Crazy Artist in Stripes

Crazy Artist in Stripes – Acrylic on stretched canvas. 2007. 36″x36″ -
Below are the process piece. I posted these in my myspace blog as I created them.

I paint in layers. I wanted to show you that process a little.

Now that I’ve gone through the process of making this piece, I’ll give you yet another layer or two of background information on it. I use so many layers in almost every piece I create, and it goes through an evolution before I stop and say the thing is complete. Sometimes I sit and stare for a good long time until I feel I can walk away from it. If it doesn’t feel finished, the lack of completion will scream at me from the walls, glaring me in the face every time I look at it. That’s one way I know when I’m done…. when I don’t get that feeling.

Since I like working with real people when I paint and this is a self-portrait, I did a photo shoot of myself in my favorite black and white stripes. (I even branded my company ODDesign Creative Services with black and white stripes)

In Photoshop, I gave each photo it’s own layer, and set the transparency of each layer to 20%. Here is the image I created in so doing:

The photo image that I created in preparation for this 36×36″ painting has all the movements laid out for me to paint from and stylize accordingly.

Comments welcome as always. I hope you enjoyed seeing a little bit of my process. I expect I’ll create more process pieces after this.