Ed Montalvo featured on Rod Serling site

This past week, 12 pages went up on rodserling.com showing examples of my art. I would very much appreciate it if you could take some time to check it out. I'm sure you will find them to be very beautifully done.

Thanks

Ed
http://www.rodserling.com/EEMontalvo/default.htm

Jason Wingreen

This is a piece I made and recently send to the great Jason Wingreen from the Twilight Zone episode "A Stop at Willoughby" Jason plays the modern day train conductor. Jason was in two other Twilight Zone episodes. The hour long "The Bard" from Season 4, and "The Midnight Sun" starring the fabulous Lois Nettleton.

Nehemiah Persoff in The Twilight Zone episode "Judgment Night"

Here is a picture of my Nehemiah Persoff piece that was delivered to him yesterday. I hope it won't take long to get it back from him. All of the recent stars I've been contacting have been very gracious.

The piece above is Nehemiah in the Twilight Zone episode "Judgment Night"

One of the spall reflections in the binoculars is a tiny little skull. I did that because I wanted to represent Nehemiah ans seeing himself in death in that episode.

This piece is # 249.

Hopefully I'll be more diligent about posting my pieces than I have been in the past. I have a lot of great pieces and I've decided that I could be promoting them more than I've done in the past.

Ed

173 William Shatner Twilight Zone

I finished this Piece July 18, 2012 but I dated it 08/11/2012 because that is when it will be signed by William Shatner when he is at the Chicago Comic Con. I have not posted for a while because I was on a 16 day trip to Europe and was busy working on this major piece.

For this Piece, I decided to track the actual man-hours that it took from start to finish. It took roughly 50 man hours to complete because it is very large 23" x 36". I hid a lot of images in this piece, but essentially the primary idea I had was to have William Shatner looking at himself in the two Twilight Zone episodes where he was the star.

I guess if anyone asks, I can post detailed photos of the different sections so you can try to find the hidden images.

172 Sox Diamond Signed

I was informed that fans were allowed to get 2 autographs from Alejandro de Azo when he appeared at Chi-Town Collectibles - 322 N. Wolf Road (Mount Prospect, IL) June 21, 2012 so I decided to make another White Sox themed piece #172 Sox Diamond.

I also learned of a Bill Melton signing 06/23/2012 at the Bass Pro Shop in the Gurnee Mills shopping center, so I took both pieces to the event. Unfortunately, when I arrived at 11:50 am for a 12:00 PM signing, I was informed that I was too late, and the line had been cut off at the person in front of me. After I complained for a while, the crowd management team said I could hang around if I wanted, but there was no guarantee I'd get an autograph. This was a dual event with Shawn Michaels (HBK) and most of the fans were waiting for him. I was there for Bill Melton though. After waiting for about 45 minutes, Bill Melton came outside and was signing items for anyone who walked up to him, so I hussled over to him and got both pieces signed. I also let Bill use #171 as a support so he could sign a blueish colored Whitesox Jersey.

The picture below shows Alejandro de Aza in the act of signing #171. When I first handed the pieces to him, he said "That's Cool". It sounded more like "Ass Cool" or "at school" but certainly he seemed to like them. The day before, Alejandro was hit by a Cubs pitcher. I heard about it on the radio, but didn't see it so I asked, "Where did you get hit by a pitch yesterday?" He looked up, smiled, and said, "Right here" as he motioned to his right hip.



171 White Sox

I interrupted piece #170 and completed #171 because Tuesday, I learned about a Chicago White Sox, Alejandro de Aza, autograph signing in Mt. Prospect, IL 06/21/2012. I didn’t have a White Sox themed piece to get signed so I needed to make one quickly. Since I have my kids on Wednesdays so I knew I wouldn’t be able to work on it Wednesday at all. I had a single day to complete a piece if I was going to have one ready.

For this piece, I needed a simple logo that wasn’t very complicated and yet looked good. I wasn’t sure what ready blanks I had so I chose two different potential designs while I was at work Fortunately, I had a nice 11.5” Diameter Basswood plaque that was perfect for the round White Sox logo. The blank has some imperfections, but I knew I could execute the design, get it signed, and then do some post autograph touch up.

I only used the shading tip and the mini flow tip for the entire piece.

As you can see, I started by burning around the edges of the letters and the Sox Logo. I left the Timestamps visible so you can see approximately how long it took between steps.

I signed it on the inside rim since I didn't want it to be confused with the player autographs.

I definitely was not quite as careful or as precise with this piece as I normally would be, but time was of the essence so I went as fast as possible.

170 Guiding Light Work in Progress

For this post, I thought it would be educational to take you though the process as I'm creating my latest piece. The first picture shows the blank moments before I started woodburning. The picture was taken while the woodburner was heating up, and it shows the two pieces of Poplar glued together to form the rather large 22.5" wide by 24 " tall blank. It already has the keyholes for hanging on the back, and the design is already drawn on the blank though you can't see it very well until the third picture.

This piece #170 is called Guiding Light, though I had thought about "Christian Light" and "North Head Lighthouse" when I was conceiving the piece. Whenever I burn a piece, I typically burn the darkest parts first, then the lightest parts, and then work my way ever lighter and darker until I meet somewhere in the middle like building a bridge. This is not 100% as there are times I just feel like I need to work on a certain area before another area. In this case, the Jesus figure is to be hanging on a cross in front of the blackest section I can make. I therefore wanted to make sure the Jesus part was simply outlined so I could burn the black part and know it was properly spaced.



I next did a general outline of the cross, then I started to burn the blackest section. As you can see, I went completely around the cross first. This required rotating the piece several times so that the lighter part was always to the left of where I was burning.

The fourth picture shows the completed black section. You should know that I had to stop a couple of times to clean off the black buildup on the woodburning tip, and also to rest because the woodburner gets VERY hot when burning the blackest section.

I next worked on the roof of the keeper's house, along with the windows. I then started on the lighthouse, and was doing some of the darkest and lightest sections of the tower. The right side of the tower will be dark, but I started it off lightly because I found that darkening it in waves yields a more uniform look than trying to hit the desired color right off. I was really working mostly on the left side of the tower, but I find it helps me to balance it out by shading a bit on both ends when shading the lightest sections. If I only do the lightest sections, it makes it hard to see the ultimate balance

Sometimes I wait to sign a piece until its done, but in this case, I decided to sign it while I had the mini-flow tip hot in the burner since I might not have a need for that tip again at all. I imagine the rest will be accomplished with the shading tip and the knife edge tip.

Even at this stage, I'm not 100% certain about the entire piece. Today I was thinking about the clouds and the sky and was debating whether to burn the clouds and leave the sky unburned, or burn the sky and leave some of the clouds unburned, and others clouds lightly burned. I'm leaning toward burning the sky not the clouds, but I'm not sure. What I will likely do next is work on the details of the tower at the top to see how balanced it looks. I'll likely start out with the knife edge tip on a dark hot setting and burn the guard rail. Then I'll work on the glass section and that will likely lead me to a decision on the clouds and the sky.