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.