Three Shades of Noir

Green Noir - 2018 - A?

Blue Noir - 2018 - A?

Red Noir - 2018 - A?

I know it's been a while since I've released new work.  I've been very busy with other projects, and haven't had as much time to focus on making art as I usually do. 

... but I digress...

I've always liked the character archetypes found in Noir films and written work. I also liked the idea of doing a series of portraits, each in different shades or hues of a particular color.

I'll be honest... there's not much to "read into," here... just some stuff that I thought would look cool, based on stuff that I already like... it's as simple as that.

So, here we have the "gritty, alcoholic private dic," presented in shades and hues of green; the "gorgeous dame, singing in the seedy night club," presented in blue; and the "untouchable boss of a criminal empire," presented in red.

I hope you like them... I enjoyed making them.

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2018

The Most Buscemiest Thing In All Buscemidom

The Most Buscemiest Thing In All Buscemidom - 2017 - A? Hidahl

I've been a big fan of Steve Buscemi ever since the first time I saw Reservoir Dogs, back in the 90's.  He has always shown himself to be a very versatile actor, capable of believably portraying extremely complex characters, while bringing his own dynamic personal flavor.

This piece was created for my Stepson, who is currently making me VERY proud with his decision to attend film school!

Characters (left to right, top to bottom):

Randall, "Monsters, Inc."

Danny McGrath, "Billy Madison"

Mr. Pink, "Reservoir Dogs"

Anton Marvelton, "The Incredible Burt Wonderstone"

Lenny Wosniak, "30 Rock"

Dr. Romero, "Spy Kids 2: Island of Lost Dreams"

Enoch "Nucky" Thompson, "Boardwalk Empire"

Buddy Holly, "Pulp Fiction"

Crazy Eyes, "Mr. Deeds"

Donny, "The Big Lebowski"

Dimensions: 27"x42"

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2017

Tarantino Mural

Tarantino Mural - A? Hidahl - 2017 - ?

So, my wife and I just moved into a new condo, and a wall in our living room just needed that "something"...

We met just short of 2 years ago (as of two days from now) at a karaoke bar.  Our initial conversation was about Quentin Tarantino films, so I thought the most "personal" thing I could make for our living room was a mural featuring one character from each film Tarantino has directed thus far (plus Alabama from the movie, "True Romance," because while it wasn't directed by Tarantino, it was written by him and she's referenced in the movie, "Reservoir Dogs"... and more importantly, she's my wife's favorite character in the entire Tarantino universe... seeing as how this is, in part, a celebration of our relationship, it's kind of important to keep wifey happy on this one...)

Featured in this painting are the following characters:

Mr. Pink, Steve Buscemi, "Reservoir Dogs"
Alabama Whorley, Patricia Arquette, "True Romance"
Vincent Vega, John Travolta, "Pulp Fiction"
Jackie Brown, Pam Grier, "Jackie Brown"
Beatrix Kiddo, Uma Thurman, "Kill Bill"
Bill, David Carradine, "Kill Bill"
Lt. Aldo Raine, Brad Pitt, "Inglourious Basterds"
Stuntman Mike, Kurt Russell, "Death Proof"
Django Freeman, Jamie Foxx, "Django Unchained"
Major Marquis Warren, Samuel L. Jackson, "Hateful 8"

On a personal note, I LOVE movies, and Quentin Tarantino, in my opinion, has made some of the finest films of my lifetime!  Nobody paints a story like Tarantino!

Commercial Work

I've done a fair amount of work for commercial purposes, on a commissioned basis.  I always enjoy doing this work, because every commission brings new challenges; they force me to be a better artist in a lot of ways!

So, here's a collection of the commercial work I've done... I hope you enjoy it!

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2017

Squares and Stars and Shit 3

Squares and Stars and Shit 3 - A? Hidahl - 2017 - ?

So, I've decided that I like making stuff using squares and stars and shit... here's another one.

Squares and Stars and Shit 2

Squares and Stars and Shit 2 - A? Hidahl - 2017 - ?

Here you go... more squares and stars and shit... because people like squares and stars and shit... I hope you enjoy these squares and stars and shit.

Squares and Stars and Shit

Squares and Stars and Shit - A? Hidahl - 2017

Sometimes, I just like to play with basic shapes, to see how they play together.

In this one, I used a bunch of squares and stars and shit.

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2017

Told You So 5: 8 Balled Eagle

Told You So 5: 8 Balled Eagle - A? Hidahl - 2017 - ?

The Eagle has landed... the balled Eagle... the 8 Balled Eagle has landed

In all fairness, this could never be the current Oval Office... the doorknobs are too big for such tiny hands to grasp...

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2017

Told You So 4: Balsa Steel

Told You So 4: Balsa Steel -A? Hidahl - 2017 - ?

From the file, "Stories of the Balsa Squad"

2017

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Told You So 3: Clowning Around

Told You So 3: Clowning Around - A? Hidahl - 2017 - ?

The warnings were ignored...

The signs were brushed aside...

... but NOBODY expected... this.

2017

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Told You So 2: Casual Friday

Told You So 2: Casual Friday - A? Hidahl - 2017 - ?

There's a lot of things they should have done differently...

Maybe they shouldn't have stolen the life savings of their customers...

Maybe they shouldn't have left their customers homeless...

Maybe they should have treated their employees better...

Maybe they should have been more forgiving to the people they fucked...

Maybe they should have paid more attention to public sentiment...

... and maybe...

... they should have x-rayed that odd-looking bunny that came in the mail...




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Told You So

Told You So - A? Hidahl - 2017 - ?

Not everything is as it looks...

There's often a facade in place to make the most devious things remain disguised, so as to complete their savagery from under the veil of feigned innocence.

Villain Comics #17: Origin of Black Friday

Villain Comics #17: Origin of Black Friday - A? Hidahl - 2017 - ?

Friday Black started out as a great employee at Walton Mart; but after a while, she grew insubordinate.

She started raising concerns about the working standards.  She started asking for more pay.  She started complaining about one of her coworkers "harassing" her.

The managers were running out of ways to tell her, the complaints wouldn't go anywhere.

More than once, she was caught talking to coworkers about forming a union... and she was promptly reprimanded for her arrogance!

... and then... Black Friday...

... the day after Thanksgiving...

... the busiest shopping day of the year!

She was warned about the sudden swarm of customers that were about to enter the store...

She knew the risks, when she signed on...

But she was unprepared for the barrage of shoppers, and the dumbass associate got trampled in the middle of the fervor.  The post-holiday holiday crowd was so thick, her nearly-dead body wasn't even found or mentioned for three hours; and she was in the middle of the aisle! 

It serves her right, though... she was a "troublemaker."  Although, if she had died, Walton Mart would have made more than a few million on the "dead peasant" insurance they had taken out on her life... not only did she cost the gracious employer hundreds of thousands of dollars in "worker's compensation" (pronounced, "welfare"), she cost the company several MILLION dollars by not dying!  The sheer nerve of her is astounding!

That was five years ago...

... and now, the higher-ups have started to go missing, and a few have turned up horribly mangled; as though they had been put through a meat grinder whole.

Walton Mart Executive, Steven Tyco, was only able to be identified by the titanium shaft that had been put in his leg after a skiing accident; and even the shaft was mangled, almost beyond recognition.

It is yet unknown for sure, whether or not these attacks and disappearances are the work of Friday Black, but her fingerprints have been found in some very incriminating places, where people have gone missing.

If not Friday, then who is responsible for these acts against the benevolent rulers of Walton Mart???

Villain Comics #29: Heathen and the Abomination

Villain Comics #29: Heathen and the Abomination - A? Hidahl - 2017 - ?

It was a calm night at Camp Urnadagay...

... the day's activities had ended...

... only three campers had committed suicide; a new record!

Dinner was delicious!

The campers were passionately trying to pray away their gay tendencies, as The LORD and their parents demanded of them.

... but then, a yellow glow emerged, beneath the Chaplain's quarters...

... a glow that quickly turned into a BLAZE, which encompased most of the camp, but miraculously did not take the lives of any campers!

Jesse Scott's brother had arrived to prise his kin from the safety and inclusion of the camp, before the word of GOD had permeated his sinful, ugly, homogay soul; leaving him as an ABOMINATION against The LORD!

Dubbing himself, "The Heathen," the Godless Atheist has come to DEMOLISH the church, in a self-righteous assault on God, himself!

Jesse had been resistant to the teachings of Jesus, earning the name, "The Abomination," by the God-fearing Christian camp counselors; many of whom had abandoned their own sinful gay lifestyles, themselves!

Now, without the loving glow of Christ, who will save The Abomination from his own perversions???

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2017

Villain Comics #29: Octotank

Villain Comics #29: Octotank - A? Hidahl - 2017 - ?

Four weeks have passed, and nobody can find The Mechanic...

Nobody expected the carnage that would ensue, when his mechanical dinosaurs stampeded through fifteen GloboMultinational Banks locations, reducing them to rubble before self-destructing...

So... where's he been since then?

He's been working on something... bigger... stronger... impenetrable... 

A mechanical juggernaut unlike anything else ever invented...

... but now, it's time... 

The world will soon quake, when Wall Street is torn asunder by this epic monstrosity and engineering marvel!

The Mechanic grins menacingly, with the world's first miniscule glimpse of...

OCTOTANK!!!

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Villain Comics #7: The Siege of Bastille

Villain Comics #7: The Siege of Bastille - A? Hidahl - 2017 - ?

July 14th, 2017...

Our righteous saviors, the Billionaires, attend their annual event, The Bastille Day Ball...

Attendees dress as "the poors," to walk a mile in their shoes for a night; while dining on the finest catered delights, prepared by the nation's greatest chefs...

The gathering, as usual, is a smashing success!!!

... until...

A gurgling scream is heard from across the ballroom, as guests are showered with blood...

... Bastille raises her still-dripping axe high in the air, screaming, "DEATH TO THE OLIGARCHS!!!"

What follows is a blood-soaked slaughter of the Gods of our society; a slashing, crashing, gashing, hacking rampage that leaves body parts strewn so far and wide, authorities may never be able to fully re-assemble the pieces!

She's still out there...

Ruminating... plotting... planning her next strike against the elite...

... but where did she come from?

What caused her to snap against those who hold our futures in their hands?

... and who, if anyone, can stop her?

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2017

Excerpt From Villain Comics #3

Excerpt From Villain Comics #3 - A? Hidahl - 2017 - ?

Some call him a monster...

Others cheer his wanton destruction, focused on those in elite society...

Everyone calls him a genius.

His exploits have rendered all country clubs uninsurable for a hundred mile radius, rendering them shuddered and closed.

... but with nowhere left to avoid "the poors," what will the elite do to fight back against this Nihilist, so as to maintain their elevation above the rest of "them?"

Who will step forward to defend high society, and vanquish this formidable foe?!

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The Milkman

The Milkman - A? Hidahl - 2017 - ?

Through the dark of night, the milkman comes...

to bomb...

to destroy...

to set ablaze, the institutions that bind society together!

Our banks, police stations, courts, and many retailers have all been reduced to cinders!

Can anybody save us from this Anarchist???

Who will step forward and do what needs to be done???

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Imperfect Reflections

Imperfect Reflections - A? Hidahl - 2016 - ?

Imperfect Reflections

The circles and ovals in this piece are both chaotic and ordered.

They are randomly spaced, but reflected exactly, across the center.

That's how I see people, individually.

Everybody has their own unique composition; both Psychologically and Physiologically.

You are a reflection of the chaos within you. 

2016

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Gandhi, VICTORIOUS!!!

Gandhi, VICTORIOUS!!! - A. Hidahl - 2016 - ?

Gandhi, VICTORIOUS!!!

We've been lied to for decades...

Hitler didn't kill himself...

Gandhi did it.

The governments of the Allied Forces all agreed to change the narrative, to protect Gandhi's peaceful legacy, to the benefit of world history.

With time, truth will out, though, and now the truth must be told.

A Nazi Party rally in Munich, the setting for our "alternate ending" to the Western Front of WWII.

Gandhi strode headlong into the foray, riding atop a monstrosity liberated from Hitler's demented laboratories in Berlin; a gene-spliced spider/scorpion hybrid, weaponized with all the armaments needed to wipe out entire cities.  On it's head, kill counts for everything they had destroyed along the way.

In an epic rampage of wanton destruction, Gandhi marched across the square, guns and canons blazing, flamethrowers blasting their infernos, and Gandhi, himself, picking up the spares!

The Fuhrer made a break for an abandoned VW bug, but was quickly swept up and bisected with a screaming chainsaw by the bloodthirsty, vengeance-enraged arachnid tank!

And with that final deathstroke, the Western Front had been relieved of a tyrannical Fascist with tiny hands...

... but for how long?

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2016