Red Samurai.100 x74 cm oil on canvas


Well, it's been a while since the last time I've been updating my blog. I better do it from now on with some higher frequency.
I guess I've been lazy about it, but in general, I always find some excuse for why not doing anything including writing telling my self I could instead, better sketch or collect some reference for a new work. Well this is the life of an ADHD artist. Anyhow  I do find pleasure on sharing my works thoughts, and process with friend and anyone else who find it interesting.
Here is a work I made the last summer, while me and my girlfriend where residing for 2 month in Amstelveen near Amsterdam. We made this change so she could do some summer job she had found there selling some cosmetic products from the dead sea. When talking about it with her this days, I've come to understand,-- it seems that ,although I wasn't out of home most of the time, I liked Amsterdam a lot more than she did. Maybe it has to do with the bad experience of the shity job she had... Well, she survived it and I'm proud of her.


- The Red Samurai -


The inspiration for this piece came to me first, after I've found this yellow can photo on flicker. don't know why, but I really liked it and wanted to use it for a new piece.
Though  I didn't know how to arrange the rest of the set for the painting  and had no idea for what would be the "story"... A few days latter I met a friend I haven't seen for many years at the corner of a street . Surprised and again inspired, the idea of using here as a model popped out in my mind and as Shira accepted the offer we shot a session of photos at the same weekend.


I was very pleased from the set of photos I had in my camera, but for some reason I was not able to look at the yellow can image and taping it in my head to any of Shira's photos, resulting a good idea for a painting. The inspiration was gone !
It was about 4 month later when I browsed her set of photos once again to be engaged in a new idea for a work.
Shira did a great job and I'm happy I did not bother her for nothing with this shooting set ( that was almost embarrassing.) Anyway I would like to thank her, my dog Lizza( the second model) and also to RavenDragon from Canada http://www.flickr.com/photos/ravendragon/4657422500/in/faves-zachcoart/ Who took the initial yellow can photo that was eventually not included. however The lighting in the image,
is based upon his photo. When shooting Shira's photo set, I tried to illuminate it according to this yellow can. It is a very cool image and I hope one day I'll be able to use it for some work or a sketch.

Here you can find the reference I used . 

As you can see the are no real reference photos for the samurai robot, beside the two silver hydrants as the samurai's helmet. I had to imagine all of the rest, while looking at red cars and other metallic red objects in order to create it, was quiet challenging...  

                                   
                                          Work in progress.

I really have lots of them , so I guess I will upload much of it in the next posts . 

First post

Well, this is my first post on my blog, so I guess I will upload some of  my actual works.

This days I'm doing lotsa' pin-ups. This are more pin up portraits, and they are painted on top of small wooden boxes , which I construct from pieces of wood I find in the the dump yard of where I'm living .

So this portrait is mainly a technical practice for me ...

It started about a year ago, when My friends where kind and gave me my desired birthday gift : the DvD guide of Jeffry Watts  for gesture portraits. I'ts funny how I can imagine the common reaction of many people, when they hear about learning to paint with a DvD guide . But, this is not the case, and before prejudicing  this terrific video one must see it first. (It's easy to find a brief of it in you-tub.) Anyway after watching Jeffry's demonstrations, and starting practicing it I've come to discover that I was not able to complete a "gesture portrait in the time limit of 30 minutes. What took him half an hour, to me was more like 2-3 hours, but the outcome was also very different. Maybe one of the reasons was that my paintings were a lot more tight brush stokes and edges ( he makes it very loose ). Still , to begin a portrait and finishing it  at the same day in one shot of few hours, was something very intuitive for me. (This is a great experience for any artist)

I tried fore about 5 times to limit myself for the30 minutes shot, like in the video, but I was left each time with  the heavy feeling of a mis-satisfaction from the result. Finally I've decided to not stay so strikingly committed to the DvD lesson and to more calmly  continued to work, until I  reach the graduate point of a small  portrait.(even though they were not very gesture.)

However, the basic of this gesture technic  is very resemble in my point of view to the technic  I recognize in classic/golden age pin-ups. This is the idea of  simplifying a sight to a  flat colors patches surface, piled up with brush . I think I once read somewhere this technic is also called the" put on " technic and I guess it relates to the order of the work that starts from putting on first the dark towns, afterwards the flash towns and afterwards the high lights, so the painter puts each level on it's place in order to have it all  together.

This technic is also very different from the glazing way of work that was more common in older days. Many artists are identified with this genre of fast figurative painting as masters of brushes like Zorn, Duvnek and Sargent, but there is something about Manet that to me, looks like the beginning of illustrative pin-up style . It might not be very accurate, to explain it , this way, but maybe,-- why not? -- it is very visible to me and it pops up in my eyes every time I notice how not messy he is in comparison to other  big modernists like Monet, Cezanne or any other impressionist. He doesn't mix many colors and texture in his figures flesh and their hair and clothe, many times might appear as a one color patch .

 I definitely recognize it as the beginning of pop and pin-up illustration. 

These days I try to limit myself  to work with a 5 color plate and I also try to have a less messy textures in my figures , as I find a lot of charm, in this simple and clean pin up style, and I hope with time I'll control it better. Such a qualification is also a big liberty for a painter who wishes his paintings won't look heavily over painted and explored. 

I guess I still have a long way to practice...