Will he finish what he begins?

Damn straight I will! Though unlike Luke I am more than willing to admit my fear and the need to overcome it! First and foremost, thanks to everyone who has continued to visit my little blog here!

Ready? Here goes!

The Han Solo Benefit Art Show my wife and I put together went amazing! We couldn't have done it without the good folks at Mom and Pop Tattoo and Piercing, or without all the excellent people who came out to party with us! We raised a lot of money for a very worthy shelter in the city of Fall River, MA. I painted over 30 works just for this show! The Yoda painting at the top of this post was one of the works sold!

I recently decided to do a 180 with my life! I have worked with disabled adults for the last 4 years. The job is great, pay is great, the benefits are great but the stress and drain are not. For a while I let my fear control me and keep me paralyzed. Gotta have a job, gotta pay for food, art supplies, rent, car, stuff and all the rest of life's costs.

There are many fields of artistic creation. Many of them do not pay well, there are a million other young hopefuls competing for them, and are extremely constricting on the artist. I have avoided the gallery scene, and stepped far away from the realms of web design and graphic arts. I have always chosen to do things my way.

For the last ten years I have given away my art. Rarely, if ever, selling a piece or taking on commissions. I focused on spreading my name and giving people the ability to get to know my work. This has returned good things for me in many, many ways. Only now have I begun to feel I have earned the right to sell my work. The success of the Han Solo Benefit Art show was definitely fuel for the fire!

Recently my aunt Chandra suggested I become a tattoo artist. Many people in my life have suggested this to me, and always I brushed it off. Partly because of arrogance, and partly because of fear. (The Dark Side) Her words really inspired me. "You would be amazing at this and people would fall over to get in line!" (less important but just as nice, she said "You would make a lot of money!")

I have always felt that things happen exactly when they are supposed to. I do not believe that life is predetermined, but instead just waiting for you to be ready. When the time comes, bang! You just know it.

So I started looking into Tattoo apprenticeships. A shop in Fall River, MA was accepting and I went down to check it out! The master artist and owner there immediately accepted me, based solely on my work and reputation! I offered to trade a mural painting for their shop, The Ink Clinic, for the apprenticeship.

The story doesn't end there! My friend Sean Theroux owns Mom and Pop Tattoo and Piercing, another tattoo shop in Fall River. (You can tell I spend a lot of time in the city!) When I told him about the apprenticeship he was a little shocked that I hadn't asked to him about it! He immediately offered to have me apprentice at his shop!

A little background. Sean would have been great friends with Han Solo. He's the definition of a heroic scoundrel. Side show magician, licensed piercer, justice of the peace and a thousand other titles follow his name! With him there is never a dull moment! For example: He blew a tremendous fireball with oil and flame hidden in his trick bible after he married my wife and I!

When he offered me an apprenticeship I knew I could not turn it down! So I jumped in, head first and have been loving it ever since! Not only am I learning from the master tattoo artists there, I am also teaching them my knowledge of painting, drawing and all that goes with 2d studies!

I am also painting the mural for the Ink Clinic! A giant work based on the history of tattooing. With many styles and themes represented!

So for the next year I will be working seven days a week. 4 days working with disabled adults, and 3 at Mom and Pop learning the craft once I finish the Ink Clinic Mural. The sacrifices are great, but worthy. I have had to put 90% of my life aside to focus. It feels great. I feel charged and ready.

Star Wars is always on my mind. Like a best friend, always ready with advice, and always offering a new way to look at the world. Everyday life constantly influences the work I am doing with the Improved Prequels.

While technically alone working on the Project, there are a few people I am in contact with who I bounce ideas off of. Kind of like having a few Joseph Campbell's around to guide the myth. One you all should really get to know is Tony Pacitti, the author of the best selling memoir: My Best Friend is a Wookiee.

He recently has been a great inspiration and a beacon in the darkness. It was great reading his book and finding parallel experiences that helped to bring new understanding to my own. His love for Star Wars is true and excellent!

Patience is the key my friends. I hope that any and all of you feel free to contact me! I love to talk Star Wars! The Improved Prequels are my life's work. Like George in the early days I will defy the standards of the day, I will do things in a way that most will think is crazy. Hopefully it will be! Whether it pays off or not is completely irrelevant! The point is myth, storytelling and that 10% everyone else gets to see.

Thank you George, Jim, Frank, Joeseph without you I would not be who I am today. Thanks also to Douglass, who taught me how to Not Panic. 42.

Much love

The Forest is with you, always

Caleb

Star Wars for a Good Cause!

Star Wars for a Good Cause!

I will be having my first Solo gallery show opening this month! I have been working very hard to prepare some awesome new works for this event! This show is also a benefit fundraiser for the Fall River Family Center. A homeless shelter near where I live that helps families get back on their feet. They work very hard for the families they support, let's show them how much we appreciate their work!

My friend Sean Theroux kindly offered me the opportunity to put on this show. He is the owner and operator of Mom and Pop Tattoo and Peircing, where the show will be held! This is not your average Tattoo Shop! Sean strives to create an open family atmosphere that breeds creativity, and he does it well!

The Show!

There will be almost 30 works in this show! There will be original drawings, inks and colors from the Improved Star Wars Prequels! Prints will be available! I will also be displaying a limited series of Star Wars paintings!

Alongside the Star Wars works, I will be displaying more of my own original artwork! These include wonderfully strange hand and foot creatures and some very pretty landscapes!

There will be a musical accompaniment provided by Looks Realistic, a local casio funtime band that will delight your ears with musical adventure!

Many of the works in the show will be for sale! Some have already been sold! A portion of all proceeds will be donated to the Fall River Family center. I will also be painting live! The painting that I create that night will be raffled off, with all proceeds from the raffle being donated to the Family Center!

If you want a sneak preview of the types of things you may see, go check out my Deviant Art gallery, there's a link in the side bar!

Make sure you check out this weeks title enclosure link! It links to the Facebook event page for the show! Directions and contact info can be found there!

Thanks to everyone who has been following along on this adventure with me! Come hang out, see some killer work, listen to some great music and take a fantastic opportunity to help a worthy cause!

Love,

Caleb

P.S. ~ details

Location: Mom and Pop Tatoo and Peircing: 288 Plymouth Ave, Fall River, MA 02721

Date: August 22, 2010

Time: 7:00 - 10:00 PM

What would Master Yoda do?

Colors coming soon!

May the Force be with you.

So what I told you was true... From a certain point of view...

I want to say thank you to all the people who have been surfing by to check out what I am doing! It means a lot to me that people are seeing the work and thinking about the project.

I am now working alone. My cousin Joe has begun a musical venture with our friend Ryan and they are screaming off into lightspeed like the Rebel fleet bound for Endor to make realistic looking music!

This means that I have double the work as I am now penciling and coloring. Sadly this probably means I will have to push back the release of issue one, again...

Thankfully for all of you I am obsessed with this project AND I got a fortune cookie that said "Never Quit!" = D

"Try not! Do, or do not. There is no try."

Caleb

The Best Star Pilot in the Galaxy!

I can only take part of the credit for this image! I took the pencil of Anakin, colored it in using Photoshop and then superimposed it over a Ralph Mcquarrie painting!

The painting is of an early concept for the Millenium Falcon. Yes, we are using that ship, though as yet unnamed, for Anakin's ship in the Prequels!

This is a very rough test drawing with a basic color job. I wanted to experiment and see what Anakin would look like in a highly detailed and well rendered environment. Enjoy the tease!

(If you haven't guessed, Ralph Mcquarrie is one of my favorite artists and the biggest inspiration for the imagery of The Improved Star Wars Prequels!)

Caleb

He was a cunning warrior... and a good friend.

Don't be too proud of this technological terror you've created...

After our failure to launch we have decided to scale back a bit. For now we will offer up some tasty treats before we put up the whole comic! Character sketches, landscapes, and other fun stuff!

If you have been reading closely you will know that we are using some aspects of the Prequels as they are. We take the good stuff and combine it with history and imagery created before the Prequels.

In this example we have a character sketch of Anakin Skywalker. His face is drawn from screenshots taken of the actor Hayden Christensen. The costume however is based off of Ralph McQuarrie's early concept sketches of Han Solo. The blaster Anakin is carrying is also from a concept sketch by McQuarrie.

I like this costume very much because it feels like it belongs in an earlier time in Star Wars history. That's because it actually is from the earliest time of Star Wars history! It also is a great foreshadowing of what will become the iconic armor of Darth Vader.

Many people have said to me: "Why don't you create your own original story and your own original characters?"

The short answer is this: "Because as I have explored the world and life, I have found that everything is derived from something else. There is no such thing as truly original thought."

T.S. Eliot had this to say about a similar subject:

"One of the surest tests [of the superiority or inferiority of a poet] is the way in which a poet borrows. Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different. The good poet welds his theft into a whole of feeling which is unique, utterly different than that from which it is torn; the bad poet throws it into something which has no cohesion. A good poet will usually borrow from authors remote in time, or alien in language, or diverse in interest."

The Original Trilogy is a collection of blatant thefts from history, mythology, movies, pop culture and so much more. Lucas used to understand the importance of this.

Most important to me is keeping the feel of Star Wars. Most of the time when watching the Prequel movies I feel like I am watching a modern Sci-Fi movie that just so happens to be called Star Wars and has lightsabers in it. Every once in a while there is a scene when all of a sudden it feels like the classic Star Wars. A feeling which is ripped away with Jar-Jar's slapstick comedy and extraneous plot movement devices like pod racing.

This feeling is important because we want to make sure that we retain recognizability as well as adding a flavor not seen in the Prequel movies. The feel of Star Wars is even more important for the connection between the two trilogies.

That's the feeling we want to carry through this entire project. We want you to get caught up and get lost in the Universe we all love so much! We will weld the theft into the tapestry of history already in existence to give the Improved Prequels the honor they deserve.

We are working very hard! More to come soon!

Caleb

"I did feel something! I could almost see the remote!"

"That's good! You've taken your first step into a larger world...."