busy bunny

making waves for MAR DE FUNDO.

This past week-end, I did some live painting at Inshala. I had a nice set up and experimented with my newest acquisitions, Chromadepth 3D glasses and an airbrush system.  The fun is over, all of a sudden things are coming to a head. Clients who haven't approached me in a month all of a sudden need work done. When it rain it pours. There will be plenty of work and catch up to do this week-end. Here is a project I completed before dinner today.

I had a day to make a 12 frame animation project titled MAR DE FUNDO out of Venezuela.
My good friend KT asked and it's headed up by Richard Reeves. So I said "I'm in for sure!"
The theme is water sea navigation tools. I figured whales are good navigators and the loop is meant to be a cycle. SO I designed a cyclical loop made up of 12 different species of Ceteceans at their relative scale to one another.

 I scanned the drawings into Photoshop then used After Effects to compile and align the drawings then output them to the various formats requested. I cant wait to see what they do with the various pieces made by all the participants.

We are the Champions

my friends.....

 I had to make myself wait until after the Versus show to share the piece on this blog. I started with a little bit a month ago but then stopped just to be fair. Hopefully you got out to the exhibit if you could. There were over 40 artists involved in the project and some amazing collaborations. The Gentlemen Destroyers made some cool walls in the front space to hang all the work and there was a good turn out while I was there.

A quick review. I ended up cutting out two different stencils back in may of the champ Batista, also a means to sign my piece since we share the same last name.

I had drawn out my anatomical heart which eventually became completely covered by my ballistic gel inspired victim figure. I started in pencil and painted in with acrylic on the re-stretched canvas.

Here is an early process shot after Ray got his Rich stencil cut and applied to the surface.

 So jumping ahead, I added the beam out of the characters mouth as an integration challenge to bring the two sides together. I have eyeballs popping out of the skull, they still need irises at this point. The blood is red but still too transparent. I splatter painted in the Batista Stencil and rubbed iridescent silver into the negative space then gave it a light sand.

I allowed a variety of browns to drip down the canvas to create more layers and depth. I cut a second negative stencil of Batista and splatter painted blues over the silver. I applied a thick pink to cover the blood and I was going to stain it red afterward but liked the interplay of pinks and blue so much I left it.  I painted in the irises in the eyes and blocked in the lower jaw.

A little further along and now there is a bit more back and forth between my collaborative partner. He added the laser rays to the piece. I decided to add a background of stars and rework the depth and shading on the skeletal elements. I created some star stencils and some tear drop stencils. I sprayed in some reflective gold spray paint and worked out some finer details.

Here you can get an idea of the detail and layering that went into the piece, this is after it is frames and varnished.

This is an angled shot taken the day Derek picked up the piece to bring to the gallery. You can see the frame job and the interplay of light on the reflective surface. ray stayed up for 2 nights working on a party binge to get the piece together with BONUS framing = sweet surprise to wake up to!

Here is the final piece to be delivered. I hand wrote the pieces title with my favorite gold paint pen. we gave it a healthy coating of outdoor vehicle clear coat. The piece has a nifty little write up explaining our process making it. Hopefully you get a chance to see our handy work in person =;)

Versus show piece, the process proceeds

Finally after grabbing some supplies, rayzor is ready to get going on his part of the piece.

A stencil of our good friend RicHard. The original photo was from a post card he gave me. It was scanned and I brought it into photoshop, did some adjustments and printed it out on a number of sheets to be a suitable size to create the stencil. Rayzor cut the vellum stencil by hand with a tiny swivel knife.

It looks pretty good. He gets his airbrush out and adheres the stencil to the canvas. Here is it applied to the canvas. There is a lot that can be done creatively with the hair. I suggested he paint dancing flames to make it really dynamic. We lined up the mouth to continue diagonally into what will be the weapon jutting from his cavernous mouth.

I picked up a large piece of watercolor paper to create my stencil. I will be using this stencil for other projects but it may come into play here. It's of the wrestler BATISTA - No relation.  Rayzor's swivel knife and other exacto blade are no good for my needs. I will have to pick up new blades for mine and get working on it tomorrow. This printout was made using the same technique and has been taped down ready to go.

BATISTA = NO RELATION!

Versus show preliminary stages

So here is some of the work I have done on the collaborative piece for the upcoming versus show.

After re surfacing the canvas and applying black gesso ground, I used a graphite pencil to draw in the initial loose plan for the piece. It is based on a ballistic dummy from an episode of World's deadliest Warrior on the moment of impact. To the left, in gold,  is the test swatch for the national stencil I made.

 On top of the line drawing I plotted in the position of the heart with paint on my scraggliest brushes. I am starting from the internal most level of organs and moving outward, at least that is my initial plan. I scraped the paint level away with an old card before it dried.

 I blocked in the skull and lungs and some of the other details before I start blocking in the body masses. I like how it is floating and the lungs are just barely a hint. The majority of the guide drawing is covered now and I am feeling like a bit of Francis Bacon influence is coming over me, I scrape again.

 I carve in the rib cage with a thick and dirty white paint. I allow dark reds to cut the edge then drip down over the body mass. I block in in varied flesh tones the structure of the body to give it some shape. I decided to make some changes and also put in some contrasting stripes to represent the background. I allow the heart to hide in the structure but it is still there.

Some parts seem to have too much ambiguity while others a little too carved out. I intend on putting the jaw back in and splattering some gruesome splatters and bold strokes, but this is just the beginning!