Who It Is

Okay, so it’s not Rick James, or James Brown, or Mick Jagger… it’s freakin’ Tina Turner!  Yes, a caricature of Tina Turner.  I’m not even a great big fan of hers, I just needed an iconic female singer to round out my “batik series” of six iconic singers… my Batik/Pop Phase, if you will, of Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Madonna, Michael Jackson circa 70s, & yes, Snoop Dogg, lookin’ all high n’ all.

Except that each time I started a new painting, I became more loose (maybe lazier) & experimental with this series.  I started with painstakingly transforming a photo into a graphic image.  Masking out the face with liquid rubber (interpreted, albeit loosely… really very loosely, on Indonesian batik art…okay, more inspired-by).  Adding wash after wash of very watered down acrylics until all the colors turned a blackish hue.  Then peeling the dried liquid rubber away, revealing the color beneath!  Voilá!  In this case, hot pink, for example.    

Except that by the time I got to Tina Turner, my sixth painting in the series, I just painted the background black & painted the image with a hot-pink paint pen… yup, a little lazy, but I said, the heck with technique!  I also just blew up a caricature doodle of her I drew on a piece of scrap-paper, as opposed to trying to get her photographic realism down perfectly.  The end result is the same & it took a fraction of the time… yeahhh buddy!  No liquid rubber here!  

The big hassle was actually dealing with the use of epoxy resin on the painting.  That’s right, epoxy resin covered canvas.  First of all… I was too cheap to buy the $45 or so that it costs at Michael’s, so I went to their website, because Michaels.com usually has 40% coupons you can print.  Well, the one time I wanted to utilize this feature, they didn’t have this coupon posted for like… three or four weeks!  But alas, I finally purchased it, with coupon.  

I have to admit, I had to doctor this painting up in Photoshop… that’s right, I said it.  You see, epoxy resin is this clear, glass, reflective-type material once it’s cured, or “hardens.”  So when I took this photo, I saw nothing but a reflection of me, holding the camera, with a view of my apartment all around me, in the painting!  It was like taking a picture of a mirror!… a very black mirror… Sooo, what you see before you is what the actual painting looks like, unobstructed.  Perhaps it should look shinier, but ohhh well. 

Hmm, almost forgot, yes that’s gold glitter!  I got the Elmer’s Glue you see, used it as a pen, & then I poured glitter all over it.  And that’s what happened.  I even like the stray glitter “detail.”  And now that I feel like I’ve written a novel, & it’s late, I… I should hit the hay… crash… catch some Zs… take a siesta… get some shut-eye, oookay, toodloo!