Mardi Gras Body Painting

Last month I had another wonderful body painting collaboration with photographer Kyaunna Hall of KFRESH Photography and model Dom Niqué! This was my first time painting Dom Niqué.

I was inspired by a Mardi Gras themed face painting that my friend and fellow face & body painter Milly Henry created on me at the New England Face & Body Artists Group Jam in February and I had some beads from a Mardi Gras birthday dance party for DJ Micky Grouse that I went to that same week.

Kyauna is hosting her 2nd R&B and Poetry Slam Networking Event II on Friday April 18th at Maggys Lounge 609 Washington Street • Quincy, MA 02169. I will be performing some of my mixed media Poetry/Songs and I may add something else to the mix! Kyauna will have some of her photography on exhibit and for sale, including some photos from our body painting sessions, come on by if you are in the area!

Sponge Roller Daubers for Face Painting

As I've been face and body painting again, I'm having fun learning about all the new developments and supplies in the field. One of them is using round foam sponges called daubers to quickly create circles. I decided to try out some of my foam hair rollers and they work just perfectly! Much more cost effective then buying daubers on a wooden stick, which are around $5 for 3 or 4, you can get 6 rollers in a pack of 1 1/2 inch rollers for about $2.79 and you can use both ends of a roller for 2 colors! Don't worry about the hole, just dab over the spot with the edge of the roller to fill it in.

    I made my Jack-O-Lantern arm art with the orange end of the roller :-)

Pitt Artist Big Brush Pens by Faber Castell - Update

Oh boy! I recently received 2 more colors (Light green and Pink madder lake) to add to my collection of Pitt Artist Big brush pens by Faber-Castell! They were on back-order from Dick Blick and I almost forgot they were on their way, when I saw the FedEx truck I said to myself "Hmmm, what could that be? I'm not expecting anything."

What a nice surprise it was! I'm off to try out these new colors and will also post on how the Pitt pens combine with Faber-Castels Albrecht Durer water colour pencils. I recently got the 250th anniversary set of 25 pencils, some of the pencils in this set are the same color number as the Pitt pens, I will see how close the colors match.

I used these markers in my pieces Happy Springtime, Two May Tulips and One Red Tulip.

Heads up on some of the colors if your planning on buying a set: These colors are not in the set of 48!

178 Nougat
228 Bright Magenta
278 Chrome Oxide Green
143 Cobalt Blue
157 Dark Indigo
219 Deep Scarlet Red
121 Pale Geranium Lake
270 Warm Gray I
230 Cold Gray I
250 Gold
251 Silver

I first bought the small set of 4 Classic Colors that was on clearance at a craft store, it had the black missing, so it was priced at $3.95 (a deal as they go for $2.55 Blick online and $3 plus per marker at brick and mortar  stores!), since I heard they were great markers from artist Don Colley in his video, On the Go with PITT artist pens http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LI24mfsrU80&feature=channel
I figured it was good time for me to give them a try. I fell in love with the first stroke! I then bought the set of 24 and started visualizing getting what I thought were the remaining 26 colors. 

So I'll have to buy the ones I have listed above separately sometime soon, I realized these were not in the 48 set after I was done ordering from Dick Blick online, grrrr! I don't know why they don't have the Deep Scarlet Red in the sets, as the red they have, Pink Carmine 127, is a medium red and not dark enough for me, I have to make several passes with it to get a good color.

I think these extra colors may only be available from online art stores, I'll check at Blick when I go this week to pick up a fine art print order that is ready, YEAH! I'll also take a look across the street (Mass Ave. Central Square in Cambridge, MA) at Artists Craftsman Supply to see if they have these colors in open stock and I'll let y'all know what I find.

Until next time, Keep on Creating!

I LOVE R & F Pigment Sticks!

Just thinking about them makes my heart beat fast and I want to jump up and down, dance and Skip, skip, skip to my Lou! I'm a multi-media artist, this is the first time I've ever had a such an intense response to a visual art medium.

I am a member of an artists site, wwww.wetcanvas.com ,one of their forums is "The Oil Stick Party", I've been enjoying reading about other artists experiences with oil sticks by lots of other companies. This inspired me to get back to using them.

At the last studio I had before my current studio, one of the artists left 2 boxes of about 16 of the R & F sticks (almost all unopened) in her studio when she moved (the building had been sold and it was converted to apartments, so all of us artists had to relocate our studios, you know the scenario.) I thought they were oil pastels, which I was just starting to get into.

When I had settled into my new studio, I found out just how different they were. I went on to the R & F site, www.rfpaints.com, to learn about them and was shocked to see how much they cost! I was glad I had rescued them before they were thrown out by the renovation crew. She had also left some gessoed boards by Houston Art supply, so I tried them on those, I tried them on canvas board and stretched canvas too, but the gessoed board is my favorite surface for the R& F's because of how smooth it is.

I just tried them on clayboard last night, (that was also left by the same artist :-) they're good on that too. I just had big time fun smoothing them on with my pallet knife, my favorite tool to use with them, just playing with the pure colors and not at all getting into my often very well thought out geometric patterns. I go totally freestyle with them, except for one medium sized painting "Sun Flower", I'll post some photos of it soon.