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| VOL 13 ISSUE 4 | April 2017 |
Denise Fleisch invited me to do a live bodypainting in her Lotus Contemporary Art Gallery in 2013. It was during the Art Detour event that takes place in downtown Phoenix every March. That year I did a bodypainted Lotus Flower. It has become an annual tradition and I came back in 2014 to paint an abstract piece, in 2015 to paint the piano that became the cover of my book, and then last year the painted on jeans.
This year I was so glad to be able to come back to her new studio location in Scottsdale. It wasn't Art Detour, but we kept the March timeframe and did the painting during a Thursday night Scottsdale Art Walk. I thought it was apropos that the title of the exhibition was "A New Beginning". I was inspired by this theme to do a body painted butterfly. I had just worked with model Chelsea Rae Rusing on the Red Queen Project (see below) and I asked her if she would want to do another one. Chelsea is also an artist so I asked her to send me some images of her work. One of her specialties was water color so I wanted to incorporate the look of water color into the butterfly design. I decided to paint butterfly wings on my studio backdrop paper roll to make them life-size. I've never considered water color to be one of my forte's but I wanted to get that look so I broke out an old water color tray and a large brush. Here are some shots of the evolution of the background painting.
Chelsea had her makeup done by Reilly O'tool who is a very talented makeup artist and model. Since this was a public event I used prosthetics to cover her breasts and bikinni areas. The wings were painted to be symmetric, but I wanted the body painting to be completely asymmetric and unplanned. One goal was to get the colors of the body painting to be comparable to the water colors on the paper. I think we came pretty close.
My interpretation of the Red Queen with Alice In Wonderland. Off with her head! This was a live demo for First Fridays on March 3rd at Unexpected Gallery in Phoenix, Arizona. The event was entitled "Wonderlandia" and I was joined by body painters Brandy Wise and Phave Salizar who were representing Arizona Creative Professionals. Model Purrversia Riot was appropriately dressed in cosplay as Alice and agreed to join in on our photoshoot. The gallery featured quite a few of my illustration canvas prints and my body painting photography. Gallery owner Ben Smith referred me to model Chelsea Rae Rusing for this project. When I met her she told me an interesting story that I had worked with her father on a project many years ago on an ad for Bill Tonneson. Small world. While brainstorming ideas for the Wonderlandia theme, I was first drawn to the movie version, then the cartoon version, and even the book illustration versions of the characters. Eventually I decided to make a somewhat original costume based on the classic playing card of the Queen of Hearts. Painting the playing card face on her face garnered the most attention. For the photoshoot we used the backdrop of an immaculate wood carved masterpiece. I used red gels with Alien Bee strobe lights to acheive the sinister uplighting in the back. Here are a few shots from the project.
E-ya later,
Mark Greenawalt
mark@futureclassx.com
Upcoming events:
May 25th-28th, 2017 - Phoenix Comicon (I have a booth this year instead of an artists table!), Phoenix Convention Center, Phoenix, Arizona
July 1, 2017 - July 4, 2017 - WesterCon, Tempe Mission Palms, Tempe, Arizona
September 13, 2017 - Speaking Engagement on Architectural Photography of Night Lighting, IES Street and Area Conference, Austin, Texas
copyright Mark Greenawalt, Future-Class X Publishing - Phoenix, AZ 85044
THIS PAGE WAS LAST UPDATED ON 5/3/2017
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