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How A Famous Montage Came Into Being
Numbers of artists stay away from difficulty of recreating emotions, moods, or fleeting moments in portraits. One standout, self taught portrait artist lives with his wife in a Marion home, where the living room walls are filled with portraits. His best work is “Faces,” a montage of an American tap dancer, an actor a scientist, the composite between three famous comedians, the traditional cast members of a long running science fiction TV series, a former TV reporter, various rock stars, athletes and entertainers, and his friends. The process starts by capturing a frame from a video, from which he gets all sorts of expressions. The montage documents a year and a half of people who influenced him. To read other paintings articles make sure to visit portrait artist website.
Other portraits hanging on his walls are large individual renditions of a lead singer from Babes in Toyland, a Russian gymnast and singer songwriter. He favors pencil, graphite, and charcoal for his works. He filled out his palette later with conte crayon and colored pencils. His first work completed in colored pencil was that of him and his wife, a Kobe, Japan native. Both American drawing and Japanese wood block print styles were used in the drawing. Both personal and Japanese symbols were layered onto the base, their wedding photograph taken at City Hall in December 1996.
These symbols included their three cats, which were not present at the actual wedding. There is a mask in Japanese opera that is believed to ward off evil spirits, and he used this as the face of the first cat. In order to attract good luck, he drew the second cat in the position of luck.
He dressed himself and his wife in kimonos in the drawing. The kikyo flower, her matriarchal symbol, covers his wife. The gingko tree is another symbol drawn in, past the third cat, behind the vertical blinds, outside the room. The inspiration for this wooden symbol of longevity was a tree at the University of Iowa. More expert paintings information is located at portrait painting of babies.
In fact, the couple first collaborated on this 1997 drawing. Idea mining and inspection were done by his wife. The drawing has high sentimental value for them, said the wife. He wishes to master landscapes, adding his favorite figures into them.
Books are his primary exposure, with four featured and one on the cover, though he has not had his own exhibit. A staff member showed his work to the book editor. The editor emailed him to praise his work for its color, shading, composition, combination of portraiture and architecture, intelligence, humor, and complexity. He has come a long way from his childhood drawings of action heroes and rock stars. No image or even impression is too hard for him now. He describes the process as a way of taking a photograph, in which the artist has the freedom to move things around.
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