The Fine Art Blog of Daz and Holly

I love art and I love to make people inspired and happy, it is what I was put on Earth to do. I have always been an artist and I always will be.

All art on this bog post by Darren Daz Cox world’s greatest artist in the world!

People often ask me to draw things for them but don’t realize that their casual demands leave me puzzled and will most likely not be fulfilled any quicker than it took Michelangelo to finish the Medici chapel.

People are rarely shy about asking me to do something for them that requires me to draw power from God and inspiration from the world. Sometimes they’ll just open a conversation by asking if i’ll  draw them something  specific, an angel with a camera for a logo the lovely photographer Tina T-Pain’s business and a dragon for Skinhead Linda’s business, a piece of tattoo flash (cherubs holding a banner) for C-Charles and another (shooting stars) for one of my art models, Beff. 

But you would never go up to Stephanie Sugarcookie and say "I’d like you to bake me a dozen chocolate chip cookies" or to Monstertruck Rick and say "I’d like you to adjust my Gran Torino’s carbourator"  or ask Dave Omega to write you a song on his banjo about skipping merrily down the f*ing lane with your one eyed cat. 

I know you guys do it out of love and that it’s a compliment and even though I really would like to please you, even if I thought it would make me happy by making you happy or get me material goods and/or services rendered or even to score points with a girl I want to get to know better, the fact is I can’t draw on demand, and If I’m not drawing on demand for them I most likely will not do so for you. 

Don’t bother to bring money into the equation as yes, given enough money I’d draw you something but as we know from quantum physics, intention is key, and my intention would be to get the money not to stretch my creative powers. If you paid me to do art you’d get faux-art but a machine might not be able to recognize the difference since the same hand made it.

Writer John "Mr. T Experience" Phillips said I could paint the cover to his new book, and gave me some specific things he wants and I really want to, and I will try, but……

Anyway, here’s my latest random digital piece of art, the Magic Snail, all hail the magic snail!

Click this one for my flickr account where the huge version lives and is ready to download. Feel free to use the liquify filter on it to make your own swirly trippy pyschedelic art!

The Magic Snail by Darren Daz Cox coolest artist in the universe.

Here are some detail jpgs to add more awesome art to the search engines and the word "zing" so when ever you search for that word you have a chance to see my cool art too.

Pyschedelic bunny artwork baby! We need more of this!!!

I really like this magic indian totem looking mask that randomly appeared in my artistic randoming. 

I have some awesome awesome pencil sketches I’m dying to show you but I don’t have electricity in my house anymore to make the scanner work, it’s been a week and no word on when it will return but yea for Copper River Coffee shop and it’s free WI-Fi, awesome staff and yummy green tea and muffins.

Have an awesome day my friends and remember to be creative!

Here’s another magic snail Pic I found! 

 Potential, the possibility of a certain thing happening. Quantum intent, the scientifically proven connection between your intentions and what actually manifests. In terms of art, that intent creates a potential and then that potential manifests into a reality.

For me, positive intent is paramount, I want to inspire, I want to be appreciated and I want to be able to continue to do so.

I really am happy in the moment, just like my fortune cookie at the excellent Dynasty Buffet. DJ Disaster liked the short haired waitress and I thought the long haired girl was lovelier!  I rarely draw girls with short hair.

We were discussing time travel and I explained (because I am such the expert on everything) that you wouldn’t suddenly disappear, like Back To The Future, if you ‘changed’ your past. The ‘grandfather paradox’ is not a certainty as quantum physics has concluded that our perception of time as being cause and effect linear is really only a perception and everything is actually happening in an instant.

Imagine that every possible outcome is out there waiting for you to grab it like a gold balloon. How do you get the outcome you want? You set your intent and, because things are all happening in an instant, you act as if you have what what you want. Have no fear.

Just a note on the flu pandemic thing, trust God. The univere will provide you with what you need to survive, if you want to survive.

Appreciate the moment, for the moment is all we have.

My intentions, which will become reality.

1: To get that sweet copier Riverfront Media looked at last week, and make tons of 11×17 double-sided posters and booklets that will inspire and spread happiness.

2: To publish other artists and interesting creative types in my new version of Go B Zine (having a finisher on the color laser copier will be perfect!)

3: To print something for the Peoria Affiliate of Susan G. Komen for the Cure since their race for the cure is on the same day as the Tech this Out – technology expo at the East Peoria Event center on may 9-10 2009.

4: Get a new office and studio for Riverfront Media, hopefully near the Illinois river again (where we got our name from) or perhaps in Pioneer Park.

5: Spread the love, we’re all connected and with all this fear and negativity around it’s time to rise above your fears and be the change you want to see. 

For The Love of Seahorses – gold leafed seahorse and digital paint by Darren Cox aka Daz

I share a birthday (coming up!) with Daphne Du Maurier  who was born on May 13, 1907

After reading the following by Wendi Kelly What do you most regret having NOT done so far in your life? I remembered I had already addressed this issue in a short story. I love ‘alternate history/dimention’ stories!

I had the bottle of pills in my hand, potent and deadly, I was meticulous in my research and procurement, a brief time of intoxication, then sleep, then death…

The computer interrupted what was my usual morning ritual of looking at the bottle by announcing that an ‘anomaly’ was pulling my spacecraft off course. “crap, I can’t even kill myself properly” I said morbidly and proceeded to cough…

I was 85 Terran years old when i bought this ship, a Japanese Chibi-class interplanetary hopper, designed to take an executive (and probably his mistress judging by the generous sized bed and bathroom) back and forth between the Moon and Mars in as fast as a week.

It was used but space worthy and cost everything I had accumulated over my lifetime. I fully intended to die in that ship, alone, and have it take me far away from where I was born.

I had long since neglected any family, had no heirs and suffered a horrible guilt of having giving up on my dreams long ago to gain material comfort that no longer mattered.

As a young man I had vowed to become an artist, a real one, one who delighted and one who was cherished, yet gave it up for a “steady career”…

I glanced at the computer screen and saw to my puzzlement the anomaly that was making the computer squawk, it was a white dot on the screen where all material things usually showed up blue, suddenly I realized it was a black hole.

I was actually excited about this twist of fate and watched the screen eagerly for new information, got bored, then decided to just fly right into it and get it over with, so I set the ship to full power, and set a course precisely to the center of the black hole.

As my last hour approached I put on the only ‘fancy’ clothes I had brought with me, a pirate costume from a play that had ended it’s short run a long time ago…

The power of the black hole suddenly became frightening as the ship creaked and clunked in new ways, and I thought about praying but something hit me square on the head and so that’s how it ends… …

only it didn’t end (continued after a brief piece of art!) (a self portrait of Darren Daz Cox!)

I woke up, seeing two pretty girls cleaning out rabbit cages and I felt good and alive.

A little groggily I stood up, no arthritis pain, funny…those girls apparently hadn’t seen me as they did their wurk with the occasional “ewww” and “yukk”, and I took a step forward just to hit an invisible wall… The girls turned around and were babbling “look, the robot found more things with it’s space-junk collector beam! is it one of those syms like we found last month? well at least this one has nice clothes!”  The brunette said. "the last one didn’t have any clothes – or a head come to think of it, not that you were looking at his head!" the blonde one said.

Suddenly a big ugly lazer-blaster was pointed at my head..”up against that wall NOW” she smiles were gone, the laughing had stopped and while these girls didn’t look anything but cute I didn’t doubt for a second that they wouldn’t shoot… “put all of your stuff into the access port on the wall and proceed to the fluoroscope next to the rabbit cages” the blonde one said. Then the one with curly brown hair said, “This spaceship has a nasty habit of picking up bits of junk from space, like you, and you’ll do what we say or we’ll blast your synthetic ass into pieces”

“You mean put my costume in that hole in the wall?” I spluttered. A blinding beam of light burned a hole next to my boot. I took that as an affirmative. I stripped in no time flat, dunked my stuff in the place they were motioning to and stepped under the fluoroscope.. “Hmmm, you’re human” blondie said “but there are abnormal readings, which colony are you from?” I suddenly realized that my body wasn’t the same as last time I had forced myself to look, shamefully, at it’s long neglected state, It WAS me, but, and then it hit me, it was the same as when I was a kid, maybe 20 at the oldest, oh shit, Einstein must have been right on the time theory associated with black holes…

“hey sorry ’bout treating you like that, we thought you were one of those pleasure robots they make for lonely space miners on the asteroid belt!, we found one floating in space before and just assumed..” curly said. “Pleasure robots??” I managed to say, unsure weather to be flattered or insulted. “look I’m not used to being naked like this can i have my clothes back?” I said.

The girls both said “NO” at the same time, smiling at me, suddenly I realized that I didn’t mind being buck ass nekkid after all….. …and so that’s how Daz The Phony Space Pirate came to be aboard the Giant Killer Death Space Robot Spaceship aka Pinky Purple…

Ok so this isn’t the best Giant, Killer, Death Space Robot story I’ve written that’s probably this one http://99daz.com/mohr-values-are-important/

and the origin of the Giant Killer Death Robot Spaceship piloted by teenage art students story is here!  that one is pretty good too!

~*laffing gurl – Pencil sketch finished in Photoshop by Darren Daz Cox*~

Above is a random pencil sketch I drew at my day job and then randomly added liquify filter goodness and below is another work sketch of my art model Beff and her bird Buddy. I tried to make the picture more fancy but sometimes the simpler the better….

I’m really getting the bug to do a really huge painting, I often think of grand murals and painting a Roman chapel ala Michelangelo but it’s becoming a craving. I think I must have painted murals or frescos in a past life…

I started a blue oil paint on gold canvas painting and you can see it below in the photograph of the front porch of the Riverfront Media Clubhouse featuring DJ Disaster rewiring the house to use our new Canon printing press (it’s a heavy duty laser printer).

In a few days I’ll finally be able to crank out my new art zine and send it to everyone and be rich and famous and have my own pet elephant.

Riverfront Media, the most creative independent audio video company in Peoria Illinois, will move into our new studios, in Mossville Illinois at the Medina Crossing center at the beginning of June and we’ll move the high tech digital printing press there then.

I’ve been really creative lately!

The drawing below is called "Hide from the rain" and is not completed quite yet, in fact it may end up as a painting! Oh wow, i have so many paintings in progress, i really need to be rich and famous like Mark Ryden so I can just do art full time!

I am very thankful and happy where I am right now. Thanks for making my dreams of being an artist come true!

Oh I made a fan page for my band Homer Simplex on Facebook, so our one fan, Hairy Armpit Girl From Germany – please become a fan!!! http://www.facebook.com/pages/Homer-Simplex/199830490108?ref=mf

This was a pencil sketch I was drawing at work (I do tech help on the phone so I can sketch while I help people, which is a two-fer).

My friend Beff and I were discussing the term ‘frolicing’ and we decided that frolic was word that could be used in many, but all positive, ways.

This discussion on frolicking was the inspiration for the sketch, which I modified with the liquify filter and added color to in Photoshop.

From Dutch vrolijk (“‘cheerful’”), or from German fröhlich (“‘blitheful, gaily, happy, merry’”), frohlocken (“‘to rejoice, to exult’”). (http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/frolic)

Frolic, it can be used to describe something as simple and innocent as a kitten playing with a ball of yarn or could describe the foreplay of a pair of lovers.

It seems to have lost a contemporary context (outside of romance novels perhaps, I’ll have to ask the amazing and talented Nicola O.O since she is the expert on foil-letter novels! )

I would like to suggest that we bring frolic back!

はしゃぐ

“The dog was created specially for children. He is a god of frolic.”

 Henry Ward Beecher quotes (Liberal US Congregational minister, 1813-1887)

I love being an artist, being able to inspire and be inspired is a direct connection to God for me. I have shown my work to thousands of people now thanks to the internet and art shows and while I’ve yet to sell an actual painting (I’m still winning Vincent!) I will make money selling my art this year. I plan to make 11×18 full bleed mini posters (that’s edge to edge color – no border) and sell them for 99 cents and also provide this service for my fellow artists. Riverfront Media is expanding and getting so many clients it is hard to predict anything but total success and the capital to really promote the arts in the way I feel is the best way.

Speaking of the arts, I had so many amazing gifts on my birthday, the most spectacular was this news story about Michelangelo’s first painting! 

The Torment of St. Anthony I have not seen this one before, which means it just wasn’t in the art books,  and so I am very thankful I can see it now! 

I remember when I was younger, how fascinating the power of creating monsters was and I do not subscribe to the theory that there are ‘phases’ in art even though it felt like I went through a monster/action/masculine/line stage and now pretty much work in a more feminine /organic/color style.

Michelangelo’s Saint Anthony with monsters is a perfect example of ‘line’ work,he literally used tiny lines of color to make a very clear sharp edged graphical painting. Compare that one with the one below with the same story being told, Saint Anthony being tormented by wiches who turn into beautiful tempting women. Fantin-Latour uses ‘color’ instead of line, meaning he makes the shapes from blobs of paint rather than from lines. I love Michelangelo but his picture is not as plesing to me as the one below. St. Anthony is not in the Bible he’s just in extra stories someone was inspired to write, and over the years it’s turned into a part of the Catholic religion. here’s the link to the story with more pics!  http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2009/may/13/art-michelangelo-torment-saint-anthony

collection.nmwa.go.jp/en/P.1959-0099.html  

Henri Fantin-Latour [Grenoble, 1836 - Buré, 1904]

The Temptation of St. Anthony

and I almost forgot! Salvador Dali did an awesome Temptation of Saint Anthony too!!

and how could I forget another of my favorite surrealist artists, Felicien Rops, did a Temptation of Saint Anthony as well!

I, Darren Daz Cox am an artist too but I make up my own stories. Here’s some of my recent sketches! I don’t use my art models the way the old masters did, they are not just bodies with light on them, but rather their actions and thoughts help inspire my art in the way I want it to be.

Beff in her holocaust cloak (from The Princess Bride) stormed the castle of bad weather and brought us some sunbeams!

Beff is a romantic who inspires these type of pictures!

My art model Beff as a little old lady reading to her grandkids and pets… pencil on paper then the liquify filter by famous artist Darren Daz Cox. I asked Beff what book her future self I drew here might be reading and she said the classic The Monster at the end of the book featuring Grover. I love that book too!

Oh, and here is the monster at the end of the post! (painted by Michelangelo)

Monster by Michelangelo!!!!