Jake "Cube" Rueth

SORRY! NEW Blog!

2010-05-22T21:03:00.000-07:00

Hey, not sure if anyone is following me here but I'm using a new blog account through wordpress.
I started blogging again so feel free to follow me and shoot me a message at my new account here:
http://jakerueth.com/blog/

Puking Projections

2009-08-10T19:05:00.000-07:00

Here is the progress of my new painting "Puking Projections".
I spraypainted a burgundy and red background and lightly sketched the characters on the canvas:

Here you can see I got the spirits all painted and starting to build up detail:

Adding more highlights and shadows to the characters:
And here is where I left it to display in my booth at Wizard World Chicago.
I'm not sure if I'm done with this. I do have some things I'd like to add but that will have to be done at a later time.

Spirited Tunes

2008-04-20T11:10:00.001-07:00

Here is a doodle I sketched one day. I decided it would make a cool painting so off I went.

I started off by making a green background:

I saved a scrap of vinyl from my last job and used the dot pattern for a cool background effect:
Next I thought it'd be cool if the MP3 player had a funky glow behind it,
so I cut out a stencil for it:
I also overlayed some of this window vinyl for another cool dot pattern/halftone effect.
Here is how the glow turned out:
Next I worked on the stencil of the Mp3 player and the spirits, I first started the screen:
Next I made the Mp3 player and shadow:
Here you can see me working on the spirits:
Here is the canvas with all the stenciling done.
After adding some details and faces the painting is done. I modeled the Mp3 player off of the Zune, I have one and love it to pieces.

Late

2008-04-20T10:31:00.000-07:00

I had a cool idea I wanted to try out for this next painting, I wanted to do a layered repeated background. So I started out making a sloppy yellow>orange gradient:

Next I took my stencil I used in some of my other paintings and started spraying:
Here you can see the final result. I thought it turned out really cool. I wasn't sure what exactly I was going to do next so I turned to my sketch book.
After some doodling I came up with a cute idea and started cutting out the next stencil:
Here are the new stencils in place:
Working on the lil monster dude:

Here is the painting so far with the monster in. I used some microns and paint markers to put in some more details:
Here is how the final turned out. I couldn't be happier :)

Stoplight Demons

2008-03-20T06:42:00.001-07:00

I got a new job just north of Chicago and the transition has been an interesting one.
I come from a small little farm town in Wisconsin and the most annoying thing about Illinois are all the stoplights!!! I was sitting at this particular intersection and the stop lights made me
burst into the gigles:

I thankfully had my camera on me and snapped the above pic. I rushed back to the place I'm staying at and tossed the picture into photoshop and started painting away:

The lights turned to eyes and soon bodies took form. I used the smudge tool to swirl and
create the creatures and sculpt the photograph. After smudging out the general shapes I went back and painted and smudged some more.

Pretty soon the photograph turned into a bunch of silly demons in their cave.
This was really fun to make, especially looking at the original photograph to the final result.

Now instead of hating stoplights, I laugh and enjoy them because deep
down they are really just a bunch of silly demons.

Moose Munny

2007-12-30T08:22:00.000-08:00

Bah! Its been awhile since I've posted anything new. I worked on rebuilding my website. Check it out cubecrazy2.com

I picked up a Munny awhile back so here is what I've been doing with it:
I recently picked up an airbrush to mess around with and base coated the munny light blue:
I then started working on the antlers by taking some wire and foil:
After making a rough shape for the antlers I took some sculpey and formed it around the foil:
I went back to the body and painted a big spot on the belly and worked on the head:

Its turning out pretty cute so far.
Here is how the body looks assembled with the arms in:
After painting the face on I glued the antlers on and wah LAH! I call him MuSu!

I pegged my initials and date on the bottom. MuSu rules! I love him!
See him on deviantart!

Hide-N-Go Seek

2007-10-22T17:54:00.000-07:00

I started a new painting. Here is simple sketch of what I want to do. Its a bunch of monsters playing hide-n-go seek or ghost in the graveyard or something. I used to play this game a lot when I was a wee lad. The fall weather kinda triggered all these memories of running and hiding in the woods and having lots of fun trying to find new hiding spots.

Here I started off by spraying the sky.

Next I cut a huge stencil by taping cereal boxes together. Its really long!

Here's how the rest of the background turned out.

Once the background is finished I covered the canvas with tracing paper and doodled on some of my characters.

Now I'm battling on whether to spraypaint the characters or not. If I do, I need some huge chunks of cardboard or somthing... If I go acrylics... well thats just a ton of paint! Haha. Plus I don't like how my red acrylic paints turn out. *shake fist* I'll duke it out soon enough.

Okay, so I went with the spraypaint. I made the stencils out of posterboard... not the greatest to use, they do tend to get all wavey and curl in contact with the spray paint.

Yup... This is the ghetto... the ghetto of trees where I make most of my spraypainted paintings and stuff.

Here is part of the stencil I cut out. spraypainted the mouth red and when I took it off the painting I was like "OMG! I made a zombie!" I think I'll have to paint my stencil and hang it up somewhere.

Here is how the painting is going. theres going to be an orange character on one side and a big green character on the left. Dont worry about the center, I just placed my stencil there.

Heres another shot with the mouths red. Looking sweet!

Heres how the two big guys came out, they are looking sweet. You can see I started painting the eyes and teeth on them.

Here is a detailed shot of whats going on in the middle. I love my tree. Its turned out so cool! Still a lot of work to do but its wrapping up pretty smooth!

Here it is! All done! This was probably one of the funnest paintings to make. I really enjoyed it. Check it out on dA here!

QEE

2007-10-19T19:04:00.000-07:00

Donald, the super crazy awesome comic shop dude, gave me this 8" DIY Qee to make a mascot for his comic store. I'm so pumped.

First things first.... How can you take one of these guys apart? After a lot of forum reading and site hunting I found the easies way is to use a hair dryer and blast some heat at the joints. Not too much but just enough to soften and pry the parts off.

Here I started masking off the parts on the Qee that I want left the original plastic. It glows in the dark so I though it'd be sweet if the eyes glowed. Here I used masking tape and vinyl stickers.

Here's how the head turned out after spray painting and peeling all the mask off. Its looking sweet. There are lots of areas that need some touching up though.

The arms are going to have flames on them to mimic the logo of the comic shop's. Here I painted a yellow>orange gradient and will mask of the flames with vinyl and paint the rest black.

Sorry! I was on a roll and didn't stop to take any shot in between, here is how the final version came out:

Check it out on deviant art here!

Finger Fox

2007-10-10T19:05:00.000-07:00

Productive day!!! I finished the "Love is in the air..." painting and you can find the final: HERE!

Also started an odd painting. I was cornered and almost raped by two boyscouts selling carmel corn. I karate chopped the one and tried to do the "Vulcan death grip" on the other but they were too darn short... so I threw a $10 at them and got myself a small tin of carmel corn.

It was yummy!

Now I have this crappy tin and I thought, "Hey Jake! This would be a cool tin to put your pins in!" And I was like: "YEAH!!! Dude! It totally would!" So I started painting the tin. You can kinda see it behind this sexy fellow:

While I was spraying the tin some red paint fell onto my fingers. I thought it looked kinda foxy so I penned in some little details:

Oh, back in July (?) or was it June... bah! I don't know... I found this cabinent on the side of the road out for trash pick up... I totally yoinked it. My Dad fixed part of the broken bottom and I painted it up! Its the sweetest new addition to my room. I keep all my music and animated movies in there. But yeah. I have a cool room.

Love is in the air...

2007-10-08T17:13:00.000-07:00

Word up Ninjas!?!

I started a new painting and its almost done. Heres what I've been doing:

I flipped through a pile of sketchs and thought this guy would be a fun one to paint:

I know my sketches are horrible!!! Stop laughing! *shake fist*

I then resketch my original sketch on a sheet of tracing paper:

Once I got that ready I transferred the image onto some card board and made some stencils.

QUICK! Grab some Krylon!

So after some fun paint slingin and flinging here is how the robot is coming along:

In the above pic you can see I already started outlining the robot with some paint markers.

After some more outlining I quick made a heart stencil and sprayed that on too.

Its almost finished, just got to do some more touch ups and it'll be ready to be hung up on the wall.