A Complex Drawing

Now that I got all the pages pasted on a board, my next step is to start drawing Aleksandr. It was a full day just to get the outline and placement correct, and another half day for his shoulder. By the evening of the first day I was getting pretty tired and should've called it quits. Instead I got the idea to shade in the dark areas with a light ink wash so I could get a feel of how it will look. Afterward, I had to paste a few pages over the areas that should have stayed the page color...oops.

Penciled in the outline, and started to wash it with ink. Even there I had already painted over vital highlights. A few pages pasted over fixed it pretty easy though. You can also see the shoulder here is still pretty basic.



Finished shading the big areas. These will be black. Although it was a bad idea, at least you can see what it will kind of look like... its hard being patient.



His shoulder has so many little parts to it. It took me a long time and a lot of erasing to get it to look accurate and correctly shaped.

Beginning the Portrait

It is two weeks before the art show at the Rothick, and Im creating things like mad! I have a lot of things I want to do for this show and of course they are all big, detailed, and take a lot of time. So the first one I am starting with is a portrait of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. He is a Russian author and Nobel prize winner. He had a pretty crazy life living in Soviet Russia, and writing all of his books in secret. Read his biography on the Nobel prize website.

I started researching Aleksandr a few weeks ago. I stumbled upon his biography while reading up on Russian history. I ordered a few of his books including "Cancer Ward" (which I am currently reading) and "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich". I also ordered an extra copy of "Cancer Ward" to use as the background of this piece. Below you can see what Ive done so far, and I will keep posting up my progress daily.

So far I have cooked up some wheatpaste... its super easy, cheap, works really good, and you can eat it (it doesnt taste very good but its just flour and water).
To make your own follow this simple recipe:
for every 3 tablespoons of flour, use 1 cup of water.
heat up water on stove without bringing to boil.
in separate container mix flour with a little water to make it pastey.
then pour into hot pot of water. mix for a few minutes.
I like to strain mine afterwards as I pour into a container, just to make it extra smooth.



Then I cut out pages of the book "Cancer Ward" and began pasting them to this a board. I use an old gift card to press them on there and flatten out any wrinkles.



There you have it.... more coming Monday!

In Preparation

  

These three sketches are for an upcoming piece Im working on. Its gonna be pretty big and hopefully awesome. Actually I know its going to be awesome, and it will be revealed at the upcoming art show "Beneath the Broken Bottles and Cigarette Butts" at the Rothick Gallery in Anaheim, CA. I urge you all to come, its gonna be crazy! I will have my own room there and will be showing new stuff. I will also have a limited number of small sketches that will be sold for cheap! Make sure you get there on time so you can get one before they are all gone... Go to my events page for more information.

Washed Out Vespa

Here is a book I just made for fun. Inside is a collection of my photography from Europe. All black and white photos from London, Paris, Barcelona, Amsterdam, Florence, Rome, and others. Its a random little coffee table type book. Hard cover. 22 pages. If you would like a copy let me know...