This is a non-publishing related post, but it’s something I’m going to share more of going forward – my DH Rodriguez art pieces. As mentioned in previous posts, the mysterious DH Rodriguez (author of “Mercy & Other Stories”) is just me – humble laborer and independent publishing company proprietor Bob Ballard. This is a pretty poorly kept secret (no one is trying to keep it secret, actually). So, in addition to talking about that one novel I wrote several years ago, I also make oil paintings.
One of my early oil paintings
I started painting back in 1999, when I took a summer course at a community college in order to get through my art credit at University of San Diego (Go Toreros!). The class was introduction to acrylic painting, and the teacher was a random local artist who had only passing interest in teaching (I really liked him). I guess it was fair, because I spent most of the summer hitting on the women in class, with passing interest in art.
We started by painting basic still life. Here’s the first painting ever – it’s my friend’s hat and my knock-off sunglasses (I think they were called “Ray-Bons”):
Then we worked on portraits. Being a complete narcissist, I went straight for self-portrait (I lived by the beach, and I wish I still owned that hat):
Since that was the only class I ever took, all of my early work was acrylic on canvas. I painted a few landscapes in college, but really enjoyed portraits. I painted a lot of the girls I knew in San Diego, under the misguided impression that this would eventually result in sex. I sold most of what I did early on, earning upwards of $80 on several terrible commissions ($80 will buy a lot of Turtle Beer!).
Here’s the first painting I ever did of my beautiful wife (still acrylic on canvas):
It was after Kelly and I moved to Wisconsin that we became interested in the pinup/ vintage lifestyle scene and I started painting with oil. I took a class with a local artist at her pottery studio and learned the basics of working with oil paint. Here’s some of my early pinup art:
Reference photo of Dayna DeLux, photographer Riley Kern
Reference photo of Heidi Van Horne, photographer Shannon Brooke
Reference photo of Dayna DeLux, photographer unknown
My early pinups were based on work of photographers that I enjoyed, but I’ve always wanted to work on truly original work. So, I took some shots of my gorgeous wife and our favorite model Ginny Rosewater which resulted in these original DH Rodriguez paintings:
Kelly
Ginny
Thanks for checking out my paintings! I am working on a number of new pinup and art nudes and will be sharing more in the future.
