Wednesday, August 12, 2009

The perfect predator


New painting for my show in September. I'm excited about the new direction. Drawing tattoos on the figures adds a second layer to the story, and allows me to draw things that are on my mind, almost like a journal. If there's something that I'm itching to draw, but I don't think it would make a good painting on it's own, tattoo. This time, I was watching shark week, and I wanted to draw a shark, so there you go! I wanted to post this earlier, but I guess the account was under review for terms violations or some non-sense, glad we got that cleared up.

7 comments:

Keyla Valerio said...

what medium do you work in?
you get really good flat color in your work

Annie Wu said...

I like this a lot! The detail is especially nice in the tattoo.

Kenny Callicutt said...

I think your work is solid and doesnt really need the gimmick of the wood grain. Looks like your painting goauche or acrlyic straight onto an unprimed board? Again.. Great stuff just feel like the woodgrain in the sky cheapens it because theres no reason for it to be there. If you had let it show up in that house in the tatoo or use it as a pattern in her shirt Id get it.

Just the .02 cents of a random person on the internet.

RNS said...

I actually like the wood grain in this piece. I feel the consistency of movement with the cigarette smoke activates the grain so it serves a purpose beyond a surface.

Jeremy Forson said...

This is acrylic. It's really not that flat up close, but if you're looking for really flat, like an animation cell, you can use enamel paints. I've seen some amazing paintings using enamel and liner brushes that are so slick and flat that they look like vector drawings. I leave the wood grain in because I like the color, but Kenny is right that it doesn't really serve a purpose conceptually. In paintings like this I think leaving a wood grain adds a lot to it though, because the image is very slick and flat, so having that natural background help to counterbalance it. There's an artist named Mioke that used that same principle very effectively http://www.mioke.de/P_pictures/b18.jpg (that's old, she doesn't work this way anymore it seems)
Also to some extent Audrey Kawasaki. I don't know what their reasons are, and perhaps it's a bit trendy, but I find that when I get these wood panels the grain looks so beautiful that I think it's a shame to paint over it all.

justin & abby nelson said...

agreed, jeremy. i love wood grain. i hate covering it up. nice painting!!

Michael Fallik said...

This is really cool. I love the expressiveness of the detail in the body versus the silhouette of the hair.