3 NINJAS!

For Halloween, Jake Simon asked me to paint some masks for him and his buddies so that they could be the 3 Ninjas. Awesome project, to say the least.

60s PISS. PAINTED.

process

process...

process!

finished.

and done... sorry for the shitty photo quality though..

I've been so terrible with my computer lately. I've only been using it to watch Hulu and not to do anything productive. Mainly because I've just been painting a shit ton. Here's some of the stuff I've been working on. This one, specifically is of my sister, Marissa, who tends to be my muse on most of the things I do. Haven't decided if I want to go nail it up somewhere or hang onto it. Or, anyone want to buy it?

WHO THE EFF IS NICKI MINAJ?

I've been working on this painting in my spare time, and it's finally done. (My apologies for the shitty quality. I did it on craft paper as too diminish it's preciousness... and because it was so fun working with Quel Beast on craft paper, so I thought I'd continue the trend) I was flipping through a Paper Magazine, saw a picture of this chick, and loved the facial expression, so I started painting her. Later to find out she's some huge pop star and I had no idea. Oh well. I don't really think it looks like Nicki Minaj anymore though. Some things got warped, I gave her a hair cut (or a wig cut in this case), changed her make-up a bit... gave her some accessories.

I also listened to a SHIT TON of electro-pop while I was painting this. Which I think is where the inspiration for the color came from.

La Roux puts me in a pop pastel mood.

DA MOOSE DA MOOSE

I feel like that's a title from a song we used to sing at sleepaway camp. I think...

Anyway, I'm doing this mural at a friend's apartment. He approached me wanting a very atmospheric nature painting on his wall, and I'm not great at doing atmospheric stuff... but I can do sketchy ridiculously large intricate trees, and he seemed okay with that. He's also a mountain man kinda guy. Goes hiking in Colorado, get's lost on trails... someone with a lot of pockets in his clothing, you know what I mean. So, after finishing the tree, I kind of stood back and looked at it, thinking, this needs a large, absurd animal. A moose seemed fitting for Chris. If I were to dub a spirit animal for Chris, it'd probably be a moose.

I think this is the biggest drawing I've ever done. It's probably 10 feet high by 12 feet wide. This is just the drawing thus far. I'm going to start painting it in the next few days when I get a day off from work. If ever...

QUEL vs ALICIA

starting to paint...

quel brings over the portraits.




this is nearly done, however i'm pretty sure we got a lot farther on it. I'll go to the bar and post up the final piece soon enough.

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At Kings County, in the backyard were basically three cement canvases that were different from the brick that made up the wall, about 6 ft x 3.5 ft I want to say. I was to take over the first one, a friend of mine was supposed to do the middle, and the last one was all the way in the back so we didn't care about it and ignored it.

Unfortunately the friend who was supposed to take over had a bit of a conflict last minute, so Mr. Ford rallied up his contacts & sent over a street artist by the name of Quel Beast. (http://www.facebook.com/?ref=home#!/quelbeastart?ref=ts) <-- In case you want to gander at his other work. To say the least, I was very excited, as I had seen his work around Brooklyn here and there and his style and drawing skills were immaculate.

In an effort to fill the backyard of Kings County with artwork, we opted to create a collaborative mural in just 2.5 days. Quite a feat, but we succeeded. Instead of working directly on site, I was interested in his processes, using craft paper & then wheatpaste, so we did self portraits, going back and forth painting, keeping with the modern day pin-up style of the show.

I don't think I have any pictures of this actually in the bar, but here is what the almost finished piece looks like. It's about 5'8" x 3'5". Generally life sized.

WEIRDEE GIRL

As I explained in my previous post, I did a mural at this bar called Kings County in Brooklyn. Here are some of the process photos & the final photo somewhere in there. Weirdee Girl is a go-go burlesque dancer who often dances at Kings County.

TRANNY TRAVIS

A couple weeks ago, I was at this bar called Kings County in Brooklyn off the Morgan L train, and just happened to meet a curator by the name of Andrew Michael Ford. We got to talking, had the most name dropping conversation ever, and turned out he knew all of our teachers at Otis, the same artists & curators we knew in LA. It was a very serendipitous meeting to say the least.

So, we got to talking & told him of the idea to paint the back of this bar with pin-up murals, as the bar often has go-go dancers on the bar. He said he's been wanting to do a pin-up show in this bar for quite some time, so again, thanks universe. This is the painting I'm putting in the show. It's of a friend from LA. They had a tranny party a few months ago and we all know how awesome art school dress up parties are - people go balls to the wall dressed up. So good. So, this is from an image of Travis from the party. :) The image quality isn't great, but you get the point. I gotta find a frame for it.... like yesterday.

Saturday, August 28th at Kings County Bar off the Morgan L train on Siegel & Bogart. Please come join us for the Pin-up group show!

BROOKLYN212

My friend Chloe is starting yet another online clothing shop called doikick, with a subbrand called Brooklyn212. I'm doing the artwork for it. Check it. Look out for stuff pretty soon. I'll post when it's all finished.

FROSCAPE pt 2

Hey Guys! In other good news, I won the Laurence King Publishing sticker contest!

Check it out:

http://www.laurenceking.com/news.htm?sw=show-item&id=43

THATAWAY!

Last May, Kerstin, Emily Cobb & I decided to take a drive up PCH and head to El Matador in Malibu. It was a beautiful, sunny, California beach day, we were all funemployed and making the best of what summer we had left. While sitting on the sand, we noticed a strapping young gent with a big back pack writing in a journal.

After a while we decided we'd talk to him & hung out with him on the beach for a while. His name: Ace. We later found out that Ace had been hitchhiking his way across the USA, starting in Austin, Texas with an eventual destination to Seattle. Kerstin, being the spontaneous devil she is, made a perfectly good argument for why we should drive him up to San Francisco. I agreed, and off we went.

Considering this was Ace's first adventure in California, I decided it would be best to take the long route up highway 1 in order to get the best of out the experience. 4 / 5 hours later we arrived at Big Sur, halfway up the coast of California. Somehow, we snuck our way in, or perhaps abused the honesty policy they had going, and found an empty campsite.

We bought a few bottles of wine, set up Ace's tent, made a bed in the back of my car, and to my surprise, also found an Autoharp in my trunk. All of the factors of a wonderful evening. We walked around the campsite, Autoharp and wine bottle in hand, telling stories, getting drunk, and singing songs.

The next day, we woke up bright and early, as to not get in trouble for stealing a campsite for the night, and continued our journey up the pacific coast highway. Ace needed to get to San Francisco, but I knew that I wasn't going to be able to tolerate the traffic, and I had a friend in Santa Cruz that I could surprise & stay for a few nights with. So, we arrived in Santa Cruz, dropped off Ace on the side of the road, never expecting to see him again.

Over a year later (about 2 weeks ago) I get an E-mail from Mr. Ace, informing me he has written & recorded an album about his hitchhiking adventures & needs an artist to do illustration for his new website. ACE? what? but how? What're the chances?

I love connections like this one. I've included the process of making this illustration here, plus the almost almost final painting. Ace also came and stayed with Aaron and I for a night last week and sang us all the songs he recorded. He's awesome, and I'm looking forward to running into him in Texas one day.

Be sure to buy some songs! (I will reap some benefits!)

www.nickelslickmusic.com

My illustration should be up soon.

THE THIRTEENTH MOON

I've just finished a few projects, so I'm going to be posting a bit more frequently over the next week or two. The most recent dream job that I finished was a book design for author, Sandy Johnson. She wrote a 250 page memoir that I got to design the interior and exterior of. I've posted the cover and some of the spreads. To see more, please visit my website at www.aliciapapanek.com.

To purchase, visit
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1453600078/ref=s9_simh_gw_p14_i1?pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=center-2&pf_rd_r=048ZKJNC9WAJ1EF2WXD0&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=470938631&pf_rd_i=507846

Seriously, dream job. Wish I could just make all my money doing this, and only this.

ICON

Seems as though I'm updating once a month now. Good for me, way to stay on top of things. I guess it's because I haven't been doing small things as much - mostly been working on longer term projects / bumming around. A combination of both.

In GREAT news : I finally got my website up! www.aliciapapanek.com is now the official site of my portfolio. I still need to figure a few things out such as nicer margins and some overall better spacing, but I'm going to need a web nerd for that. The whole process was a nightmare. I successfully rerouted my website to itself, destroyed the html, had the wrong things talking to each other, talked to godaddy every other day for 2 weeks, at least 5 times a day. Nightmare. However, the worst is over, and I finally have something to direct potential clients to. Fewf.

So, the visual candy I have for you here are some icons I developed for this project I'm working on with Big New Ideas. (www.bignewideas.com, check it out) It was going to be used for pattern development, but we decided to go in another direction. I'm not usually an icon lady, in fact, I have a really difficult time with it, but I had fun with these... putting them into the different circles, creating wacky characters. Plus, it's fun to relearn illustrator.

PIANO

Wow it has been a long time since I've posted here. Nearly a month I think. I don't think I've neglected this blog for so long since November. Anyway. I've been pretty busy. Moving, settling into Brooklyn, trying to make some friends, be creative, stay sane and sober all at the same time. Shit's rough. Quite good though. Very much enjoying Brooklyn. I've done some venturing in other places, and Brooklyn really is amazing.

I've been working on a couple of things since I last posted. I recently finished a book design job for an author named Sandy Johnson. The book should be coming out soon. I'll post everything I did for it once it comes out and then you all can purchase tons of copies and tell everyone what a wonderful book designer I am get me loads of work! Great. Thanks all.

This painting is something I did for my dad for his birthday/fathers day. It's so awesome having a dad that all he wants is art for his new "groovy pad." His words. So good. So, I've painted him a groovy piano for his new groovy pad. Voi La.

The other is a little doodle I did the other night. She runs a tight ship around here.

FROSCAPE

signed it! (we WILL have the hussies website up soon. promise.)

Last week, Max, Justin and I were all on their roof after the AIDs walk, "winding down", to put it eloquently... or legally... and began to notice the complete lack of art in the surrounding area. So, of course we agreed to do a mural on one side of their roof. We bounced around a few ideas, but ultimately this seemed to be the missing piece.

Since we had a square in the middle of a skyline to work with, we thought about somehow utilizing the space by making it seem like someone was actually hanging out in the square, for instance : maybe all you saw were legs dangling at the top as if someone were sitting there, or perhaps a girl would be leaning on the edge. Anyway, we came to this. Noelle Raffael (www.noelleraffael.com), a new friend we made today helped us with it, and did an awesome awesome job at that. We really enjoy painting murals, so if you ever need a mural done, please don't hesitate to call us. We have references.

DRUNK DUTCH

I was rummaging through some of my old work today, looking through as much as I could so that I can actually compile an actual professional website. What a drag. But it must be done, so I've started collecting and organizing. Anyway, during my search, I came across some old paintings I did in Rotterdam 2 years ago, and I thought I might share them with you because they are actually pretty sweet. I need to paint more like this again. I remember how much fun it was. I locked myself in my apartment for like a week, watched 4 seasons of Six Feet Under and smoked a lot of that Holland weed. Good times.

By the way, NY is good. Still on the job search. It's only been a little over a week though, so the search is probably exactly where it should be. Applying to lots of places. I very much hope I can get a job that utilizes the fact that I can paint and be creative. Fingers crossed. Wish me luck.