Friday, August 30, 2013

Robert "Bob" Gilbert Bob Stock 2013

Framed going away gift for Bob!

SWA BARF BAG ART PROJECT

Intense Man! Ballookey's pocket item,

Collaboration in progress!

  by Mike "Dakinewavamon" Kline
, a photo by Mike "Dakinewavamon" Kline on Flickr.

Mystery of the human heart!

Ever wonder what they were thinking?

Collaboration? Insect robotic skull with bug eyes!

Ballookey's Moleskine

What Next? Overwhelmed Man with Fish Tie.

What Next? by Mike "Dakinewavamon" Kline
What Next?, a photo by Mike "Dakinewavamon" Kline on Flickr.

Ballookey's Moleskine now in New York.

Victorian Home (unfinished) collaboration?

I will complete this one and the collaboration next to it next round. Unless someone feels the urge to complete....

SWA BARF BAG ART PROJECT

Ballookey's pocket item

Friday, August 16, 2013

Final Spoonbill/Duckbill Plus Envelope Plus in-the-pocket

Spoonbill, Hornbill and Duckbill
Acrylic, by Mary Stebbins Taitt
Click on this or any image to view all of them larger
Spoonbill and Duckbill
with their friend Hornbill
Rode a red wagon downhill
with glorious freewill
past the sawmill
and came to a standstill
at Frankie's doorsill.

 Frankie is my grandson.  One of four.

I can't find the paper with the "poem" on it, and I'm not sure I'm remembering it right.

I forgot to mention that my over-enthusiastic painting damaged the thin paper and I had to apply two patches.  If you click on the upper picture to make it bigger, you can see the patches at the top left on a smaller patch just left of center at the top--sorry about that.  :-(

I am working on removing the gutter between the pages
for my book for Frankie.
and tweaking it
(not quite done yet.)

Roseate Spoonbills envelope
acrylic, Mary Stebbins Taitt
Pumice Fish
Acrylic, Mary Stebbins Taitt

I never went to art school, so I have to learn everything by experimenting.  I bought some pumice medium and played with it on the envelope for the first time ever (dumb, I know).  It was so rough, like sandpaper,only worse, so, worried about the mail carriers and postal employees injuring their fingers, I put a couple layers of matte medium over it, but that made it look dull.   :-(  It has lots of texture!  But less than before. (I also used a tiny but of the pumice medium on the rocks and on the road in the Spoonbill hornbill duckbill painting.)

In the Pocket:

Twin Poppies
oil on Graham Cracker box treated with acrylics
Mary Stebbisn Taitt

Flute Practice
oil and Arches Oil Paper
Mary Stebbins Taitt

Flute practice, side view
showing topography of oils
Mike, take the oils out and let them dry some more.  I hope they survive the journey to your house!!!

Cassandra Elise Lapwing revisited yet again (I'm probably still working on this):


Wednesday, August 14, 2013

Riding the Storm; Andrea and Mary in Mike's

Riding the Storm
painted collage
Collab Andrea and Mary
click image to view larger.
When we were in Colorado, driving south on the east side of the mountains, a storm sat over the mountains and funnel clouds, sometimes a number of them, kept snaking down out of the clouds.  It was creepy, scary and fascinating.

Andrea added the house.

I made a college and then painted over parts of it.  The witch is my friend Gail Slaughter and Dorothy, the scarecrow, the Tin Man and the Cowardly Lion are all friends of hers.

Cassandra Elise Lapwing: An Extra and a Collab in Mike's by Mary

I had a bout of fairly severe insomnia the night before last and was up for several hours between 2 and 6 AM, and spent my time painting. First, I covered the backside of the painting of Frankie and the spoonbill, hornbill and duckbill with a painting of Cassandra Elise Lapwing, in profile. I THINK she is played by Julianne Moore. This is acrylics, and it is an "extra" painting, to covered the bleed-through. Since there seem to be MANY pages in this Moleskine, I didn't think Mike or anyone would mind my doing an extra.  I used 3 "colors," black, Payne's grey and neutral #5 grey.

Cassandra Elise Lapwing profile
acrylic
Mary Stebbins Taitt
Click images to view larger.
Now I was really into Cassandra Elise Lapwing, so I did another HALF portrait of her for a collaboration with Mike.  This is entirely done with one black gel pen and some Faber-castel PITT artist pigment pens in 4 colors, black, sepia, sanguine and grey.

Cassandra Elise Lapwing collab
gel pen and Faber-Castelle PITT pigment artists pens

Mary Stebbins Taitt
Click images to view larger
Here is the two-page spread:

Two-page spread

Mary Stebbins Taitt
Click images to view larger

Here is the collab image doubled.  This is not what I expect from Mike; I'm sure he'll be much more creative.  Doubling it like this tells me there is something wrong with the original that I couldn't see (or didn;t notice) in the half-image.  That is one weird-looking chick, LOL!!!!  (I did not complete the process of doubling her because my main computer has died and the Cintique is still attached to the dead computer.)
 
Cassandra Elise Lapwing half doubled.

Cassandra Elise Lapwing half doubled
and slightly fiddled with
I really need to get the Cintique on the piece of junk I have to use for a computer now, since my Mac died.
I need to stop playing with this, pointlessly, and get back to the actual Moleskine. What remains to be done is finishing the paining of Frankie and the spoonbill, hornbill and duckbill and the collab with Andrea, which I have started on, but not completed.

Sunday, August 11, 2013

Slow progress

I decided to post my slow progress on Mike's book because I'm afraid I won't be ready to mail on the 15th,

Session 1

First I searched for reference photos.  Then, because the paper is so thin, I sprayed it, then drew on it with a white "soufflé" pen. (I tried pencil and ballpoint, but they didn't show up.) I intentionally made Frankie and the animals proportionately a little extra big relative to the porch and door etc.

Session 2

I worked on the boy first.  He is my grandson,  Unfortunately, the ballpoint pen ink keeps coming through the paint, and unfortunately, I only used it on Frankie, on his face, legs and neck!!  :-(

Session 3
Frankie's face was too short in the beginning, but I overcompensated and made it too long.  This is a very slow process.  It will be a while before I finish it, and I have the two collaborations to do--I started on one, but not on the other yet.  I've had some health issues and family crises (including a kid in jail, a kid with a concussion, etc).  But I am plugging away.

Session 4
I worked on the mountains plus trying to get rid of the stupid white lines from my sketch.

Session 5, Monday Night, August 12
I worked on Frankie's Face, the trees on the hills, the logs, some of the clouds and fog in the mountains. I'm very slow--each session is a couple hours long.  You probably can;t even tell the difference.  None of the photos quite look like the actual painting.

Tuesday, August 6, 2013

Half page in Andrea's book

Can't wait to see what Ballooky does with this!

Eli as Eve - page 5 in Andrea's book




Beauty - page 4 in Andrea's book



This is Claudia, a really wonderful model with very Tim Burtonish face. We shot her for a lookbook for a friend who's a Jewelry designer. 

Models - Andrea's book pages 2 and 3


Those are a few of the girls we shot for the models agency's show card package. I really like the red tattoos from the first page, so kept them on this as well. It made the girls looks a bit like Yakuza members. 






What a mess!

First page in Andera's book was done in the middle of an extremely busy photography time for us. Ned and I are shooting a lot of look books right now, and we also shot a show card package for a models agency, which means shooting all the models they are presenting for next fashion week.

So, I planned to use Andrea's book at a little visual diary of this busy time of hanging out with models and thinking of the nature of beauty and what is fashion etc.

The first page is one of those pieces that everything went wrong in.
I wanted to use Mike's pattern as a background, but didn't quite measured correctly and the model (a lovely crazy girl called Eli) came out smaller then expected, so I decided to cover part of Mike's pattern with white liquid acrylic. This usually work for me, but I forgot to check if Mike's drawing was done in waterproof paint. As it turned out, it was not! the black ink mixed with the white paint and I went over it a million times, while it kept coming out gray.

And so, I decided to cover that with red tattoos. This solved the problem, but then the model got blended in the background because of the tattoos... So, I painted the background, But then it turned out that the white paint doesn't hold the markers.

So this was fun, and actually, considering all the disasters, came out pretty well...



Monday, August 5, 2013

Round 3: "What if Everything I told you was True?"

"What if Everything I told you was True?"
Golden "Open" acrylics
in round 3 Moleskine
click image to view larger
I did this on one of the blank pages in my round 3 Moleskine sketchbook.  I bought some open acrylics and thought I should experiment in my own Mole rather than Mike's, in case I screwed it up.  The first thing I did was lay down cobalt blue, red and yellow and blend them, then painted the forest scene over that--it is almost entirely painted with the primary colors, with just a little white and black added at the end.  (I only bought 3 tubes of paint to try out.)  The "open" acrylics are supposed to stay workable significantly longer.)

I am thinking of the scene as something from dream shamanism.