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Numbers of artists stay away from difficulty of recreating emotions, moods, or fleeting moments in portraits. The living room walls of one Marion home are filled with portraits by a courageous, self taught artist, who lives there with his wife. He put together the faces of an American tap dancer, an actor a scientist, the composite between three famous comedians, the traditional cast members of a long running science fiction TV series, a former TV reporter, various rock stars, athletes and entertainers, and his friends for a single montage called “Faces”. The first step he takes is grabbing stills from videos, which gives him surprising results. The montage documents a year and a half of people who influenced him. Thank you for reading about portrait artist websites and paintings.

 

Other portraits hanging on his walls are large individual renditions of a lead singer from Babes in Toyland, a Russian gymnast and singer songwriter. His favorite tools are pencil, graphite, and charcoal. He tried conte crayon and then colored pencils. For his first colored pencil drawing, he used his wedding photo, taken with his Japanese wife, who is originally from Kobe. Truly a case when East meets West, he combined traditional American drawing and Japanese wood block print. He uses personal and Japanese symbols to further decorate his version of their wedding photograph, taken at City Hall in December 1996.

 

Though not present at the actual wedding, he included their three cats. The face of one cat was turned into a Japanese opera mask, said to fend off evil spirits. In a position of good luck he decided to draw the second cat.

 

The couples are dressed in kimonos in the drawing. The kikyo flower, her matriarchal symbol, covers his wife. He decided to draw in a gingko tree, past the third cat, behind the vertical blinds, outside the room. The idea came for the gingko, which symbolizes longevity, from a tree at the University of Iowa. If you like this article on paintings visit portrait painting oil for more education.

 

The first time the couple worked together was on this 1997 drawing. It was his wife’s job to develop and critique ideas. The drawing is their prized possession, according to the wife. He says he would like to see his art evolve more into landscapes, but with people in them because that’s what he likes to draw the most.

 

It doesn’t matter that his pieces have not been exhibited, because four have found their way into books and one on the cover. A staff member showed his work to the book editor. Then the lady editor emailed him saying she is impressed by his self taught talent, his sense of color, shading, composition, his ability to combine portrait study with architectural elements in thought provoking and surprising ways, and the intelligence, humor and complexity behind his work. All he drew as a child were action heroes and rock stars, and he has come a long way from then. His ability has grown so that he can draw anything he puts his mind to. He explains that he creates a drawing by thinking what he can add or change about a scene that would otherwise be just a photograph.

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