Why people?

Recently, someone observed that my art focuses on people.

And, it, almost exclusively, does.

This man, shown above, is the subject of the next painting that I have in mind. In contrast to the excited girl and the pensive boy, this man is older and has a look of experience and perhaps a little annoyance. Similar to the other photos that I've painted from, this was taken on the streets of Manhattan. I've found that I've been seeing certain connections between the two finished pieces and this idea of one. The boy and the man both have an object (the boy has a train), and they are both looking at something to their right. The girl and the boy both have white shirts and have youthful poses. The man looks utterly weary, but his clothes have similar textures to those seen in the first two pieces. These are random observations, but they connect to my passion for people.

 I've always loved observing, studying, and understanding people. This passion is evident in almost all of my work as it highlights expressions, characteristics, and movements (one of the reasons that I love dance is that it's art you can actually be as a person). While the following observation is a less art related, I think I belong to a people-obsessed generation, with Humans of New York becoming a world wide phenomenon, personality quizzes consuming the internet, and the drastic rise of psychology majors in colleges and universities. And, as someone who religiously follows HONY, completes numerous personality quizzes daily, and may very possibly become a psychology major, I think people are the best subjects for art. I think art should be a beautiful idea, whether that beauty looks ugly or strange, art conveys a thought. And, people are endlessly confusing and intriguing all at the same time, so I continue to obsessively photograph, paint, and observe them, as creepy as that sounds.

And, that is why- people.

Watercolor experiments.

   I am currently working on finding a subject for my third multi - canvas painting. So, I decided to take this awkward-in-between place to show two small paintings that I did in my spare time.         

    These are two watercolor pieces that I did at home. I have very little experience with watercolor, but I've always loved it. The paint is unpredictable and magnificently sneaky. I found the most control when I used slicker paper because I could move the color and dilute it more effectively. I liked the way I could push the color around when making the structure of the face. It's very easy to create bone structure by diluting the color at the highest points of the bone and then by having softer shadows. More generally speaking, watercolor is great for shadow. You don't have to have ten different shades of the same color (as you would have to have with other paints), because you can simply add water. You can also add water that is tinted with a different color, which creates a more unique shadow. Under the cheek bone of the second woman's face, you can see that I shaded her face with red, which is not the color of her skin. 

With the first face, I was attempting to capture the features of my friend by exaggerating her eyes and her mouth. I was focusing on the style of my favorite New Yorker cover artist, who uses watercolor and ink. He frequently paints people who are well known, and he makes them recognizable by exaggerating their features in a way that still leaves a layer of the painter's vision while still having the click, in the viewers brain, of who the person is. I also wanted it to look like the blue was enveloping her. 

The second face is from the cover of a book. I left half of the face two dimensional to emphasize the drama of the other half. The brown strip along the side stemmed from an accident with her hair, and the blue bow-like object stemmed from my obsession with blue. The drip going down her neck was also a mistake, but I was excited about it because it's another unique benefit of working with watercolor.