Sunday, July 29, 2012

Warren Legion Art Show, July 28, 2012

So my friend Shannon usually hosts a lot of shows at this VFW up in Warren, NJ, and they usually always have to do with music, which is AWESOME! But this particular show was a lot of fun cuz she had tons of bands play, as well as showcase original art by local artists.  I was excited when she had asked me to be a part of it, and it didn't take me long to jump onboard! 

For this show I entered a lot of framed prints of sketchbook pieces that I have done over the last few years.  Back in 2009, while I was in LA for 6 months, I didn't have access to all of my paints and craft supplies which I had left back home in NJ, so I had bought a small Crayola watercolor palette, a few ink pens, some color pencils, and a glue stick. These few little items actually kept me very busy, as I did watercolor washes in my sketchbook, and then did magazine collages over the color wash. I embellished these pieces with crazy ink line drawings, and color pencil shading.  I think it was then when I had started to find my sketchbook style.  I still love a lot of those pieces I did in LA, to this day, and continue to do more of the same type of sketchbook pieces. They are just so colorful and fun, and when people see them, they go WOW, that ink work is awesome! I love that feeling...



More recently, before the whole Walking Dead craze had started to sweep the nation like a zombie plague (pun intended!), I was obsessing over zombie inspired art so I decided to create zombie like portraits, where I would take model faces from magazines and paint over them to turn them into zombies...


This lasted for a short while, and then I moved on to something that was even more fun! Sugar Skulls! 
Below are a couple pieces that I had done, where I used the same technique.  I would just take models faces out of magazines, paint over them to make them look like sugar skulls, and then I would ink line over them to give each one a unique detailed look! I would also collage the background with newsprint and magazine print to give it a bit more texture, and I'd sweep over it with some acrylic paint on a brayer. 




The art show was overall a BLAST! I chose not to sell anything, cuz I felt like I couldn't really part with anything just yet.  I think that is my biggest downfall as an artist.  Naturally I want to keep every single thing I create, but truth is, I am running out of room to keep these things! :-P


Well Till Next Time!