I’ll start with a slight disclaimer, in that Gallery Nucleus, which is currently having a solo exhibition of Mike Hernandez’ work, is also currently an advertiser on Lines and Colors.

That being said, when I check in on Gallery Nucleus, it often turns out that they have something on exhibit that is interesting to the point where I want to tell you about it, and I’m trying to do that while the show is current and those in the area can still catch it.

Mike Hernandez is a concept artist and art director at Dreamworks Animation. He has worked on projects like Shreck, Sinbad and Bee Movie. You can see some concept art for Sinbad and Bee Movie on his blog.

Most of the artwork on his blog, though, is his personal work — beautiful small landscapes in gouache, a few somewhat larger ones in oil, charcoal drawings, and marker and ink drawings, often with versions colored after the fact in Photoshop.

Hernandez apparently paints and sketches either on the way to and from work, or perhaps on his lunch hour, as many of the small landscapes are of the area around or even on the Dreamworks campus. They range from traditional landscapes in parks and wooded areas to urban scenes and compositions of industrial buildings, which he renders as miniature marvels of geometric color and light.

Hernandez’ ink sketches, frequently done with a Sharpie, are loose and gestural, but nicely evocative of the California countryside and urban alleyways.

His gouache paintings and sketches are splashed with color and texture, and often have a nice quality of brushstrokes that feel a bit like scribble lines.

Unfortunately, you can’t just click an “Older posts” link to dig back through his blog, as it’s one of those Blogger arrangements where you have to go to particular months on the sidebar; but digging will be rewarded — with life sketches, wonderful charcoal drawings of dogs, photoshop renderings of imaginary scenes and lots of landscape paintings and drawings.

Gallery Nucleus has an online gallery of some of the work that will be offered during the show, though the images on the page are incomplete. (The prices, even given the small scale of the paintings, seem low.)

The Mike Hernandez Solo Exhibition at Gallery Nucleus in Alhambra, CA runs from now until Jaunary 11, 2009. There is a reception tonight, January 3, 2009 from 7-11PM.