"Siegfried and Brünnhilde"

It's a constant struggle to keep up a portfolio, for me it is anyway.

Between client work and my projects (Ticket, Walters, Grimm, Terrible Yellow Eyes) I tend to not often have the time to do individual pieces. Don't get me wrong, all of those projects have been incredibly rewarding and fun to do but there's a certain thrill that comes only from doing a single piece, no part of a collection or set or story but one image.

I have a sketchbook. It's square. And in the front there's a little spot of paint that I got from Greg Manchess' painting demo last year at Comic-Con. I carry this sketchbook around with me all the time and I also misplace it all the time. But when I do have it with me it's where I make all my plans and write out my ideas (and future projects) and that all works out pretty well. When I don't have it with me I doodle on whatever I find and tuck the paper into the back pocket of the sketchbook whenever I find it again.

One of those ideas on a stray piece of paper in the back pocket was the beginning of this piece :

Siegfried and Brünnhilde

I'm very happy with this because it is the fulfillment of an idea I had some time ago (and stuck in the back of my sketchbook) and I also completed it during an entire 24 hour period (otherwise known as a "day" + night)

I spent a long time trying to figure out what scene should be in the upper portion of the piece. I went with a moment from the Wagner re-telling of Siegfried and Brünnhilde when Siegfried, a youth who does not know fear, awakens Brünnhilde who was put to sleep in a ring of fire by Odin.

The idea behind the piece is that, to me, Opera is at once silly and serious. Silly in its high seriousness and yet the costumes and music and yes, even the 30 minute singing death scenes conspire somehow touch something incredibly beautiful. That's what I wanted for this piece.

This is one of a several new prints I'll have at Comic-Con this week and on my store when I get back.