Kaleidoscope - Sea Apple

"Sea Apple" Body Painting (from my Kaleidoscope Series)

In May 2013, one of my sponsors Kryolan asked me to do a UV body painting at a convention with their UV body paint. My friend Lisa Greenberg was also attending the convention and I had been wanting to paint her for a few years since she is a trained dancer and can pose extremely well. Kryolan UV Paint +  Lisa as my Model = my vision for the latest of my Kaleidoscope series.

The entire design was done with Kryolan UV and Kryolan black body paints (which is a theatrical make up product, not to be mistaken for the spray cans with the similar name "Krylon").

Lisa did  many amazing poses that Thomas Ledford was able to capture with his photography skills. I then used photoshop and manipulated it to make the repeating image to create the Kaldeoscope effect. The end result was an image for my Kaleidoscope series, that looked amazingly like an Australian Sea Apple. I discovered these fascinatingly odd little creatures at an aquarium in Australia when I was visiting. They are a plankton eating creatures that looks like alien plant life with brilliant coloring. Nature is full of so much inspiration!

Halloween Workshop in Virginia

On Tuesday, Aug 20th, my friend Nick Wolfe and I held a surprise Halloween themed workshop in Richmond, VA, with our host Tal Thompson. With less than a week notice, we had 10 people in the workshop. Not too shabby.

We started off teaching the students how to paint skull and zombie designs, because what's more Halloween than skulls and zombies?? During the break, we all went downstairs to get some coffee at the local coffee shop. I think we took the employees by surprise as it was quite the invasion of creepy cool designs! If the coffee hadn't woken up all the customers, the sudden appearance of a pending Zombie Apocalypse certainly did!! They loved it, and insisted on getting pictures with their undead patrons!

A 10 minute demo of a ghost/zombie design

that I painted on my friend Nick during the workshop.

One of the best things about workshops is getting to see old friends and make new ones, nothing like zombies to bring a group together!! The stories that come from such events...for example: When we left, we were pulled over for an expired tag (which luckily had already been fixed)... Nick was still in his zombie ghost make up that I painted him in. The cop said nothing. Absolutely nothing. Now this was a cop who truly had seen it all!

Afterwards, we all went back to Tal's and had an amazing dinner with some of the other attendees, a great end to a great workshop! Thanks to everyone that came out!

Mars Attacks Her Booty!

I was in town visiting my sister in Charlotte, NC on Aug 24th and had a day to myself so I thought I would do some body painting.

My photographer friend Charles of NC Glamour Photo picked me up and we went to his photo studio where I set up and waited for the model to arrive. The model, Amie Raine, arrived on time and was cool off the get go. I painted a green fantasy armor design design on her and we finished with some time to spare. So I had a little time to do a second body art piece on her if she was willing. I had been wanting to do the Mars Attacks piece, but did she have the right hiney for the job? I told her my concept and she was totally game.

First thing I had to do was make sure the shape of her buttocks would be right (you would be surprised how many butt shapes would not have worked). She had the right butt shape for the design, so I began...

Working on the design, upside down. The green is from a previous design I painted on her.

I outlined the piece on her from the position it would be photographed in, and then for the model's comfort - she stood up and I painted the design upside down! For the final touches, I had her lay over a chair to do the detailed line work and squiggly brain parts. Here I was, a real smart ass painting a brain on a butt... the irony. The entire piece took me 75 minutes to paint, albeit the laughter that was ensuing probably added some time!

When I was all done, Amie said, "This is the coolest thing I have ever done." It never hurts to hear that statement.

Charles got great photos of the design on a black background and the next day he sent me the best image from the bunch. My girlfriend found the font online and sent it to me, and with a little photoshop for the background and lettering, the piece was complete.

I might do a sequel to the piece called, Ass Invaders. Time will tell.

A Day in Haight Ashbury

The Outsidelands festival was over and my girlfriend Jennifer and I had a day in San Francisco to check out the city and celebrate her birthday a little more.

The day started off perfect as a tourist, complete with a San Francisco trolley car speeding by, a sight that never gets old!

We stopped at the headquarters of one of my body paint sponsors, Kryolan to check out the latest products and visit with our good friend Joe. As always, much laughter was shared, and make-up was bought!

Then it was onto famous Haight-Ashbury, the hippie haven of a bygone era… okay now it’s just cool shops but still….

We found parking, but needed change for the meter, and low and behold, there was a shop right on the corner to get change… a DONUT shop, and you can’t get change without buying s something…so a pocket full of change and a amazing donut later, we were ready to explore!

We started to explore and realized all we had eaten was that donut and right in front of us was Escape from NY Pizza! Sadly Snake Pliscomb had already escaped.  The pizza however was amazing!

After we ate a slice, we ventured in the mecca of bizarre and unique shops that is The Haight. The shops included...

Loved to Death, an awesome scientifically goth store full of bat skeletons, insects and an array of jewelry and home décor cast from bones…the staff was friendly but decidedly pale of color, which lends credence to my girlfriends theory that the shop is in fact run by Vampires. P-kok Planet a crazy clothing store, and t-shirt shop called Body of the Sheep that was filled with some of the wittiest Star Wars parody designs I have ever seen! Another neat find was Distractions, a steampunk megastore where you could purchase everything from leather top hats to old fashion opera glasses!

To end our day we had Post birthday crepes followed by an awesome cappuccino at Stanza coffee, complete with decorative latte foam art - which is the best cappuccino either of us have had since we were in Spain.

We then headed back to L.A. and marveled at the size of California since we seemed to drive for days!!