Live Painting – Even Sketchier

February 4, 2021February 4, 2021Live Painting

A Confectionary Collaboration

My sister runs a bakery called Simply Sweets by Lauren and she’s fixing to make a special little cookie for Valentine’s day. She recruited me to help out by utilizing my screen printing skills or more so, my ability to hand paint whatever she wanted onto a screen. She would be doing the actual printing onto her delicious sugar cookies. I used a dissolvable gel medium to paint the printable area and a non-toxic screen blocker to mask out the surrounding areas. I used a tiny little brush to paint in the details with the masking liquid. It was a unique opportunity to work in a different medium and create something truly special and it couldn’t have turned out better.
Check out Simply Sweets by Lauren for more creative confectionary creations.

September 11, 2020September 11, 2020Live Painting

SPB Tribute Show

This past week I was asked to be part of a virtual show, streamed over Zoom and Facebook as a tribute to the Indian Musician, S. P. Balasubrahmanyam, who is recovering from Covid-19. The live stream would include a number of local Indian musicians performing medleys of SPB’s songs while I painted a portrait of the artist. The event is unique for me in the musical material that I would be accompanying, but it’s always great fun to expose yourself to new genres of music and branch outside your cultural norms. I was not familiar with his music despite holding the world record for the most amount of songs recorded by a singer, which is over 40,000 songs in 16 different languages. That’s just an insane amount of singing. It would take about 100 days to sing through his entire catalog if you were to do it non-stop. I painted a couple preparatory pieces for the event, and then one final piece the day of the event. The show was a success with all of the musicians getting through their sets glitch free which is all too common in the virtual setting, and my painting turned out great! A big thank you to the sponsors of the event PDXA1 Realty for asking be to come on their PDXA1 Spotlight program, and to the musicians and technicians who helped make the night such a huge success!

December 17, 2019January 9, 2020Live Painting

Super Secret Studio Session

I was invited to join Shane Brown and Matt Sulikowski as they recorded their upcoming album at The Super Secret Studio. Having never been in a recording studio before I was very excited to be a part of the session. I was called upon to once again record some musical mastery visually. I got to wear the fancy headphones and everything. Look for the album dropping soon!

November 16, 2019January 9, 2020Live Painting, People

Back To Al’s Den

Was another night of art, music, drinks, and revelry at Al’s Den. I joined Stephanie Scelza, Katelyn Convery, and Tim Karplus as they did their fantastic singer/songwriter, super talented, awesome performer thing. Blown away every time by the talent these folks possess. If you ever get a chance, and see a show of theirs coming up, do yourself a favor and get there.

September 26, 2019September 26, 2019Live Painting

An Evening With Sarah Kwak and Friends

I recently had the honor of painting live alongside Sarah Kwak, The Principal Soloist and Concertmaster of the Oregon Symphony. She was joined by Vali Philipps and Cary Lewis for a concert benefitting the Hillsboro Arts & Cultural Endowment. I prepped as I usually do, photographing the set-up and busting out some rough studies of the people I’d be painting. Included below are some of the preparatory works along with the painting I created that night. The evening was a success and I look forward to doing more work with Chamber Music of Hillsboro group.

June 20, 2019June 27, 2019Live Painting, New Stuff

Mousai Remix

I’ve been struggling and procrastinating for months on how to build this website, how to promote some stuff I’ve been working on, a project or two, working the day job, etc… The same shit every artist trying to artist does before the desperation kicks in. We perform this act of procrastination right up until the time we question our ability to do for life, whatever shit ass job we currently find ourselves occupying.

So yeah, onto…. the stuff. I’ll just start with a recent thing. Just over a month ago through a chance encounter, I ended up teaming together with the Portland based string quartet Mousai Remix to do live painting with them during a performance. I prepared my color scheme, researched the musicians, practiced sketching them, and even went to the venue to plan for the set-up.

As all things go however, the inevitable is an inevitability and those plans went out the window the second I showed up at the venue. There had been a change in the set up where the band would be below me, and I’d be up on the stage… solo. The following photos are what had been planned for.

This is what we ended up with.

You have to just go with the flow sometimes, adjust and adapt to developing challenges, and carry on in a positive fashion. The performance by the group was stellar, I had a great time painting, and a pretty cool piece came out of it. Success all around.

April 24, 2019June 27, 2019Live Painting, People

Al’s Den

Deep in the heart of Ringler’s Annex in downtown Portland, a group of visual artists and musicians were gathered by the indomitable Stephanie Scelza for a week of art and music. Stephanie asked me to be part of the gig, she having been privy to the early days of my arting whilst musicians shared their songs.

Each day had different musicians paired up with a local artist, and I was fortunate enough to have my personal favorites for the Wednesday night billing. We started off with diversely talented Crystal Lariza of the band Corner, and Never Come Down Band, Shane Brown of Shane Mother F****ing Brown, and of course Stephanie Scelza often seen playing her part of Strange with The Familiars. My usual prep for the event consisted of planning out a color scheme and maybe some cursory sketches of the musicians. I was going to work all three acts onto one large canvas, but it needed a little something more than just the talent.

At some point I asked Crystal what her favorite animal is, and her surprising response was armadillo. With that, my imagination took flight and here, in all their glory, I painted the three musicians on a large bright canvas with what I could only imagine are their spirit animals. There’s Crystal and her special armadillo friend, Shane and his connection with the natural world represented by a large bear, and Stephanie and her little unassuming kitty, Nina nightmare. Maybe, if there’s ever a need, I’ll get prints made of the piece. One, if not all three of these musicians are bound for greatness, and I’m sure the memory of a crowded night in a basement bar surrounded by good friends, good music, and good vibes will make a nice addition to their personal recording studio wall.

3musicians — Crystal, Stephanie, Shane and Isaac bringing up the rear.

Find out more about the musicians with the links below:
Shane Brown:
Instagram: @shanesawthis
Website – www.shanebrownmusic.com

Crystal Lariza:
Website: www.cornerpdx.com

Stephanie Scelza:
Website: www.strangeandthefamiliars.com

March 13, 2019September 26, 2019Live Painting

The Vault

Tucked away in a typical new vertical suburban development in Beaverton (La Scala) is a food hall that will occasionally feature the musical stylings of Shane Brown. Sometimes, I’m lucky enough to accompany the bearded fella’. Here, Shane and I have the opportunity to work out some of our ideas in a public forum. The most recent project we’ve been working on has been projecting live art onto a screen via an Apple TV hooked up to an IPad, then printing out postcard sized prints of the works for the fans.

Category: Live Painting