The Artistic Process

About three months ago I had a freelance job for a lady who lives in New York. She is a costume designer and was working on costumes for Disney Land in Tokyo, Japan. She provided me with very detailed, photoshop generated mock ups of the costumes she designed and I was to paint them on paper. She later explained to me that I was simply filling in a small portion of her artistic process. First she would design the costumes and plan their colors. Then I would use her computer mock ups and swatches to create the colors on paper. It turns out that the costume makers would use my drawings for color matching rather than the computer generated mock ups because the computer screen shines light through the image and it makes it very hard to interpret the colors in the real world. So my work basically made her imagination's ideal easier to interpret for the costume makers. Then the costumes were going to be made using white material. Then adjustments and remakes would be made. And then, finally, the actual materials would be used to make the actual costumes.

Sometimes one of my paintings for her would take about 20 or more hours to finish. It wasn't because I was slow, but because it was painstakingly time consuming to mix the right shades of colors, check with her via text and photos weather or not the colors were correct and often times repainting the same vestige 4 or more times until I would get the color right. She had something like 60 of those kinds of images, if I remember correctly. I did not get to paint all of them, but I painted quite a few, I think about 16 and it was very time consuming. The incredible thing was that I was not even providing her with a finished product of her brain child. I was only one cog in a big wheel of an artistic process that led to the eventual completion of the project. After working for her and getting insight into her very intricate and time consuming process I came to a realization that there really was no cutting corners when you wanted to get a thing done right.

I've always been under the impression that I should learn to make my paintings quicker. I like to have intricate details, but I should somehow accelerate the making of the details by figuring out some way where they're suggested rather than carefully depicted. Now I know that if I like to have intricate details I should come to terms that those details will take some time to create and it's okay that it will take many hours, because that's how long a thing takes to make if I want it done the way I envision it in my brain. I think my latest piece really shows growth in my willingness to do what I endeavor to accomplish. I've certainly done other paintings in my life that took as long and were quite intricate, but I think this has a larger diversity in depth and pattern and I hope that my next pieces continue to improve.

This current work has taken me at least 30 hours to paint if not longer. A very basic run down of my process is that I choose images to reference when I decide to paint something. Then I combine various elements and use those images when necessary to look at. I use many rulers, compasses and right angles. I switch from tiny to larger brushes and back to tiny ones depending on the size of the surface area I am painting. Sometimes I look at a book of my favorite artist to help me with technique or to simply inspire myself when I'm making decisions on what direction to go to accomplish the best result.

Life in St. Petersburg

Here's some stuff about what it's like to live here. If you want to buy anything, you have many choice of how you'll experience shopping. St. Petersburg is abundant in its variety of retail practices. While there are supermarkets like those we're used to in major cities in the US, there are also small shopping centers that follow the soviet era procedures. While all the sails people are in one space, you have to come up to every sales person individually to buy stuff. You can't just put it into your cart and pay at the end after you've accumulated everything.

This type of shopping center is kind of like a farmer's market, only the goods are not necessarily from a farm. Here you see a fish stand inside of such a shopping center. The only thing that has changed is that before, in the Soviet era, this place had only one cashier. So, every singly sales stand had a sales person give you the goods and a sales ticket and you would go to a cashier in the center of the sales area and pay them after you show them all your tickets. I'm not sure how they controlled theft in that situation.

Of course other types of selling practices exist, this is just one of the kind that stands out to me as something I don't see often in the US.

If you're looking for scarves in St. Petersburg chances are, as a tourist you may end up in this store on Nevsky Prospect. Here they sell the world renown Pavlovposadski scarfs with beautiful folk prints made in the town Pavlov Posad. As you can see this store is decked out in a huge number of different prints, so if you go in there you better know what colors look good with you so the sales ladies can help you pick, or you'll spend a lifetime looking through all of them. You can also find them in any of the souvenir shops along Nevsky, but they will not have this many and you may not find the right one for you.This store has four walls covered in scarves.

As you walk along the streets you will find amazingly intricate facades such as this one. I really try to resist taking too many pictures because I'd like to experience the world through my own eyes as much as possible but this decorative architecture was just too much for me to pass up.

I've been taking ballet classes and below you will see what some of my walk back home looks like. I am particularly fond of the night lights in this city.

Housing in St. Petersburg

During communism these high-rise apartment buildings were built in St. Petersburg, and other places in Russia. This type of architecture is still being built to suit the needs of the dwindling Russian population. Many families originally owned apartments in the pre-soviet block houses, which were built much better, but as communal housing was on the rise and private ownership was minimal in that era, people were exchanging their smaller apartments for bigger apartments and families moved from the sturdy and the now prestigious neighborhoods to these modern multi-storied suburbias. Here's an impressive view of the concrete jungle from my friend's 9th story apartment near the Primorskaya metro station.

Russian Grandmothers

I usually try to avoid answering my phone when it's my mom or my grandmother. Most of our conversations consist of them telling me how I should be doing things differently and how my life isn't what it could have been had I listened to them. So I listen to them less and less as I grow older. For a while though my grandmother stopped calling me altogether because she got used to the idea that she had nothing to say to me that I would want to hear, so when she called I answered.

She said she's getting surgery and I must immediately fly to Russia. She thinks her surgery will be sometime in May, although she doesn't know exactly.  A preliminary consultation with a doctor is scheduled and at this consultation she will be given a specific date for the surgery. Surgery is imminent.

I bought a ticket and came to Russia. I thought my grandmother was getting a surgery. I went with her to the "preliminary consultation" and it was certainly not a visitation to schedule any surgery. Rather it seemed more like a routine check up with a doctor who decided to send her to do an MRI just to make sure she doesn't have cancer. Although I did not ask the doctor weather my suspicions are true because the time and place were not appropriate for such questions, I did think this may have been a yearly routine for my grandmother.

So while I'm here I'll take the time to share some of my impressions about St. Petersburg, the city I was born in.

First on the list is the May 1st celebration. I did not know this but May 1st is Labor Day and is very much observed in St. Petersburg. My grandmother tells me it's observed all over Russia since the Soviet Times. I went downtown to the central city street, Nevsky Prospect, to see what was happening. There was a parade and tons of people came to watch it.

When I first got off the metro I thought the parade was wherever these lovely ladies were and I followed them until the main square in front of the Hermitage where the parade culminated and there was nothing more to see. A small stage was set up there with an awful sound system that hurt the brain so I left. I walked through the arches and back towards Nevsky Prospect.

I thought all the festivities were over and people were just walking the streets now, but suddenly I saw a mass of red flags descending  upon us in a solid wall of human flesh and I knew there was more to be seen.

Fortunately I took a video. To be continued...