WilRenn.com - Miscellaneous

Here's an abstract sunset painting I did for my father for his birthday one year. I like painting abstract sunsets. Heck, every sunset is an abstract.

I've done plenty of abstract paintings. They're fun to make and it doesn't matter that it's nonrepresentational of anything. I've heard they're for artists who can't draw, but that's just not the case -they're perfect stress relievers for when you want to paint or draw something but aren't inspired by anything in particular. After doing that one for my father, I painted this one and gave it to a girlfriend at the time and then this one which I kept for myself.

I've done a lot of non-sunset abstract paintings, too. I'm not particularly excited about these, but they often wind up being tests that I want to try out ...how pastels mix with acrylics, etc. Anything, really. Here, now is Untitled 1, Untitled 2, Untitled 3, Untitled 4, and Untitled 5. Pretty creative names for them, aren't they?

I have a button making machine and I made this design and this one with it. Buttons are fun to make and cool to collect, but you can't make a whole lot of scratch with them, unfortunately.

My job at Endo wasn't just pushing papers all the time. From time to time they asked to use my artistic abilities and I obliged. They wanted cartoons to promote their IT department's new 'IT Central' so I made this, this, this and this.

Endo also wanted a mascot of sorts. Not an overall company-wide mascot, but a character to use for safety notices. I submitted this, this and this and won. Funny, but I don't think they ever used them. In the whole time I was there, I just don't recall ever seeing a posting, a poster, a notice or anything with my liitle 'Endog'. Oh well.

Logos? Yeah, I've done a few. Here's Blue Goose Trading Company logo #1 and logo #2. Eclectic Trading Company, NIS Investigations, Perfect Specimen supplements, and Bone Cellar for a comic book shop in Ohio.

More on the subject of logos, at my new job I've been asked to create logos for 2 of their studies. Here's one and here's the other.

I got my job at Endo mostly through the kindness of Erika (if you're reading this: Hi, Erika!) and she wanted a dragon. "Draw me a dragon!" she'd ask me and one day, being the smart-ass I am, I drew an egg in a nest on a piece of paper and told her it was a dragon but it hasn't hatched yet. She didn't think it was too funny, but she set it aside waiting for it to hatch. I waited a long time, maybe a whole 9 months or maybe a year, and I drew her a dragon and before she got into work one day, replaced her egg. Here's Erika's Baby Dragon.

At my new job, someone asked me to draw them a picture of Spider-man in exchange for a gift card to EB Games to get myself a new video game. Never one to turn down some video game goodness, I drew it for him. Here's his Spider-man.

I made a bunch of different, nonspecific drawings and put them together into mailings that I'd send out to magazines trying to drum up some business from time to time. A boy and his dog, Cowboy, Pizza and Beer, Sleepwalking, Praying for snow, Galactic waiter, Star gazing, Alternatives to turkey, and Volleyball.

After college I worked for 2 local monthly magazines: Out and About and Big Shout. Somewhere around here I have the Out and About stuff, but I can't find any of it. For Big Shout, I did this for the various radio stations nearby, this for their trip that year to the new SXSW conference, and this for a story on ASCAP.

My father's favorite greeting card of mine was the clown design. I've since made a clown sculpture for him and even a clock.

My mother loves roses, so I made this for her.

I met a girl named Lisa at one time who wanted to be a poet and shared lots of poems with me. This one in particular caught my mind's eye and I envisioned this.

For some reason I can't explain, my father has a fascination with old, run-down barns, so I made this for him. I guess old barns look pretty cool.

At one point while in college, I found some really sleazy guy who wanted t-shirt designs. I say "sleazy" because he was just this shifty character and I never really trusted him. Still, I wanted to do some freelance work and, though the money wasn't all that much, it was a job. Anyway, he wanted some cute designs for t-shirts that he was going to produce and sell at the beach. He had this idea that pigs were the next big thing, so he hired me to do this, this, this, and this.

I did a charcoal drawing in college I called 'Glow Belly' only because I didn't have a name for it. Again, dad liked it and he has it now. The same goes for a drawing which featured my ex wife called 'The Fortune Teller'.

One of the oldest pictures I ever did is this one of Godzilla. It was done long, long ago. I look at it and think it's pretty cool, but I can't help but look and wonder "Where's his tail?"

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