Song of Myself part 1

"I CELEBRATE myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you"
Walt Whitman

Ink drawing and Photoshop colouring
(Click on image to enlarge)

Tobiyokogeri graffiti

For this kick I started from a couple of pictures of Elena, I wanted to work from a model (with some trick to make her fly...).
I made 3 versions of this drawing: the paintbrush and Indian ink sketch, a Photoshop colored line art, and this digital graffiti. I am posting the latter because I think it looks better, and it is also another attempt to use digital painting in a non-canonical way.

Photoshop digital painting
Click on image to enlarge

The tiger in the background is the classic logo of shotokan karate, painted by Japanese artist Hoan Kosugi.

Elena with double swords graffiti

Another Photoshop graffiti, this time with Elena soloing with double katanas.
The "inspiration" is a drawing of Psylocke by Jim Lee from an X-men graphic novel, which I modified to reflect Elena's face and body.

Photoshop digital painting
Click on image to enlarge

As always when copying a master this was a good learning experience, I really saw how complex and sofisticated is the graphic work contained in these comic books.

I applied almost completely the instructions of Melissa Clifton's tutorial on Colouring Line Art. I am quite happy with the final drawing, although I think that for the purpose of making digital graffiti I'd better use a less refined picture to provide a more spraycan-like feeling.

It's the (martial) art: Elena vs. Marco virtual spraycan

While I fancied about drawing another virtual spraycan picture on the facade of my house like this, I decided to experiment with Photoshop instead of going through the lenghty preparation that watercolors or oil painting nee. With the little free time I have, completing a watercolor takes me at least 3 days and an oil painting almost 3 months.

This time I was driven by 3 ideas:

1) doing graffiti - the truly postmodern art - without looking silly at my age
2) learning more Photoshop, that I believe can be the new leading medium in visual arts after 6 centuries of oil painting
3) drawing Elena and myself fighting, always a funny subject

Photoshop digital painting
Click on image to enlarge

So I made a quick, rough sketch, took a snapshot of it with my Nokia camera, and fired up Photoshop.

Then I followed a great tutorial by Melissa Clifton about colouring line art. I read a few tutorials, but Melissa's is the best because it gives a concrete and practical approach, without leaving out the details and supporting difficult points with accurate, step-by-step explanations.

I also discussed with the Master of the Temple the results, and he gave me useful suggestions on how to tune the lights and the shadows. In deed, the blending of the graffiti with the background picture was a bit odd because of the different reflection given by the metal framework and the glasses.

I quite like the final picture, Photoshop graffiti is an interest subject to investigate. But it is not a shortcut - it took me about 3 days to complete.

It's the art: virtual spraycan

I always found graffiti a fascinating form of art, which is unfortunately still largely perceived as form of vandalism. I fiddled with the idea of doing myself some graffiti, while the parallel chance of being arrested looked a bit too undignified and also a bad example for my family.

(Click to enlarge the image)
Oil on cardboard, 24x30 cm

I resorted then to this oil painting compromise, making a virtual spraycan tag on the front door of my house.