saint or sinner.. or both?

Teddy bear attempt

As i wait to move today.... this is about the best I could do with the base image.  Neon bright to say the least

neonie bear

Liked Art

Found these on Huffington post yesterday...love them both.  Feel like these have some twisted relationship  (second cousins) with what I do.  Enjoy

Four from one

I'm in the middle of moving to a new place and it often seems difficult to keep up this blog and image editing in general.  What I've found is that posting and editing is often very grounding... even if I'm just spending half an hour on the process.


As I've mentioned before these collages are made the old fashioned way... by cutting and pasting real photographs and then scanning them back into digital form.  This gives me the option of creating new versions of what is/was a finished work.
So here are todays images: hot off their final clean up and now back in digital form... four from one.
First: the original  I like the intensity of color but don't think this has the cute/scary/creepy that I usually go for... so a little quiet/sedate for my tastes.

Now three alternate versions

white goes to black

inverted and otherwise messed with

black to white

This last one is my favorite of the day.  I like the dirty/dusty quality of the background.
Back to packing!

A favorite in a collage

A new Dorothy, a new OZ?

New collages

Here are two new ones... fresh from being scanned back into a digital format.  Both more to the black and white end of things.  First: Alien Overlord or  at least a comment on the fast approaching surveillance state that is the US of A.  


With his four regular eyes and a souped up laser guided 3rd eye the alien overlord sees and knows all.  He seems a bit shocked... to the point of vibrating, at the secrets he has seen.

Mystic king baby ponders the many shades of gray.  You can almost hear the ooooh!
of his eyes, mind blown in wonder.

Another male / female

Here are a couple images that share the same background:  male and female.


It's always tricky when you combine images... as what works when you have the two glued together photos in front of you often doesn't work when it's then re-scanned back to a digital format.  Usually it's the perspective that gets lost (meaning a sense of foreground and background).  
Not sure why that is. In these two cases the images (background and face) seem to coalesce into a coherent gestalt much easier in the first image than the second.  For some reason...  and in person the black and white head of the male snaps together as a whole while now back in digital form it doesn't quite make it.  my humble opinion.

alien bodybuilder: female

male

Dail mirror example

Here is what mirroring does to a face.  A bit subtle but still makes the point that the face and the emotions it expresses change when mirrored.
 The BASE image first: A souped up/close up of a Dali painting/portrait.  Odd even before I touched it.

base

Now here: taking the left hand side of the image and mirroring it. The forehead bulges, the eyes set wide and looking at you, lips pursed tight.

left

And here from the right .. pinched but with a hint of a smile, looking upward. Double beauty spots like tears offset from each eye. note the the yellowing wisps in the sky

right

The fun for me comes next:  Which is turning what still looks like a Dali in any of the three above into something that looks like mine, or at least transforms into something beyond what you see here.  
                   So
Two examples of the fairly wild direction I took it to make it less Dali-ish.  This one ...not very far away at all.  A figure within it's own landscape

4 b &w

Now here: based on the left mirror image from above:    F*cked with about as far as i could.  Viewed out of the Dali context above... it doesn't seem much like the base image.  Then again I may have stripped away too much!  The black Abe Lincoln like beard-ish thing are the dark shadows of the original.  Bottom right is the best in my opinion.

Male/Female

These two are an interesting pair.  Mirrored from the same image... meaning that one is all the left hand side, the other the right hand side.. Mirrored from the center line.  I will post  a demo of what I mean next. 
The point being: the whole look/emotion/gender/sensation... changes thru mirroring. 

left

right

VIP Paper: a picasso

Here's a curiosity I found today at VIP Paper; an online art fair happening now..  4/19-22


The great thing about the VIP fairs is that you can zoom in quite closely to the works... enough to see the brushstrokes clearly.. and that the price is listed for almost every work.  It's fun to compare what I would want to own myself vs. how much it costs.  Also does my liking a specific work = correspond with how much it costs + the artist's reputation.  


Other things I look for:  How the work is fabricated to + value and stage appeal.
Finding new artists whose work I haven't seen before.  Ways of combining materials to make work look fresh.  I think there are 30+ galleries from around the world represented in the current online show.  Well that's enough of a plug.


A Picasso

I was struck by how odd it looked compared with the other work I've seen...  thought I would share.  More graphic and cartoon like.  More like what I do.

Best of the last week

Right now I'm spending most of my time creating collages or backgrounds for collages so have done very little editing of faces, etc.  Here are two of the better /but off key selections for the week. 

Wobbow of Venus

Bain Niab Voice

Same base image mirrored from both sides.  Of course also trimmed, + contrast, color shifted, inverted, etc.

Abu Ghraib

A bit of an oddity today.  Abu Ghraib with a pop twist.  I like how they are almost holding hands

Winged oddity

As promised:  Wing-ed oddities ... heading down the surreal road or maybe it's already arrived!
No cut and paste here, it's all in the distortion of the found image.

Now taken fully into pop excess.  Fairly rare color wise as I stay away from this mid toned green.

Angel?

Yes it's super kitchy but I love angels.  More specifically any creature that transforms with the addition of wings.  I have great piles of photos of wings , putti, birds, baroque and renaissance angels, etc.  Will start adding them to the blog... starting with this one larger scale collage.


After I did this one I was kind of shocked how different it was to what I usually do.  So sober and in black and white.  Either the start of a trend or a dead end.        Enjoy

Two more large collages

A color and B & W version here.  The base image is of a model with a Vidal Sasoon haircut... circa 1968.  I think it's a good counterpoint to the Nomi collages posted a few days ago.  


Both have an androgynous quality that keeps them bouncing between their male and female aspects.  In both of these works it's both curious and fascinating how each figure seems to have their own personality... or at least reflect to the viewer a differing set of emotions and attitudes depending on  the color and pattern of the background distortion.

Nomi

Here:  A couple large scale collages of Klaus Nomi.  The original and it's inverted (color wise) twin.  If you don't know Klaus Nomi... check out the many You Tube videos of this genre smashing singer and visual artist.  My favorite video: Lightening Strikes for it's mix of corny camp lyrics... and then that falsetto near shrieking chorus.
anyway... well worked images in a large collage.

the original

and its inverse

The sacrifice: Time

Here are two larger collages... again badly photo'd rather than scanned.  I so love these two.

Now some words

Up for sale in 48 hours

I've decided to take the plunge and will start selling at saatchi online sometime in the next 48 hours.  This is a big and oft delayed step for me.  The delay is due to their needing to verify me as me and otherwise review the work as fit for the site.  Have uploaded six so far... here are a couple more that will probably go up as well.  All surreal portraits at this point.

sacred heart of king baby: in white

ambivalent angel

No idea what to call it

Three large panel collages

Here are three collages that are too big to easily rescan back to a digital format.... so my bad and blurry photo will have to do.  it's funny, the longer I focus on editing the worse my actual photo- taking becomes.
Each of the below is 2ft x 2ft.  Original photo: bangkok, street poster advertising a gym.  Original image: most likely 50's-60's physique magazine.  

Shhh.. collage face before and after

Found in Berlin.   The original of the face.  Note the rust and wrinkles as this street poster ages and decays.

And now inserted in a collage.

shhh!

Big in Russia?

Blogger has become much more advanced since I wrote my first travel blog of 10 years ago.  Now you can get stats...based on the countries with the most page views of a blog.  Right now I'm big in Russia.... meaning second highest page views vs. USA.  India is # 3.


So here is an oddity... for your viewing pleasure

four bears

I welcome comments and feedback on the images.  Let me know what you think


Some more odds and ends.  Loei Fuller: two versions.  Google or wiki her... interesting character from 100 years ago.  One of my themes/interests has always been wings; so angels & birds and other mutant versions of creatures in transformation.  Will post others in this oeuvre at a later date.

Best of the last three days

What I should be doing today... well really all this week... is combining images to create some collaged works.  Everything is ready, backgrounds on board, images cut.


What I am doing is everything but .... that work.  Artistic process, or whatever passes for one is a strange thing. It's all impulse and and internal hints...what 'feels' right at the time.  If it doesn't feel right I don't do it.  As I'm a procrastinator by nature this can lead to days/weeks/months of circling around the work.  This seems to honor whatever is going on inside but it's frustrating  the production/numbers/logic/system side of my self.


anyway.... These are my current faves from the images I've editied this week.  Work I've done while avoiding other work.


First:  A current favorite image by Lillian Bassman.  Two views/versions.  I'm in love with the curves.  The second one is the edited original.

cut and wiped

original

Next:  Two framed backgrounds for future collages.

Another word pair: train graffiti

I used to love finding and shooting train graffiti and for several years it was my #1 source for images.  There is something fun & post apocalyptic wandering thru half abandoned rail yards and industrial areas, trying to avoid the police, searching for someones scrawl and art on these HUGE metal beasts.  Have you ever been just that close to a train as it starts to move... you feel the rumble rise up thru your feet, the clang and creak...like huge beasts waking from slumber. 
I gave up shooting trains when the police started showing up every time I was at my favorite train spot.  The hassle, "lets see your ID, lets search your bag."  kind of blew the fun out of it.
also my eye started finding other images that intrigued me more. 


Here are a couple word pairings/tags... from I think a well known hobo-ish tagger.