— The Atlas of Popephoenix

Archive
Tag "painting"

Love double image days, they allow me to catch a bit up. This image is from the vault &  finally got around to finally coloring it.

A few years ago after a drunken night at a club I was inspired to draw this image. While at said club, I watched as this chick basically  molested by this dude to the winding and grinding sounds of classic Reggae. I watched this woman, politely but reluctantly, absorb this guys unwanted advances. Grimacing and pushing his hands away from her body as Caribbean Riddems filled the room. He, thoroughly enjoying himself. Her, not so much. With the slightest hint of a song change she was gone into the darkness of the club and crowd. He quickly moving onto his next “dance partner.”

The night life in New York is hard. A lot harder than it should be for both men and women. Its a perpetual cycle of mistrust and abuse of trust. For every guy who is respectful of the woman’s personal space there’s 3-5 guys like our friend above. BUT, at the same time for every woman who just wants to dance with a nice guy, there are an equal amount of women who will not give a guy the option to show what category he falls in. No matter how far he bows and asks “May I have this dance?” he is the Octopus who grabbed her ass last week. I won’t even get into dynamics of securing a dance partner, as a man, in a NYC party. I’ll save that for another post.

Have you ever been or seen this person? I’d love to hear stories about your adventures in NY nightlife. Things you’ve seen and heard. I’m making a series of NYC nightlife illustrations and would love for your experience to become part of my artistic legacy…

Continue to the rest of the post

On my run to catch up with my daily image posting I’ve taken to doing some speed paintings. The last one I did was 20 minutes, today’s was done in 10 minutes give or take a minute. Just getting more comfortable with my line work and my how I treat the lighting. This was done in Photoshop and a Wacom. Not bad for 10 minutes… it could be better though.

Continue to the rest of the post

Today’s image comes from a need…a need for speed. Testing out how long it takes to actually digitally paint a portrait. This is strictly from the head the next will be from reference. For 20 minutes of my time I think is is pretty good. Not great but at least good, lol.

Continue to the rest of the post

Nick Gentry has a collection of paintings which discusses the use and discard nature of today’s storage mediums. With each new development the cycle of storage becomes shorter and shorter. I love the reuse of old floppy disks and VHS tapes as a canvas for his work. If you like his work, check out his site for the rest of the collection: www.nickgentry.co.uk/

Continue to the rest of the post

Wow. What a first month. I took on this task to help build my skill and strengthen my discipline as a whole. In the course of the first 31 days I’ve learned that drawing daily illustrations is a very big task. Currently I’m about 10 images behind on this project, I’m not giving up though. Its been difficult and rewarding. The first step is always the hardest one but now I’m deep into this there’s no turning back. More work coming tomorrow.  In the meantime peep my favorite pieces from this month after the break…

Continue to the rest of the post

Today I was lined up to go party it up at a ?uestlove event out in Brooklyn. You know drinking, dancing and enjoying my Pre-MLK holiday. BUT unlike most people I totally refused to understand the concept of pre-ordering tickets. HAHA ohh the joy of trying to order sold out tix. With no party lined up I decided to stay home and knock out more illustrations. What you see above is the culmination of my poor ticket buy ability.

For this piece I used Adobe Photoshop to create the original illustration of ?uestlove then added textures, type and various lighting techniques to create the final effect. I think its pretty dope for about 2 1/2 hours of work.  I’m currently a few days behind on schedule, 17th day and 14th illustration. No excuses, I told you this was a work in progress. Catch you tomorrow.

Continue to the rest of the post