Back in 2011, I was going to two different drawing groups here in town where models would pose for professional artists. The watercolor drawing/painting you see in this image is material from hundreds of drawings and watercolors I did while attending those groups. I’ve had this material stored away for a few years now. I knew I would end up doing something with them, but I didn’t know what until a few days ago.
As you know, I’ve been experimenting with layering multiple pieces of my artwork and coming up with new artworks. I’ve been doing that with my Wrecked Tangles series, my Micro-Chimerisms series, and now the nudes I’ve accumulated. The nude drawings I had been doing in the past really honed my hand-eye-muscle coordination. Those sessions—countless of which I attended—were invaluable, as I now have more of a sense of mastery and command than I’d ever had before.
I can still feel that mastery, even though I haven’t been to those drawing groups for about three years now. I plan on going back soon as I finish up my health information technology degree. Actually, I already graduated for that, but what I’m doing right now is studying diligently for the registered health information technologist (RHIT) exam. I have been fortunate to also have a little time to develop some ideas for the Art of eVan lately as well.
I was inspired by some of Pink Floyd’s early videos in which they used projectors with psychedelic imagery cast upon them as they played their music. The Velvet Underground also played with this idea. I’m not sure who came up with it first—the Velvets, Syd Barrett, or Andy Warhol; I do know Andy Warhol used old military film to record the videos he did, so, it’s quite possible this idea extended to the Velvet Underground, and the music they’d play at The Factory. Perhaps Syd Barrett caught on to the idea and used it for Pink Floyd. Who knows? Anyways, this idea really comes from the cultural and art revolutions of the 1960s.
There are a couple other contemporary sources that inspired this work as well. Some of the artist’s work at Curbside Clothing gives me pleasure to look at. I’ve always been into drawing mandalas since I was a child. Both my mother and father were artists. I suppose they still are artists at heart, but they aren’t currently practicing their art. My mother is the one who really got me fascinated with mandalas. She was a Flower Child at one time, and she would show me some art from that genre. One album cover from that era that had me fixated is Anthem of the Sun, by the Grateful Dead.
While the figure depicted here isn’t perfectly proportional, I still felt it embodied the strokes, contours, and coloring I wanted to use. I had no idea how the final work would turn out, but I used two different drawings as backgrounds from my Micro-Chimerisms series, and meshed it all together for the hybrid you see here. I look forward to working with this new concept in the future, and evolving it into something more sophisticated.
Art of eVan 