Friday, February 28, 2014

Bacon Face Mardi Gras Mask: Sketchbook Friday



Mardi Gras, Mardi Gras, Mardi McFly. Beads, parades, masks, colors, DeLoreans and shouting. This tiny watercolor sketch was done as a way to purge some creative juices during a much more strict drawing assignment (which is a stone cold secret). Inspired by Venetian Mardi Gras masks like the ones seen below. A creature seemed to grow from the mask in a very odd Miyazaki-esque form. It would be fun to see this thing animated, but animation is not in my toolbox of skills.
All I really know, is that "This is heavy".


Each Friday at noon I scan in one new sketch or drawing from one of my many sketchbooks. Many times my sketches are ideas for larger projects that you might find on my fine art website William Hessian dot com, or as projects right here on my Bearded Bunny art blog. If you enjoy these sketches make sure to also see my Favorite 20 sketches from 2011 or go back and check out all of the sketchbook friday posts.

Sunday, February 23, 2014

Your Wildest Dreams at Dr. Goodweather's Dreaming Attic


Dr. Goodweather's Dreaming Attic

For three hours in April at Mayo Street Arts you will have the chance to slip into a world of dreams crafted just for you by some of Portland’s most surreal and innovative painters, sculptors, musicians, video artists, and creators. View the brushstrokes, lines, colors, forms, and drips that dreams are made of. Witness the rapid eye movements of living statues. Enter a dream booth where Dr. Goodweather himself will present you with a virtual dream. Peek into a telescope and see a dream occurring outside the window. Expose your ears to a live musical battle between dreams and nightmares. Get lost in the magical haze of a show beyond your wildest dreams.

“This isn’t just an art show, it is a full experience. A collection of dreams brought to life.” --Sleepwalk Gazette

“An awakening event.” --The Nightlight Times

As for my part in the show:

Your WILDEST Dreams
illustration performance
by William Hessian



Whisper your WILDEST dreams to artist William Hessian and he will be doing sketch illustrating of everything he hears during the show. The small cloud illustrations will populate the wall. The artist will spend the entire show under a sheet focused only on the drawings, and listening to your WILDEST dreams.

Come have your WILDEST dream illustrated.

As for the rest of the show:


Painting by Bridget McAlonan

The entire show is going to feature a handful of my favorite artists in Portland which will include incredible works Abbeth Russell(curator), Andrew Abbott (see painting below), Sighless, Kevin Gallagher, Gabriel McGuire and Bridget McAlonan (who is posting about the painting seen above at Inventing Trees
). You can also read an interview with Bridget McAlonan I did last year, that talks a lot about her as an artist. I could write for hours about each of these artists and how incredible there work is, but until I do, this is a show you should not miss! Basically, much like any Hidden Ladder Collective show or anything that Abbeth Russell creates: this will be a party!


Painting by Andrew Abbott

Andrew Abbott is another artist you should try not to miss. If you are intrigued by the painting above, check out his Facebook page to see hundreds of his contemporary paintings.

Friday, February 21, 2014

Failed Eevee Pokemon: Sketchbook Friday



If you look through all of my sketchbook fridays over 175 posts, you will find what looks to be many failed attempts at designing my own Pokemon characters. I admit it! I love cute litte squishy creatures. I cannot stop drawing them. Sketchbook Friday is where they drop from my mind and into the world for a brief moment before disappearing into the lost sketchbooks of doom. This 4 legged guy seems to has some personality and a case of bad breath, but in the end he is just a wanna-be evolution form of Eevee. Because, everyone wishes they had been evolved from Eevee. I know I do. Don't you? And if by chance, my little drawing was an evolution form of Eevee, he would surely eat Glaceon as a breath mint: Winter fresh.
Just for reference, here is the Eevee evolution chart:


Each Friday at noon I scan in one new sketch or drawing from one of my many sketchbooks. Many times my sketches are ideas for larger projects that you might find on my fine art website William Hessian dot com, or as projects right here on my Bearded Bunny art blog. If you enjoy these sketches make sure to also see my Favorite 20 sketches from 2011 or go back and check out all of the sketchbook friday posts.

Friday, February 14, 2014

100 Not Pokemon: Sketchbook Friday

I was a little too old for Pokemon when it came out, at least according to their target audience demographics. I remember seeing a pack of Pokemon cards at Shinder Card Collectible Store in Minnesota and buying it up. 15 cute creatures later, I found myself racing home everyday after school to catch the animated cartoon (the original series), "gotta catch em' all" my friends. I remember being bewildered by the simple concept of catching and collecting cute animals and battling them against each other. It captured all of my fascinations and I was jealous of all the kids a generation under me who got to grow up with Pokemon as children. Meanwhile, cute creatures has been a constant subject matter in my art and continues even today. Part of me wishes I could design characters for Nintendo. Some days I just pages and pages of goofy non Pokemon. Hope you enjoy them. Gotta invent them all!


Each Friday at noon I scan in one new sketch or drawing from one of my many sketchbooks. Many times my sketches are ideas for larger projects that you might find on my fine art website William Hessian dot com, or as projects right here on my Bearded Bunny art blog. If you enjoy these sketches make sure to also see my Favorite 20 sketches from 2011 or go back and check out all of the sketchbook friday posts.

Tuesday, February 11, 2014

Maze Online


Here are a collection of Free Printable Mazes that I have created over the last 5 years. Including a dragon maze, a pizza maze, a hydra maze and so many more. These mazes are for children of all ages, although they are admittedly challenging mazes designed for young teenagers, or older.



My mazes are the most popular part of the blog, and you can check back often to see new mazes put up a few times each year. The collection of challenging mazes are always free to print out and solve.

Make sure to check all of the Free Printable Mazes

Friday, February 7, 2014

LEGO BATMAN has six eyes: Sketchbook Friday



"BATMAN has six eyes?" the little kid yelled at me in horror. I thought the kids eyes were about to pop out of his skull. I had to assure him my little sketch was in fact not BATMAN but just a silly guy I was inventing. It took 30 minutes to settle the poor kid down. He gave me those skeptical eyes, "Are you sure it is not BATMAN? Lego Batman perhaps?" The next 30 minutes was a great hypothetical conversation about how much more powerful BATMAN would be if indeed he had 6 eyes instead of two and how great and rare the LEGO figurine of 6-eyed BATMAN would surely be. Work (teaching art to kids) is always a great place for feedback on my sketches. Welcome to sketchbook Friday!


Each Friday at noon I scan in one new sketch or drawing from one of my many sketchbooks. Many times my sketches are ideas for larger projects that you might find on my fine art website William Hessian dot com, or as projects right here on my Bearded Bunny art blog. If you enjoy these sketches make sure to also see my Favorite 20 sketches from 2011 or go back and check out all of the sketchbook friday posts.

If you want to own some of my work, you can always find great deals on my artwork and stickers at my Etsy shop. Do not forget to subscribe to my blog and never miss another post.

Saturday, February 1, 2014

Canvas Killer and the Bumbling Woohas at Mayo Street Arts


For Jay: Canvas Kill by William Hessian

My father, Jay, passed away on Christmas Eve 2013. He was a wonderful man and the nicest person I have ever met. I was lucky to have him as a father. The end of 2013 was a bright red blur of emotional pain and a really hard for me to deal with, given my intense fear of death. My father died unexpectedly of a heart attack, and Christmas will never be the same. Incredible energy from my friends, my family, my partner and from my father's spirit helped me dredge through the sorrow and wade to the shore of acceptance. One of the ways I deal with emotional pain is to do performance art that I call Canvas Kill. My father was a huge supporter of my performance art and when I was approached by my closest friends and band "The Bumbling Woohas!" to perform a canvas kill during their show at Mayo Street Arts in Portland Maine, I asked if I could dedicate it to my father. Sighless and Abbeth Russell told me that they had already planned on dedicating the show to Jay.

The creator and the destroyer
One of my hands was bandaged up with only a paint brush jutting through; the other was bandages up with only a knife jutting through. My entire body was painted dirty gray. On my chest I painted a stitched line to represent my recent hernia surgery (of which i was only partially recovered from) and also to represent the pain I was feeling without my Father. On my stomach I painted a symbol that my father often used of a cartoon dog, which was his humorous way of joining me in the world of visual art time and time again throughout my life. On the center of my chest I painted, "For Jay". The creator and the destroyer. The high energy rock n roll show was juxtaposed by my emotional process of grieving through my art. The show started with Abbeth Russell bursting free of a box in the backdrop. As the show progressed from guitar riffs by Fernando, to juggling, harmonica and vocals by Abbeth, intense guitar playing and raw vocals by Sighless the band played through their set of original songs. The music erupted the crowd into a melee of dancing and thrashing. Meanwhile, I was painting a dark portrait of three characters. I paid tribute to Jay and knelt before the crowd sobbing underneath the mask, wishing for my dad to return to me, but also trying to let him go. In the energy vortex that is a Bumbling Woohas show I found the strength to stand and stab the artwork with my knife hand. The painting featured three figures (representing my dad's immediate family, my brother Scott, my mother Lori and myself) and we were all entirely black. Consumed. The gouges made violently by the butcher knife hand caused the black painting to bleed small drips of red and pink. As the music climatic ending called dozens of people to the stage to sing along together, I rested my head against the dead painting thanking my dad for everything he was to me and promised to be more like him than ever before. During this performance I dug deep inside and extracted some of my vulnerable and injured parts and gifted them to a raucous crowd, asking for the audience to adopt these damaged parts and lessen my burden. Simultaneously I tried to breath in the love, passion and positive energy that surrounded the performance. Many in attendance were close friends who were aware of my loss and pain and were willingly accepting my painful performance.

Making it happen
My amazing partner, Kara Oster, took an incredible set of photos, including before and after shots of the performance which you can check out here: Photos of the Canvas Kill. Kara also did the sewing for the mask and the arm bandages. A big thank you to Kara, Abbeth, Sighless, Fernando, and Greg McKillop for all that they did to make this Canvas Kill successful.



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