Now... I know it's not entirely the best portrait of Nick ever... there are things about it that bug me. But if I was going to actually do this part of the interlude assignment that was given to my class between finishing our Master copy paintings (blog post to come about that next week possibly. I need to fix something on the painting and get photos) and starting our final project (another 9 sq. ft painting, and we have a month of classes left!!!! O_O) where we had to "litter the landscapes" or "tattoo the portraits" we did at the very beginning of the semester and they were black and white paintings. Now, I had thought that the painting came out great and I put it away... but then yesterday came it and it was time for me to do something to it. Originally, I was going to turn him into Jafar from Aladdin but I just wasn't feeling it. And I was really really nervous, to the point of almost hyperventilating over this. I really didn't want to do this and ruin the portrait. I wouldn't be able to handle that. But anyways, I got to school at around 8am (class starts at 9 but I'm always an hour early), sitting in the computer lab. And for some reason, I found myself looking up David Bowie photos... and I got an idea in my head... Does the title of this post make sense now?
So I decided then and there I'd give him the David Bowie makeover. Now we had the option of putting plastic wrap over the paintings if we really really loved how our black and white paintings came out and paint on top of that, take photos, and then take the plastic wrap off. I considered doing that. But as I'm sitting in class, watching every single other student in class wrap their paintings in the plastic wrap, I realized that A) I have to be different and actually paint on top of the painting and B) I'm not one to paint on top of plastic wrap, I'm someone who just totally, 100% commits to something. I had to actually paint on top of the black and white. My poor friend, Aly, had to really nudge me to get started after that because, again, I really liked my portrait and was totally afraid of ruining it and also... I was worried that Nick wouldn't like it. And as silly as it is, it's important to me that he likes it because it is a portrait of him and I want to do him justice, artist to artist and not just fan to YouTuber.
Finally I got started. I started off simply, to really ease myself into this.
(ignore the red bottom lip for now. For some reason I forgot to take a photo of when I just added the lightning bolt thing to his face). Okay. Lightning bolt glaze added. I was doing two things at once (which made my professor happy. Not that that really matters because he's not really checking these things...). And I liked it. So I sat staring at him for a few minutes before deciding that I needed to add something else to it. So I decided to paint Nick's lips red. Now they don't look exactly like they do in Nick's photo, which for me was kind of the point. David Bowie sort of does these weird things to stand out and since I was giving Nick the Bowie makeover... you get the point. (Another photo I forgot to take: when the lips were done) The next addition...
I decided to add a bit of color to Nick's eyes. Originally I was going to do just one and I was going to do it brown, like his natural eye color. But I decided that wasn't Bowie enough... so I made it red. And let me tell you something... I walked away from the painting for a few moments to go see what one of my classmates was doing, totally forgot I did the eye, came back, and scared myself with the eye XD Just about died laughing from being scared by my own painting. After this...
I couldn't just leave the other eye not done at this point. I was sort of on a role really... So I painted it green (Fun fact: Nick's favorite color is green, if I remember correctly, which is something he and I have in common!). And I fell in love. So I put it to the side to work on some other paintings/experiments. Came back from lunch and pulled this out again and flipped it upside down because I decided the background needed a little treatment too.... Now I'm really into splattering and dripping paint and one of my classmates did something really cool with hers so I totally stole her idea for my background (with permission of course) and did this:
That was a really fun thing to do! I love drips and splatters and things that get messy :3 It just makes painting more fun sometimes when you just sort of let loose on a piece of canvas :) So I put it away to dry again. My friend and I decided that we were so into what we were doing that we couldn't just clean up at 2:45 and go home so we stayed and continued to work... for another 2 hours and 15 minutes XD I did pull my Nick painting out again because I felt that it was missing one more thing, just a little bit of something something. I had a bunch of lime green and purple glazes that I had made for something else I had been working on and I really didn't want to waste it.... so I did this
The painting is officially done at this point. I decided to add this to A) really bring out the red eye, B) to use up some of the glazes I had left still, C) because it makes it different enough from just the David Bowie lightning bolt that it's different, but keeps the essence of what I had in mind, and D) (this is the most important one), I feel like it really makes Nick look like Nick, even though he doesn't do weird/crazy things like this with make up. I'm totally more in love with the portrait now than I was when I started the 10 hour day I had at the school.
Again, I'm just really nervous he's not going to like it. But... I'm still going to share this and the portrait with him and hopefully he'll like it and not think I'm bat-shit crazy (which I am but that's a whole other story we aren't going to get into... maybe one day). Anyways hope y'all enjoyed this :)
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