fluidbeauty

Decade in Review: The 00s The Mystery Decade

Tue, 22 Dec 2009 10:27:31 GMT

There's a saying: "Everyone likes a good mystery." Well, does everyone like a decade of mystery?
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Like many others, I'm reviewing the decade that's about to end. I'm doing it in the hopes to understand the history that I'm in the middle of, what it means, and what the future might look like. I'm also using this reflection as the source of new painting ideas.
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	It's hard to define this decade. Looking back for some clues, the 80s seemed to me to be about Excess. Nuclear stockpiling, corporate greed, crack cocaine (because cocaine wasn't addictive enough), huge shoulder pads, baggy pants. Danny Pintauro. All excessive.
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The 90s were a fantastic decade for me. I experienced the freedom of graduating high school and college. I got married. We lived in Hawai'i for a year. I learned how to paint and make Websites. For you guys, the 90s was about Alternatives. Alternative music. Alternative energy. Alternative lifestyles. Alternatives to TV and radio (the internet). It was about the end of a century of amazing progress. It was about possibilities and freedom. Happy, exciting times.
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And the 00s? As I began to try and understand this decade, I found myself with more questions than answers. There are some definite themes: terrorism, fame, superheroes, social media. But there were many questions. This decade is all about unanswered questions. It is the Mystery decade.
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Consider these questions that came up during the decade and remain unanswered as we leave it. These are in semi-chronological order.
Who won the 2000 election? Where’s Bin Laden? Who wants to be a millionaire? Who let the dogs out? What was the X-Files about? Where are the WMDs?
When does Jack Bauer pee? What is Lost about? Why isn't a ban on gay marriage discrimination? Why didn't we hear about the "threat level" after the '04 election? Why is Paris Hilton famous?
What’s wrong with Britney? Why doesn't everyone believe in global warming? Why is country music popular? Will I get SARS? Avian Flu? Swine Flu? Who is Garret Dillahunt?
Sarah Palin? Really? Who killed Amanda Palmer? When’s the economy bouncing back? Where did all that stimulus money go? Who watched Watchmen?
Why are people wearing leggings again? Will we have health care reform? What’s next after capitalism? Who’s the next superpower after the USA? Is there going to be one? What do we even call this decade? What’s going to happen in 2012?
What do you think?
Mysteries. Any questions? See you next year! Steve

New boy = short break - but I'll be showing work

Fri, 02 Oct 2009 13:53:54 GMT

My wife and I had a baby boy yesterday (10/02), and I'll be going on a short break.

Meanwhile, you can see some of my recent work at Obscura, on 10/17 in Newark. Details here:
http://www.modelmayhem.com/po.php?thread_id=455770

In the Spring, you can see my work in a solo show at the Amberella Sugary & Sweet Gallery and Boutique in the Piazza. Gallery information here:
http://amberellagallery.wordpress.com/

Hope to see you
Steve
http://www.fluidbeauty.com

Veronica Dyes

Fri, 07 Aug 2009 13:50:31 GMT

It’s been a month or so since I painted. Usually my “first painting back” is a little wild and this painting is no different. Luckily, I’m learning some control even when I’m all jacked up to paint. In years past, this painting would have sucked. Heh. I’ll post some pictures of these types of paintings to illustrate the point and help me to see my growth.

Meanwhile, I really like a lot of what turned out in this painting.

Also, it’s my third painting using watercolor canvas and I continue to fall in love with it. I never, ever thought I’d replace my cotton illustration board, but with this specially treated canvas I’m getting the effects I want with the added bonuses of more control, no warping, and a gallery-ready piece.

Here’s another of Veronica, who’s just an exceptional model to work with and creates amazing shots that make it easy for me to paint. Higher quality photos next week.

Dr. Sketchy's Philly: Heroes vs. Villains

Tue, 21 Jul 2009 15:12:39 GMT

Comics! Pictures of my work from @drsketchyphilly this past Friday: Heroes vs. Villains are up only at: http://bit.ly/PP1T6

New Painting

Sat, 11 Jul 2009 01:53:00 GMT

I finished this about 10 minutes ago.

You may remember the color study

The hold up was that I didn't know what music to play while I painted. Sounds trivial, but the thing is that I didn't know that was the hold up for a couple of weeks. I figured it out earlier today. So, clearly it didn't take long to fix.

I listened to Firewater, BTW. I've only painted with these colors a few times before. I've used Alice in Chains, but it's a slightly different feel. If you're reading this and think I'm nuts, I have synesthesia so I see colors when I hear sound. It makes it easy to come up with color schemes. Sometimes I pick the music to fit the colors, most often I pick the colors to fit the music. At some point, I'll mention which music goes with which paintings / colors / styles.

Right now I'm going to enjoy a feeling of accomplishment.

Dr. Sketchy's New York! Justine Joli!

Mon, 15 Jun 2009 17:41:53 GMT

I went to Dr. Sketchy's again, this time in NYC this past Saturday. The amazingly talented and accomplished Molly Crabapple was there. I'm eternally grateful to her for establishing Dr. Sketchy's Anti-Art School.

I'm going to the Dr. Sketchy's Philly this Friday, let me know if you're interested. It's fun, there's cool people and free beer, and it's in an amazing part of the Fleisher Art Memorial that's not always open.

I'm going to post about 20 sketches soon, from Philly and NYC Dr. Sketchy's, but for now, here's one of the beautiful Justine Joli.

Julie. Green

Mon, 08 Jun 2009 03:23:51 GMT

One of the things it's easier to do with oil than the dyes is paint with green.

Here's an image from my second or third shoot ever. I recently got back in touch with this model after a very long time. Thanks, Facebook.

I'm working on more from the shoot. I've tried to paint from these images for years, but because of the lighting, they just didn't work well in watercolors or dyes. Now that I've learned to paint in oils, I can give them another shot.

Recent painting, new color palette

Mon, 08 Jun 2009 03:23:16 GMT

Been busy. Working on my last run of paintings before my new boy arrives in September and I go on hiatus.
Here's one I painted in the past couple of weeks. It's a new color palette. If you know that I have synesthesia, then it'll make sense when I tell you that I see the colors in this palette when I hear the Ting Tings.

Recent Paintings

Mon, 11 May 2009 03:30:05 GMT

Last week was a pretty damn productive. I finished a painting last Sunday, then I did another Monday and Tuesday and then Friday I nearly completed a painting that night.

Here's crappy pics of the them, I shot some quality ones outside today, but I'll have to pull them off the flash card tomorrow / Monday night. Weird trivia: a couple of nights I turned down drinking with friends and painted instead. Coincidental. But, hey, if you want to help me paint, throw me some drinking invites. Apparently they drive me to paint.

Thanks to all my friends who commented on these already. It's flattering and keeps me going even when I just want to enjoy the weather. Though now I'm painting in oils maybe I'll paint outside old school.

Here they is:

Mosh from 5/8

Lilah from Cinco de Mayo

Veronica from 5/3

This one's next:

Veronica: Step 1

Wed, 29 Apr 2009 01:13:53 GMT

I probably won't be able to get back to this until Saturday. Denis Leary tomorrow, dinners on Thurs and Fri

From Twitter as I was painting tonight:
# Darks. I think that's all for tonight. Hard to really fight to get myself to paint for some reason

# Using a butcher tray for a palette. Crazy thing about water-mixable oils, I just soak the tray in water to clean it
# And I got these two #8 kolinsky sable brushes for about 1/2 off (normally $70 or so each).

# Oils were half off at the local art supply place

# Painting for the next 45 minutes or so

Study #2 for Veronica

Tue, 14 Apr 2009 16:30:21 GMT

yes this sketch again

Sun, 12 Apr 2009 04:17:24 GMT

tomorrow i'm going to complete my experiments with different media and i'm using this image again to compare them all. i like to sketch before i paint as a warm up, so here she is again

Echo - echo - echo

Thu, 12 Mar 2009 04:16:37 GMT

Hi, I told you I'd make a new painting every week. I just haven't been able to post them until now. Check them out at http://www.fluidbeauty.com

Two of them are oil, which I haven't used in 15 years. I'm pretty excited about them.

Hello!

Wed, 04 Feb 2009 00:28:28 GMT

Hi
So since the first of the year, I've been doing a drawing every day. You can see them all at my site: http://www.fluidbeauty.com

I tried to post them here, but it's just been too much to post them in both places.

Anyway, since most of you readers are on Facebook now, I assumed you could see them there, and, more importantly, see that I was taking requests for February. I still will take your request if I get it some time tomorrow.

Day 6

Wed, 07 Jan 2009 01:56:14 GMT

Actress Gene Tierney from the movie Laura

Tanya

Tue, 06 Jan 2009 02:22:19 GMT

My friend Tanya shaved her head yesterday. She's awesome.

See more daily sketches at FluidBeauty.com

Eagles win 26 - 14

Mon, 05 Jan 2009 03:34:21 GMT

There were a few choices for today’s picture. I had to note the Eagles win. I couldn’t find a good picture of B-Dawk from today and was going to do a sketch of Asante Samuel’s interception, but I thought it was funny how much philly.com used this picture of Kendra Wilkinson, the fiance of Eagles Wide Receiver Hank Baskett. You may know Kendra from her time on the Girls Next Door.

You can see more of my daily sketches at http://www.fluidbeauty.com

Painting photo

Wed, 31 Dec 2008 05:56:18 GMT

Pretty sure no one's reading this blog anymore, but heregoes.

iPhone pic of finished painting, higher quality will be posted soon. Second attempt at the Frankenstyle.

Also, noteworthy, I made some important purchases today. I bought a starter set of oil paints, and some canvas to stretch to try using the dyes on untreated canvas. One of those will work and get me from boards to canvas

Here’s the work that led up to this:

Been busy

Tue, 30 Dec 2008 06:15:29 GMT

I haven't posted here in a while, as I've been lazy/efficient by posting at my site http://www.fluidbeauty.com

It's now a blog, so I'm using it instead of this one. I can keep this one going, though I may not be as frequent as I am with the other site. Anyone out there? Let me know what you think about keeping my LJ.

I've been trying to get the weekly paintings going once '09 starts, and revving up some work to get me set up to paint regularly.

I'm also on vacation this week, painting away.

Here's what I'm working on now. Man, I'm so far behind. This is from a shoot that was, I think, in November? Kat?

Halloween Painting 6 of 13

Mon, 01 Dec 2008 00:27:39 GMT

In 2001, I noticed the 80s were coming back (I had no idea it would take until this year to hit full force, with black suede boots and gray, stone wash jeans showing up at my workplace). I thought it would be good to end this trend quickly. I honestly can't remember why, because I love the 80s. Anyway, out party had a theme for the first time, I went as Don Johnson, and Trish was Jennfer Beals. I made a Flash invitation, as was all the rage at the time. It featured many 80s icons, like Jordache jeans, Swatches, MC Hammer and a loop from the epitome of 80s music, "Relax" by Frankie Goes to Hollywood. I'll try to dig it up and link to it.

I only did one painting in 2001. It's strange, but I forgot what was going on in the world a few years later as I looked at having only done one painting and was mad at myself about the lack of productivity. I couldn't remember why and asked myself what could have possibly been going on that would have made it acceptable to have only done the one painting. Then a few days later it hit me: 9/11. So I gave myself a pass for only doing one painting.

I did a Patrick Nagel style piece of Trish, which I love. I had done a Nagel of Elvira back in '99 and this one turned out even better.

Only having one painting made it difficult this year to decide what to do for a painting. I knew 80s was the theme, but really wasn't sure how to extend that. I did decide not to redo the Nagelish Trish, as I'm pretty happy with it.

Then a few ideas came together with an explosion in my head.

For a few years I had told friends about my goal of painting Donkey Kong as if it was real. It started with a conversation about how if the game came out now for the first time, it should be done as realistically as possible, and if it was, it would be the most frightening game ever. Imagine seeing a realistic ape standing between you and your girlfriend. Throwing barrels at you. As you scaled a construction site. The RAGE of the ape. The unbearable shrieking as it threw fiery barrels at you. A massive ape ready to kill, mouth frothing, eyes darting, arms swinging, fists pounding. Terror.

It would be the best game ever.

So I had long imagined painting this. But I put it off. Until this year. This was a very difficult painting to do. It is my third favorite painting I've ever done.

I look at it and just grin. I do wish it was more realistic, but I am proud of it. I had to stretch further that I ever had to pull something from my imagination onto the canvas. I wasn't able to set up a shoot, and I just had to work harder to realize the image.

As soon as I had decided to do this painting, I remembered an old King Kong movie poster that I wanted to base it one. I researched tons of ape pictures, and found a video of apes fighting each other on YouTube. I was struggling with it actually, until I just let go and did a quick sharpie sketch to get the essense of it. Once I did that, I was on my way.

I hope you like even a little bit as much as I do.

Behold, Donkey Kong:

Reference:

Sketch that helped me solve how to do it:

Movie poster that inspired the style:

2000: Evil Philly

Thu, 20 Nov 2008 04:07:36 GMT

2000 Evil Philly

When revisiting the year 2000, I realized that of all these people I painted, there's very few I still see. This year I hoped to have the paintings be of people who would likely attend the party. So, I decided to paint our friends Jeremy and Stacey. Plus they're good sports. I wasn't sure where in Philly (the theme was horror/spooky paintings with Philly landmarks) to put these two. I realized I hadn't done the Clothespin sculpture or the Love Park sculpture, but then I remembered that I had slapped together the Art Museum painting back in 2000 and the point of this thing was to redo paintings I wished I had put more time into.

And so we find our zombies at the art museum. True, they crave tasty brains, but they have culture.

Thanks to Jeremy and Stacey for sending me a lot of photos that were perfect for the painting.

This next part is just a note for me. But I added yellow in there to make it disturbing. You can't really tell it without seeing it up close. And unless you follow everything I do really, really closely you won't know that I've used yellow about 6 times in the past 50 paintings. This is part of me growing as an artist this year.

1999: Evil Masters

Thu, 20 Nov 2008 04:00:47 GMT

Old paintings:
1999 Evil Masters

New painting:

In 1999, I chose to do evil versions of famous paintings. Some of these are my favorite artists, some are just well-known. I recently was sorting through a lot of paintings and found an old drawing of Whistler's Mother as a skeleton that I had forgotten that I never got to paint.

Some of these are my favorite paintings ever. The Michelangelo is probably my third or fourth favorite painting. God is wearing a labcoat. A labcoat. It says more than I ever could say with words. It's funny, but there's a genuine commentary there. I rarely nail it like that, and more often than not it's more about style than substance, so I appreciate it when I get lucky and have some substance. It was a bit of a happy accident, it seemed logical to have Frankenstein, since the original is about the first spark of life, but it turned into something more. I guess what I'm struggling to say is that I don't often get to put wit into my paintings and this is a time when I did. I'm also happy that I figured out how to make it look like marble. I actually overpainted the background then wiped it off with paper towels and it accidentally looked perfect. Not sure if I could do it that well again. I used the same technique on the Superman and later the Frankenstein this year.

The Picasso cracks me up every time I look at it. I think that one was a milestone in the development of my humor in my painting. I've tried to put more of my personality into my paintings and that went a long way. Treating absurd situations as seriously as possible just kills me.

It was a lot of fun learning about the work from these artists that I admire. Doing the Nagel was a lot of fun, I used the reverse-painting on acetate trick I had learned from reading about Mike Allred's work.

I was a little stuck when I got to "Christina's World" I wasn't sure what to do to make it spooky, and it was time to paint. Somehow I got the idea of the earth slowly cracking open, and light shooting upwards. I had wanted to paint light in front of objects like in the Sleepy Hollow opening credits for a long time, so here was my chance. I did OK. I should probably try it again.

The Klimt was a lot of fun, especially sneaking in the skulls into the fabric.

I remember painting these things all over the place, at our apartment, at my parents house, at Trish's parent's house, everywhere we were in Sept. '99. I had a new job in Philly and we were still living in Doylestown, so the long commute meant finding time to paint whenever I could.

I was running out of steam when I got to the flytrap. It was my last idea and it came to me quickly. The work is a little sloppy, but I still didn't want to redo it when it came time this year to choose one to repaint.

I looked over the paintings to pick one to redo, but I really didn't think I could do better than these. Stumped, I then changed the rules for this year and decided to do a Warhol.

I originally started on a version with Marilyn four times, with more and more zombie-like rotting in each picture, but when I showed the sketches to Trish, she was kind of bummed that I was ruining images of Marilyn and I had to admit it seemed wrong. I decided to do something different and remembered that I had wanted to do a painting of the Bride of Frankenstein this year and was disappointed I didn't have an opportunity. Thoughts collided and there I was with the idea.

I actually had to make one of these in Photoshop to get the colors down. I had tried to just imagine how they would translate from the original to spooky, orange / purple / green. It was surprisingly difficult.
Alright, thus endeth the ramble.

1998: Evil Friends

Fri, 24 Oct 2008 13:02:55 GMT

Too busy to write the intros I wanted to, I'm going to be posting a lot of paintings the next few days, leading up to Halloween. Here's the new painting:

The old paintings:
1998 Evil Friends

The intro:

In 1998, I had finally decided to do paintings every year. To combine the fun of having a party with all our friends and the fun of making Halloween paintings, I decided to put my friends in the paintings. This has become a tradition now, but it was at that time just a theme for the year.

'98 was really tough to put together for paintings and party, but I'm really proud of us. I had gotten my appendix out a couple weeks earlier and couldn't move that much. Luckily I had finished most of the paintings by then. I had a week off and made a movie of all the best horror scenes in film (as of '98) I still play it at the party. I should get around to updating it, missing from it now are the Ring, 28 Days later, Dawn of the Dead, House of 1000 corpses, all sorts of good stuff.

For the original paintings, I wanted to make things spooky without being too overt. I was thinking 30s horror films where more was left to the imagination. So I just called people up, brought them to the apartment, and staged them in creepy poses using dramatic lighting. It was one of the most fun series of shoots I've done. Trish helped with the pose suggestions and the lighting. I used an actual film camera. Which is weird to think about.

For this year, I was going to redo a painting of a couple of friends from that year, but it turned out they wouldn't be able to make the party and I like to have people in the paintings at the party and vice versa. So I e-mailed a couple of friends who are a lot of fun, and great at posing and are coming to the party and Trish and I went into town, got dinner, walked to a creepy alley on 2nd and ... Locust, maybe? and shot the pic. Everything good in this picture is the enthusiasm and acting of Marques and Karen.

For the style yet again I tried to get into the neighborhood of Bill Sienkiewicz, greatest living artist. I didn't work out. I put in too many colors and it things got watered down and boring I actually was going to give up on this painting after the first pass of colors, but then figured I'd mess around since there was no pressure. And at that point, I had plenty of time to play with. This was around Sept 15th or so. After the first underpainting, I painted red midtones. Things got much better. Then the darks and a painting was forming. Finally I added a fourth layer of darker midtones and just "painting" loosley. And here we go. I like it very much. Guess I got the intro in anyway.

Hope you like it. Next: Evil Masters

1997: Scary Sculptures

Thu, 16 Oct 2008 00:40:17 GMT

Time for the next painting for 2008: Greatest Hits and Remixes

After the success of our first Halloween party in 1996, Trish and I decided to have one every year. It was initially intended to be a Syracuse reunion party, since we saw most of our other friends regularly. I hadn't committed to doing paintings each year, I actually had planned on adding a different medium each year, so 1997's contribution was sculptures. I had planned on future additions being video, maybe some kind of soundtrack, etc. Also, in 1997 Halloween parties were kind of a novelty and decorations weren't as easy to find, especially the animatronic stuff that's actually affordable now. So future additions might have been trap doors and special effects.

Anyway, in '97 I made sculptures, you can link to photos of them below. It was a lot of fun, but this year with the number of pieces I want to do, sculptures weren't really an option. So, I decided to do a painting of a spooky statue. For some reason this made me think of Dario Argento and the lighting he uses. Just as I watched Frankenstein while painting that painting, I watched Suspiria while painting this one. An added bonus was that I was able to pull off lighting I've been trying to portray for at least 10 years. That's pretty satisfying. One last note: the combination of the statue and Argento brought up initial discussions of doing movie posters for all the paintings. I believe that was Trish's idea. She and I collaborated on all the concepts this year. We always work together on these, but more so this year than ever before. Anyway, I wound up scrapping the movie poster idea, although I have a backup plan where I could easily add it if I magically have extra time.

Here's the sculptures from 1997:
1997 Scary Sculptures

Here's the second painting from 2008, Haunted Statue:

Halloween 2008

Thu, 16 Oct 2008 00:39:45 GMT

I try very hard to keep this journal focused on my "Fluid Beauty" art, but since the Halloween work is taking me away from this, I'm going to cross post here so you can see what I've been up to.

This is the first painting I made for this year.

If you weren't aware, my wife and I have a Halloween party every year and I make paintings for it. There's a different theme every year. This year's theme is "Greatest Hits and Remixes." I'm revisiting all the paintings I've done and either redoing them or doing new ones based on the theme form that year.

I've been painting these for thirteen years.

The first year, 1996, Trish and I had just moved into our first apartment and didn't have money to spend on decorations. But - I had a lot of art supplies from college, so I decided I'd paint some decorations. I had no idea that it'd become an annual tradition. I love doing it, but it does sallow up my Octobers.

The first year's theme was "Famous Monsters"

Here are the paintings from that year:
1996 Famous Monsters

For this year, I redid the Frankenstein for a couple of reasons. One was because I really liked the simplicity of the painting, but I thought it was rushed, so I wanted a chance to do a better job. The second reason was to do a tribute to Basil Gogos who I hadn't discovered until a few years ago. Definitely check his stuff out, it's amazing. I was shocked to learn that he used to paint with the same Dr. Martin's inks I use and in some of the same ways. For this one, though I used Acrylics, although I did an underpainting with Dr. Martin's inks. Here's Frankenstein 2008: