Paint By Word: Happy Birthday Mikey!! + two paintings..

My crazy ass obsession (ass obsession?!) with Michael Jackson still holds strong even 16 years after first discovering him on TV as a 6 year-old kid. Today he turns 50, which is about 12 years old in MJ years..

This year was also the 25th anniversary of his famous Thriller album, and I have the great liberty of using the album artwork to create some MJ-inspired art for Gallery1988 LA's show, Cover Band, which opens October 7th. Artists in the show choose an album from Rolling Stone's Top 500 Albums of All Time, and create artwork using the album itself as a canvas, kind of like a collaboration between the artist and the record.

hi!

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In other news, there are so many things I've been wanting to post but haven't because 1.) I've been in NY with limited access to the outside world 2.) I've been too busy or 3.) I'm lazy. So I'm going to start as far back as possible..

In June I was part of Gallery1988 SF's show, Everyone In Together. Both pieces sold before the show's opening (yay!). Here are a couple pictures of the process, sorry for the low quality pics these were all taken on my camera phone:

Base layers are put down

Getting the background texture just right

Then the people start to emerge! The girl on the right is based off of a picture of my girl Misa

When I started painting, the girl looked like Britney Spears. I tried to change up her face as best I could, and she ended up looking like Tila Tequila, or something.