secret paint ingredient

Today, I found out a great, secret paint ingredient that helps murals flow magically across ceilings...

Bengay

mural update

Brigette from Bucks County, Pa. sent me this screen grab today from the mural. ...I flipped it because technically the camera shows the mural "upside down". Above is my mural in progress and below is my reference art--- Leonardo's "Battle of Anghiari" I am adding color as per request of the homeowner and the original Leonardo (destroyed in the 16th century) was painted with color as well...This is my greatest technical challenge to date because of the difficulty involved with painting on a ceiling...I will be done on wed. and I am on schedule...I thin k tonight I will stay in and watercolor all night long.

mural update

I will be on the mural cam again today, I think around 11 AM I will start painting.

http://68.194.9.52:99/main_activex.cgi

if you are firewalled you can try variations of the toggle buttons on entry page.

If you log on please log out when you are done as opposed to leaving on all day.

thanks


I woke up at three AM with a title for a painting ringing in my head-- "dreams without shadows" was the title and I couldn't get back to sleep. I was thinking all night what that painting would look like. I think it would be about flight , shadows are much less apparent when you leave the earth in any form be it death, dream, or flight.

reston virginia

I would like to thank whomever is from Reston Virginia for being such a faithful follower of my artistic dribbles.

mural photo

Here is another mural photo/ video grab from the lovely Mary DeSilva from WFAS in Westchester. She is a great DJ and really nice person so if you live up there tune into 103.9!

mural photos

Here is a photo/ screen grab from the mural cam (thanks Brigitte!) I put the blue tape up in the morning to force myself to only work on one side of the mural as I tend to work around the entire picture to keep from growing bored. I decided I needed to focus and get one side done so I could feel like I was on schedule for deadline. My neck and back are really feeling the two weeks but I am finally feeling like it is really coming together.

update

I will be working on the Da Vinci mural again today. I will be finished by Tuesday (at latest, Wednesday. ) If anyone can email me a screen shot from the "mural cam" today I would be most thankful...

brooklyn

today I will be in brooklyn making a glass sculpture, back on mural tomorrow. Ill try to photograph the glass when done

quote of the day

"Once you say you're going to settle for second, that's what happens to you in life."

schedule

I will be on the mural cam again today at noon. I will be in Brooklyn studio tomorrow.

mural update

Here is my daily ceiling mural progress shot. I am really feeling the effects of painting a ceiling on my back and neck but I am getting closer to the end game. The mural is a copy of Da Vinci's Battle of Anghiari. It is more difficult than I had expected to paint such a detailed picture on a ceiling but I am gaining some ground in the battle. The twin angels of color and drawing are guiding me through into the light of day. In the very end I will have a time lapse video to show the entire two week progress.

Mural Cam

Back on mural Cam around ten today. Still pushing to finish by Friday but I will allow another two days or so of detailing (if needed.) If you are not blocked by a firewall you can view here.



you can see some images here if you are blocked by a firewall.

www.fonesys.com/leonardo ( I am not sure what files these are I am an artist not a techie)


enjoy your day...

mural study---horse drawing

Here is one of the studies for the mural I am painting. The mural is a copy of the Battle of Anghiari by Leonardo. I have been painting for a week and will be done by Friday (if it all goes well.)


click here to buy.

mural Nov 12th.

Here is the latest update of my ceiling mural. It is a "snapshot" from the video cam so it is not quite the quality of a photograph. Today I added my first color to the mural and started to visually refine it to where it really looks like something. I think the homeowner was getting a bit nervous because I paint in glazes in oil paint and therefore it a very slow process to get to the point where it starts to really shine and read as a painting. Even I get impatient because I want to show what I can do with paint but I have to restrain myself and get the drawing and tones perfected in monochrome first.


(thanks to Rebecca K. for for the screenshot)

mural cam

I will be back on my mural today. If you wish to watch the progress you can try the link after 9 AM. Some firewalls are preventing access so you can try toggling some of the buttons in the entry page and see if that works. (tech speak)


mural cam

quote of the day

Conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth. John F. Kennedy.

Sea Urchin News

Anyone who knows anything about Dali knows that he had a deep rooted fascination with many things he considered to contain certain "magical" properties. He had a preoccupation with the sea urchin and included it in much of his work. I have a book in which dali puts a hole in the urchin shell and uses it as a lens to look through. They have recently studied the genome of the sea urchin and have made amazing discoveries about it that were previously unknown. If you want to read the article I will put the link here!


here is a snippet of article:

"The sea urchin is surprisingly similar to humans," said George Weinstock of Baylor College of Medicine and co-director of the sea urchin-sequencing project. "Sea urchins don't look any more like humans than fruit flies, but about 70 percent of sea urchin genes have a human counterpart, whereas only about 40 percent of fruit fly genes do."

In a special report detailed in the Nov. 9 issue of the journal Science, research teams describe the genome of the purple sea urchin, revealing not only human-urchin similarities but also features such as the urchin's immune system, which far surpasses that of humans.

Adirondack Watercolor

I decided to repaint one of my Adirondack Watercolors for a collector and friend who left her work in a cab in NYC. She was terribly upset so I replaced her work for free but never repainted this until today. It is strange to paint a landscape without looking at a landscape. (I was looking at my copy of the original.)

good news

amidst the bad news that is fed to us daily I stumbled upon this news article today that made me very happy. One of my favorite places in the world is New Orleans and when I go there I try to stay in the garden district just outside the French Quarter. I was going to go there not too long ago and found out that the street cars were not running since Katrina. I found out today that the street cars are back up and running and this is Good News for the mind of Alex and the soul of America!

Ten Dollar Owl

I have always had a good eye for picking out shapes or patterns or finding hidden things in pictures etc. On more than one occasion I have hidden faces of my ex girlfriends or their names in my book covers. (Once I hid my girlfriends name in a wave in the sea on a beer label.) I am sure if I was an engraver for the national treasury I would do the same! I am not saying what I see on the ten dollar bill is definitely "there" I would like you to decide this for yourself. I personally think it is a pretty strong image of an Owl in the hair of Hamilton. The owl does have significant cult associations etc. but I will not go into that I am just curious if you think it is a mistake or a real image. Take out a ten dollar bill and look closely to the hair on the right side of Hamilton's head.