Black Russian. White Russian.
Apr 05 2010
Painting Diptych
"Tales of the Black Russian" + "Tales of the White Russian"
About a full year ago I had an idea for a series of paintings for my 7-Hells body of horror work. A very, very large series. Not large is size, maybe, but large in number.
The issues at the time were: 1) I never painted before 2) the concept would take a lot of custom fabrication after painting and 3) it was obvious that this could quickly become a very expensive experiment.
But here it is. The finished proof of concept and a glimpse at the beginning of the ongoing project that has been gaining steam ever since.
This is a diptych of 24x36 acrylic paintings that represent fake pulp novel illustrations from the 1960s. The pulp novel characters are based off of a sort of universe of pop-culture characters I created. In this case they are the 'Red Sisters'. Russian identical twins that are identified only by the different color of their hair: the Black Russian and the White Russian.
When the paintings are completed, I have them digitized at an extremely high resolution. Taking those scans, I use the computer to design all of the additional elements that would be laid out to complete a paperback book cover.
After removing the original scan from the layout, I then send the file to San Francisco to have the elements printed directly onto thick plexiglass. Then I use that plexiglass to frame them with, creating a layered effect with spacers separating the plexiglass from the canvass.
Viola!
As an added bonus, check out the impromptu photo of the real life Russian who helped inspire the paintings, when we suddenly discovered the cap and goggles at Disneyland almost a year after the paintings were painted!
