I few months ago i ordered some blank Russian sets to paint as various characters. With the buildup and excitement of this years presidential election, i found myself painting these the night before i voted. It took me a while to figure out how to depict them on the curved surface and still get the likeness down. They all pop open and swallow the smaller until they are all in Obama. The dolls are high quality woodwork, ordered from a manufacturer in Russia. They are hand painted by me and one of a kind and highly detailed...down to McCains short arms.
GO OBAMA!

I has started this portrait of my buddy Ricky for the Grace Ellay show but had never finished it until now. His birthday was last week so...Happy Birthday!

HANDS.01

Now that I'm finally finished with those commissioned portraits i can move onto doing something personal. Nathan Lumm (see links) is putting together a group show for the Pink Ghost in Fort Lauderdale, Fl. The only restriction is the piece has to be 8x8 inches. I'm going do a few hand studies to go along with some portraits. I think they will provide a good balance and i'm hoping to capture the same emotion and character that the head shots had.

HANDS 01

here is a wedding portrait i'm doing for a neighbor. It should be all finished tonight...yay! Then i can go back to working on my own crap. I've got a upcoming show in Berlin later this year and haven't done a thing.

Commissions

Its been a while! I got 2 commission portraits a while back and it took me forever to knock them out. The first was of a friends nephew for her parents. Kids can be quite troublesome, its difficult to make them look cute...they tend to look like some weird old fucked up dude. This kid in particular was a bitch. i had both hands in the original design but it gave him a weird creepy quality....and i have to admit, in retrospect he still looks a little creepy! I removed one of them which helped quite a bit. I didn't get a good photo of the final but here are some images of the major stages.

Untitled Playlist

Here was a big piece I did for the Grace Ellay show. After doing all the portraits it was hard to do a painting with a background, quite frustrating actually. I ended up removing the back window along the way and adding my cat to balance it out. I was quite happy with the end result. Here are a few images of the process.

Sorry for the delay, not that anyone was waiting on the edge of their seats. I had a great show at Grace Ellay, a cute boutique and gallery in Silverlake. I sold quite a bit of art but to be honest it was just nice to get all my paintings out of my apartment and in the publics view. This friday i pick up what's left to redistribute along my apartments walls. The opening was packed and it was great to see my friends and family all together. Along with my portraits I did a whole series of characters on cigarette packs called "Pack of Insurgents" which seemed to be a big hit. Ron Livingston (the lead actor in Office Space) bought 2 of them! Here are some pictures from the show.