks. So we spent new year watching everyone else waste their money on flashing lights that last for a few seconds. At some point during new year's eve one of the neighbors' fireworks went flying in the wrong direction. It zoomed past my dad's shoulder,grazed our servant's knee and whized past my shoulder to explode about 5 ft away from me. whew! Next year I'll watch the fireworks from my bedroom window. lol

So this year's Christmas break turned into a real vacation. I ended up sleeping, resting, eating, playing on the computer, reading books and somewhere in between I got to work on a little something I promised I would give to this nice lovely lady who calls herself my girlfriend. :D

There she is. After working on and off for the whole vacation apparently I did catch her likeness. It was pretty frustrating at times since I have to work from several references which didn't really do well as reference. Most of them were too small. Also none of the pictures had this pose. Anyways I sent it to her yesterday to have the likeness approved before continuing and she was pretty pleased with it. This morning she asked if she could have this picture here so she could place it in their living room. :D So now I'm giving her this and the finished painting too.

The portrait I'm making is somewhat based on William Bougereau's "Reflexion". I'll just try and make things look more up to date if not modern. Below is a picture of the dress I'm planning to use for this piece.

Yes I'm straight! Straight! Straight! Straight! And No I'm not a fashion designer obviously! :P I'm leaning towards a dark blue for the bottom and a light blue-grey for the top... maybe the belt should be some complementary of the main colors. That's not fur you see on the top of it. It's this transparent material I saw Karel Marquez wearing in her FHM spread. I hope I pull it off coz that fabric looks really cool. :P The dress is still on the drawing board and may change... I'm partial to ancient greek designs. hmm...

Okay. Enough for now. I'm hungry. XD

A reason to be jolly

Another year came and is nearly going and we're all wiser from a year's worth of experience. It's drawing to a close, this page of in the book that is our lives. Everyone's so busy getting ready to write the final paragraphs, dotting every i's and crossing every t's.

For that matter so am I. This christmas vacation will be a time for work. A time when I can finally sit long enough to finish paintings in a day and revisit some old ones that need completion. Hopefully I will have a bigger volume of work to show by the start of the following year. May you enjoy looking at them as much as I enjoy making them. It is with this in mind that I must now turn the lights off on this little corner of the net that I call mine. Only for a little while of course. Every artist needs to sign off from the world for a bit or we will never get things done.

So this is me thanking you all for a year of good companionship and pleasant surprises. A year of firsts. A year of good experiences, of bad ones, and the lessons we've learned from them. A year of love and a year of loss. A year full of life.

Merry Christmas and tune in again next year. ;)

Church Bells and Wedding Vows

Thankfully not mine. :D I have, however been commissioned to do the background for a wedding invitation. This ugly sketch here is the basic idea for it. I just did this in the office with a mouse(booo!).

The scene is supposed to be the silhoutte of two lovers in an intimate pose with a lovely sunset in the background. This is a sketch of a poster in my parent's room. Just trying to get a feel for the work.

On another note I had my niece come over this weekend and I finally got to make her do some excercises that were aimed on being able to see her skills. I made her do a landscape, a figure and still life, which I setup hastily using some old vases and some fruits from a local store(which includes a yummy melon that i feel like turning into a shake sometimes soon). She's a 2nd grader and I think her drawing is much better than most people in their late twenties. lol. So I opted to take her on as my student. She can visualize shadows but not subtle values and she still suffers from typical childish impatience. Still there is much promise in her. Trained early and with a watchful eye she could turn out to be a great artist someday. So the only thing that really bothers me is if I can live up to the task of being her mentor... atleast until she learns all she can from me. Anyways... no better way to do it than to break one's teeth on the wall, to quote miss Serena De Biasi.

******Updated Nov 28, 2006******

So here's a juggled concept of both the picture that the client had and my fumblings at making it more simple. There will be two lovers kissing (or almost) on right side of the beach beneath the setting sun. Still lots to do with this one. I'm kinda struggling with the color consistency a bit. The full size is 5r (7.5" x 5" if we have it right).

******Updated Nov 29, 2006******

Alas the commission was dropped. Anyways far be it for me to not finish what I've started so here it is.

"Lover's Sunset"
7.5" x 5"

Digital Media

Make it stop!!!

Digital Pencils, 22" x 31"

It looks nothing like the reference I used. This is the one I've been working on and off for the past few weeks. It's got lots of issues but I'm stopping this right here... or atleast I'm trying to stop. lolz

Everytime I see the issues I end up working at it and can't put the pen down... I'm likely to super work on this before I have the full size printed. It'll be a custom print because of the unusual size. Kodak actually prints custom sizes but they say it'll take 2 weeks since they have to send it somewhere and pick it up afterwards. The original plan was to do it in color and not in greyscale but I'm having trouble seeing the details of the miniscule ref. For the time being this will remain in black and white.

So I've done portraits and I've done a bit of figure... I think it's high time I get to work on real pieces so I have something original to submit. Jay's suggestion of doing a series sounded good to me so that's what I'll do next...

p.s. she looks like someone my friends know but at the same time tend to not like... XD

-----0-----

friday, October 6, 2006. -- *update*

As we say in my country. Kamote! I can't stop working on this thing. We're having a love hate relationship this girl and me. lolz After getting some good feedback from a friend and CGtalkers I decided to take it up again and keep fixing the issues... also having it printed made me realise it could be a potentially good piece (in an amateurish sort of way). So now I find myself sleeping late and waking up early in an effort to push this piece further in the right direction. Oh and help me but I can already tell I'm going to end up coloring this after the grey scale is finished. Waaaah...

Very messy. Added legnth and girth to some stuff. I think I'll end up rendering as much of the muscle groups as I can so the next print out will look even better... maybe have it mounted. :D

-----0-----

Updated October 10, 2006

Not much to say. Just an update. I have yet to work on both hands and the right leg. Hopefully the remaining issues will be easier to fix.

Rainy Days and Mondays

I haven't posted any miniatures around here for awhile. Maybe coz I haven't been doing them in the first place. :D At any rate, I'm posting this for the meantime while I'm working on another painting. I'll eventually show it when I've got the bloody thing done.

Here's a not so good picture of the details:

Bleugh!

It looks nothing like the reference picture. Not to mention the obvious mistakes I made while working this piece. In hindsight I shouldn't have add the yellows as it only made an already bad work even worse. I am going to give it another try this weekend.

I actually started out fine laying in the initial washes of yellows, blues and reds. It was when I painted in the violet clouds that things got out of hand. Dealing with a very cloudy sky is still difficult for me. The timing required to do wet in wet painting is a little stiff. Work too fast and the colors just end up dripping, work too slow and they end up drying with hard edges. At any rate... like that old proverb says: "before enlightenment, chop wood and carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood and carry water."

with watercolors... you need lots of patience
with watercolors... timing is critical
with watercolors... you need to buy napkins once a month
with watercolors... the colors are never what they seem
with watercolors... it's not the legnth of your brush but how you use it
and most of all...
with watercolors... you get the best results if you work wet

ahehe...

Back in the day...

So after doing the initial sketch for my original idea on that bather piece I realize the pose looked absolutely uninteresting. I then opted to forego this piece for now and work on something else. After a few minutes of rummaging thru my reference pictures I found an old old image of a nude girl in seated position. I remember asking the photographer Mr. Dan Cardish for this pic. I emailed him after seeing a small thumbnail on it in his website. I told him that I'd like to use it for the painting and he obliged by sending me a larger image of the file. It's still in low res as he took the picture back in mid to late 90's. It was also around that time that I asked him for this picture.

I told myself someday I'd do this painting. Those were the days of my burnout... too many things were happening in my life and I was too distraught to pickup a brush and paint. In my heart though I knew I would always come back to this. One of the three things in life that move me. Now that, to quote a good friend "happy days are here again!" it's time I finally do this and get around to finishing it. ;)

So where's the picture? hehe... that will come in time. I only just began the initial sketch yesterday and there's nothing concrete enough to post. In the meantime I leave you with these horrid looking *things*:

They were all painted with a tiny and ugly genius tablet when 'pen pressure' was a futuristic concept (i think). All done in 99' when I had no knowledge of photoshop(I still can't use it to paint effectively today. :D). The first one was a paintover of an image from, once again, Druuna ;) , the other two are doodles. I used to like comic book and anime styles. I like keeping these things. I can always look back to them and see where I began. Keep my feet grounded. :D

How's my hair?

No Title
8" x 8" (ish. :D)
Digital Media

It still has plenty of issues but I'm so over this. lolz. Nah... I'll likely fix it some other time. What started out as a pratice piece turned into a casualty of OCD.

I have to remember to avoid the pitfalls of painting from a photograph in the future. Much lessons learned from this one. I bought a book on anatomy(and on on perspective) to cover my weaknesses. (clavicle vs ryan: clavicle = 1, ryan = 0. lolz) More reading and practice for me. Come to think of it my library is nearly good to go. I just need 3 more books perhaps.

Now I'm gonna get onto that bather... as soon as I can pry my hands off final fantasy tactics...

Starting Fresh

I officially ended my vacation last sunday with this image:

I'm still thinking on whether the features line up correctly. I think I've spent around 8 hours just obsessing over the sketch. lolz. Since this is a practice piece before I work on the planned bather for my portfolio, I decided to go ahead with it. I set aside the thinking pose for now. That one ended up looking like an Egyptian catamite. lolz.

This is where I'm currently at. Just managed to pick the palette and lay in the basic light and dark areas last night. I'm thinking of changing some of the colors... particularly the cool shadow which seems more gray than I'm going for. Hope I get far enough tonight so I can keep the time frame for this at 1 week only... I can hardly find time to do these paintings. I definitely have to learn how to paint faster.

Don't grow too attached to the line art. They will all disappear in the later stages. ;)

**********************************Updated 8-16-06 **********************************

Worked more on this last night. This is basically the application of the warm shadow and the cool lights. I think I made a mistake with the process... not so sure if its cool shadows first or warm shadows. Anyway I'll just wing it. The cheeks look really flat right now. Haven't gone into those yet. Maybe tonight or tomorrow night. It is a different band of orange.

This is the first time I've used such bold colors. Usually I keep them somewhat tempered... but I guess I just felt brave. :D Hopefully the image will be more formed when the warm lights have been applied. If it's not then I've done this all wrong and I'd have to go back 3 layers...

--------------------------------------Updated 8-17-06---------------------------------------

Added the warm lights last night. It is starting to take shape. I also clipped the legnth of the nose and cheeks a bit. It's kinda looking like the ref a bit except my work is a little more saturated. I was supposed to block in the rest of the features and the background but I was too sleepy.

Thanks to Kelandra this image will be saved. She kindly pointed out the poor girl's missing clavicles. Lolz. This is what I get for painting half asleep. lolz.

Now If I can only remember how to define brushes in painter I can actually go ahead with the background...

--------------------------------------Updated 8-18-06---------------------------------------

Just managed to do preliminary work on the background and blocked in the colors to be used for the hair. Still no clavicle but hopefully when I come back on tuesday this will not only be finished but also anatomicaly correct. ;)

hmm... blue and orange color scheme. That reminds me something. haha...

--------------------------------------Updated 8-18-06---------------------------------------

Weekends never turnout to be the way you expect them. :D I wasn't able to finish but atleast I got to push it further. I worked in the facial features. Also fixed the eyes a bit. The following the first sketch made her right eye wander around. The distance between the two eyes too were off so I had to adjust that. Pushed the skin tones further as well.

Issues issues. Why are there always issues... with my painting that is! I see countless things that need fixing and there's nothing worse than remembering a lesson or a rule of thumb more than halfay thru your painting. Too late to go back and fix some of the issues. I'll just apply them next time. Here's some of what I missed:

• shadows are supposed to be less saturated than the tones in light.
• shadows are supposed to be the complementary of both the local color and the color of the light.
• well it's no secret. she still has no clavicle. :P

I'm liking how this is turning out afterall. (here's where the fulfillment comes. lolz) Maybe she'll go into my portfolio after all. hmm...
--------------------------------------Updated 8-25-06---------------------------------------

I just worked on the hair. I'm finding it difficult and right now I have mixed feelings with the result. This is how it looks without the sketch lines by the way. I figure I need to define the image more. Also spent some time last night looking at the issues that other artists pointed out. I think I got it. I'll spend the weekend finishing up and hopefully start the bather series. :D

Come Away With Me

6" x 9" Digital Media

So here's the finished piece. I actually did a version of it with a girl in a red cloak walking in the path but I felt it kinda ruined the scale of the trees. The thing that intrigued me enough about this scene that I went ahead and painted it was the somewhat mysterious if not eerie lighting. Someone commented that he actually found the forest inviting... I guess that's due to the mystery that surrounds it and our natural curiousity to brave the unknown.

I was able to get some rest yesterday as it was a holiday in my country. Independence day to be
exact. I didn't slack off completely though since I also did some practice drawings of hands. I've been putting it off for the longest time but one of my goals is to improve my drawing skills so I gave it a whirl.

I think I sketch better with traditional media than on the computer. Maybe I'm having a hard time looking at my work and the picture when it's on the monitor. I can't explain it.

I decided to copy these from Clem Robin's book as a sort of excercise. I won't be painting skeletons but I still recognize the value of doing them... if only to know what lies underneath the skin and why the surface looks the way it does. I think it's more important for hands though as it's probably one of the parts of the body where the surface appearance is heavily influenced by the inner structure.

I copied poses with the skeleton and muscles exposed and then also did the versions with only the surface visible. I have to say that aside from the face (gah!) the hands and feet are probably the ones I find so much difficulty with. Such complex plains...

I finished off the day with another portrait excercise though it's only supposed to be minimal work. Something I'd like to incorporate into my website's interface when I finally get around to doing it. I only got as far as the sketch though.
















<- Que Horror!!! Good thing it's only the rough sketch. lolz.

Caffeine Induced Painting

I've been staring at the reference pic for days. This weekend I finally got around to working on it. Too bad I wasn't able to finish. Anyways as I was feeling so sleepy last night I had to end with trying out the leaves. I'm definitely not going to stick with the leaves as it is here. It doesn't show the form clearly and the colors are too saturated. I think I may also have to fix that path as the ground seems to slope downwards where it shouldn't.

I noticed I could start a landscape (or any painting for that matter) by blocking in the colors but somehow I can't work the same way with figures. I really have to start with a skeleton on that one. :D

There's still lots of work to be done before I set this aside. I'm also thinking of putting a traveler on that path... something that could work as a focal point. I am satisfied with the established mood though (okay maybe just a little more contrast) .

-----------------------Update June 7, '06-----------------------

Eep! Now I'm not so sure if the leaves look better or worse...

Okay I'm thinking the trees in the foreground, their leaves don't work... it must be either too saturated or something with the shape? It's still in the wip stage but I'm thiking that needs changing.

Maybe the tree in the middle looks bad too. I may need to work the color a little more.

I tripped on a pebble

I very rarely post anything here that does not include one of my works but since coming across this quote I feel that it is only fair to post this.

A very important quote from Pablo Picasso:

"From the moment that art ceases to be food that feeds the best minds, the artist can use his talents to perform all the tricks of the intellectual charlatan. Most people can today no longer expect to receive consolation and exaltation from art. The 'refined,' the rich, the professional 'do-nothings', the distillers of quintessence desire only the peculiar, the sensational, the eccentric, the scandalous in today's art. I myself, since the advent of Cubism, have fed these fellows what they wanted and satisfied these critics with all the ridiculous ideas that have passed through my mind. The less they understood them, the more they admired me. Through amusing myself with all these absurd farces, I became celebrated, and very rapidly. For a painter, celebrity means sales and consequent affluence. Today, as you know, I am celebrated, I am rich. But when I am alone, I do not have the effrontery to consider myself an artist at all, not in the grand old meaning of the word: Giotto, Titian, Rembrandt, Goya were great painters. I am only a public clown--a mountebank. I have understood my time and have exploited the imbecility, the vanity, the greed of my contemporaries. It is a bitter confession, this confession of mine, more painful than it may seem. But at least and at last it does have the merit of being honest."

I think that I am definitely not your ordinary guy. This damn quote moves me to tears. :(

I think that I will never again lambast modern art.

Or atleast I'll try not to. :P