I Blog For…Art!

This took longer than I thought it would! I thought, ah, a bit of white, red, blue, and black, how hard can it be? Many hours later, I have a different opinion!

Here’s the final:

Here’s a surprised shot of me:

The drawing and progress shots are on the previous post as I started this yesterday in addition to finishing yesterday’s painting!

This time Korea and Pan Africa. The girl who modeled for Korea has such a quiet elegance, and the Pan-African model has a gorgeous smile! Can’t wait to finish up. I’m also excited to be working on TWO paintings and managing this somehow on a Thursday, one of my busiest days! Awesome!

I’m not sure we got the Pan-African Flag quite right… Oh well. We tried!

Here’s the second one I worked on today:

Here are the photos by Ernst Mutchnik that I worked from

(If you haven’t been following, I painted these gals’ faces about three years ago and decided to do again, except this time on paper.)

It’s what keeps things spinnin’! I’m realizing that an artist I recently became aware of has influenced two of my choices already in this challenge. I first saw Shawn Barber’s work at Sullivan Goss Gallery in Downtown Santa Barbara, and was fascinated by his portraits of tattoo artists. I went to his site, and although it kind of creeped me out, I really liked his technique on a series of baby doll paintings. (Hence my first painting was of a Mexican flamenco dancer doll.)

I confess, although I don’t think I would ever want a tattoo, I enjoy the art of it and love other people’s tattoos and body art. I loved painting the models’ faces for the photo series I’m currently painting, and I enjoyed drawing fake tattoos on a character for a friend’s short film. It’s seems I’m not alone in liking the body as a canvas, Shawn Barber now tattoos part time! It’s not something I’d ever considered, but it’s an interesting concept, now that I think of it!

My first dabblings at tattoo art, (with permanent marker—not needle and ink!)

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Here’s the finished painting:

Here’s the painting, almost finished. Click it to view larger.

Here it is as a drawing:

I admit, I want to be ahead of the controversy over why I’ve let myself fall behind two days! After exhausting myself trying to complete paintings at night when the workday is too intense to paint, I’ve decided this schedule is not conducive to creating good art or learning. Last night, for instance, I was excited about mixing all the subtle shades of red in the girl’s face, but instead, I took as many short cuts as I could in order to finish faster. I can’t let that happen again tonight. I also can’t function much longer on this goofy sleep schedule.

I’ve decided to prepare the drawings tonight and paint tomorrow having learned how unimpassioned I paint when I’m in a mad rush to finish. Thus tonight, let there be sleep!

I’m one painting behind, so tonight I’ll be trying to finish two works along the same theme. If you have visited my main website, zoenathan.com, you may have seen the Miscellaneous page, which shows a face painting project I worked on for a photographer friend, Ernst Mutchnick. The models reported feeling quite peculiar wearing their country of origin on their face for everyone to see for a while after being photographed. The whole thing was a lot of fun, and I’m thrilled to be painting the faces I painted so long ago, in a whole new way!

Here are the two pictures:

UPDATE:

And the results are in: I’ll need to touch it up a bit when I’m more awake, (it’s 5:23 am!) But in a panic not fall too far behind, I’ve nearly finished another painting between the hours of 2-5 am.

Remember to click on the images you would like to see enlarged…

And here it is as a drawing:

One thing has led to another to make today unproductive. Letting myself slip yesterday thinking I would pick up the slack today led to plans unraveling.

One distraction occurred when I ran across the street from my apartment out of curiosity to see an old house that had gone up for sale. It saddened me a bit, because we used to hear musicians practicing wonderful French gypsy folk music from that house from the apartment. Anyway, I saw the 1915 style hardwood floors and shelving, large basement for making ceramics, and perfect detached art studio for painting over a two car garage, and I was in love! I digress, but it was quite ironic: an artist’s dream home that there’s no way I could afford, right down the street!

Most of the rest of the distractions were fairly typical of me when I’m in a hurry: I forgot to bring two extra papers for today and tomorrow’s paintings when I raced out of the apartment for an overnight trip to my parent’s ranch today. Then, after making two more primed papers from material I had here, I knocked over a glass jar half-full of water, which spilled over one of the newly primed papers and broke all over the floor where I was getting ready to work.

The rest is yet to come. I have two hours and I hope that’s enough to finish at least yesterday’s work!

Anyone who has showed knows the stress and excitement of it. Here, the rider is composed, waiting in a line to be judged. He is watching the judge make his way around. I positioned him slightly high in the picture to create a sense of nervous isolation. It is just you and the horse, and sometimes, it feels like it’s all about you and the state you are in before and while you ride. As long as your horse behaves, your riding should determine your performance.

Here is the final painting:

Here I’m racing against time to finish:

What do you do when the web, your DSL, and your computer seems to be conspiring against you? You paint, (at least I did.) For some reason, I tried and failed for the first time to upload new videos to my YouTube account, and for two days in a row! Hours of my life, gone with no return… I actually started the drawing for this yesterday while waiting for videos to render. I’m glad some of my work was fruitful!

Karina’s creativity and charisma are contagious! I found this photo going through some old pictures, (from back in the day when I used filmed and got it printed!) I couldn’t resist painting it!

Check out her work:
Karina Puente at the Judith Hale Gallery

Here it is:

Finished!

Almost there:

In progress:

Here’s the drawing:

I liked painting this so much the first time, I decided I’d do it again. Unfortunately, this was a model from W magazine, so, like yesterday’s painting, I don’t know who it is, and thus can’t tell him he now has two portraits painted of him in addition to being on my business card and the header for this blog!

Miraculously, I found a way to photograph it without too much glare:

With the photo:

In progress:

Here’s the drawing:

Here’s the first version I did:

Tonight I wanted to explore the many colors that comprise black. I had “Woman With a Fan” by Veláquez in mind. It’s beautiful, with creamy gradations of black clothing.

Working in my apartment, as I have the past few nights, with the exception of Saturday night while working on the first painting. I was visiting my parents and took of advantage of the studio space they have!

And the final piece, which is once again plagued by glare:

And a detail from it:

And here’s an image of the drawing: