the void i used to fill with iron is now filled with lead.

my life drastically changed after a super-human sneeze put me in the hospital for nearly a week with herniated a disc and a partially paralyzing my left leg.  no more sports.  no more gym.  no more running, biking, jumping.  no more comfortable car rides....

but a lot more free time...

the void i used to fill with iron is now filled with lead.

this is my silver lining.

the make-up artist: lipstick art.

everything is beautiful make-up.

(paintings with lipstick/eye-shadow)

self-portrait 

the mirror

Proper Portraits for Paupers.

i lost my enthusiasm for drawing runway models as i realized that their mainstream type of beauty is all too common - so, i set out to capture more unique faces.  typical beauty is what everyone notices.  its what everyone wants. and its what we're getting spoon fed by everyday life.  there is already enough of it - i dont need to add to it.  however, while we are saturated with these monotonous images of "beauty"our world is also littered with quirky noses, bulging eye balls, receding mandibles and lots of wrinkles.  this is the stuff i noticed as a kid and many times these facets on faces end up being the part of the body i cherish on the people i love.  i can remember being a five year-old pinching the extra skin on my grandpa's elbows or the soft bags under his smiling grey eyes and and then letting go to watch the folds mosey back to their cosy, wrinkly, place.  as a kid, i did not notice the really pretty lady with "flawless" features or the man with a perfectly symmetrical 1.618 face.  i was (and still) captivated by a crooked nose or a lady with the tiny-thin lips that barely seem to move...perhaps an old lady's ears have gotten so big and bendy that it looks like she is always listening... or just the pleasure of my grandpa's squishy, wrinkly wrinkles that felt good to pinch.   whatever it is, i would like to capture that novel feeling.

each one of these drawings is inspired by a face, or part of a face, that i saw in passing - usually on the streets or MTA in NYC.  none of them are "beautiful" models but they all have a story.

Marble eyes:

i like to make the iris of the eye look like its a clear glass marble sitting above the eye ball - so much so that they usually sit outside of the eye lid.  

grandpa

grandpa 2

Pearl

my first time putting eye lids over my "marble" eyes.

these lips were taken from a kid sleeping on the Q (shown above this picture)

he really was wearing a baseball cap - which made him so endearing.

i had to get a quick sketch of this jesus look-alike as he enjoyed a coffee with his boyfriend.

a quick sketch of this restless old man on the Q train

my twist...i took the liberty of giving the man something calming.

this woman had so much work done (botox/facelifts, etc.) that this drawing of her looks more natural than she did.

i wanted to draw a few from the perspective of a little kid looking up at these new faces.

i challenged my self to make the nose look like it was being pressed up against a window.

i swear, i take the bus every morning with a woman that looks just like this. promise.

i'm figure its not possible to see both nostrils and the back of an ear unless you're looking from down below.

Models: Martyrs Without Cause.

the fester of something so robustly powerful in into something trivial is the root of this idea. 

*this is meant to bore you.*

Summer of '06, i traveled around europe with the mind set of enjoying some of the world's finest and most powerful works of art.  of course, one of the best places to see inspiring and powerful art is rome.  it was in rome where i became a born-again agnostic.

Supply and Demon

"I need a fix 'cause I'm going down
Down to the bits that I left uptown
I need a fix cause I'm going down
Mother Superior jumped the gun
Mother Superior jumped the gun
Mother Superior jumped the gun
Mother Superior jumped the gun
Mother Superior jumped the gun
Mother Superior jumped the gun
Happiness (is a warm gun)
Bang Bang Shoot Shoot
Happiness (is a warm gun, momma)

Bang Bang Shoot Shoot"

"happiness is a warm gun" by the beatles was stuck on repeat inside my brain as i shuffled through the vatican gawking at the abundance of crucifixes, re-born jesus' and a plethora of other dying and tortured saints.  all of the images blurred into a diluted mass of sameness. i had become apathetic to the greatness of these depictions.  i could now better understand the testimonials i read as a kid of soldiers of the liberating armies feeling ashamed that after a few days at a concentration camp they had grown callous to growing mountains of bodies.  i was blown away that something as powerful as jesus, bloody and tortured,  could lose its meaning if cheapened by abundance.  

Models: Martyrs Without A Cause

the fester of something so robustly powerful in into something trivial is the root of this idea.  i woke up one cynical morning to with a plan to make the beautiful super model a meaningless object. (a stretch, i know.)   i was going to draw/paint an endless stream of beautifully vapid models - gorgeous and mundane - with long legs, perfect symmetry and empty stares.  i proved myself right - it took fewer than 15 drawings for me to get too bored of this daft endeavor.