improv is good for you*

Look at these Japanese boys. The one on the right is trying to put his little brother’s shoe back on. Moments later, the older brother would spy me trying to frame up this shot. He would become self conscious and run back to where his parents were sitting, leaving his baby brother in the middle of the floor of the hotel lobby. I’ll be honest — I’m pretty jet-lagged right now. I don’t know why I’m posting this.

Six years ago, I painted Roy Lichtenstein’s “Girl With Hair Ribbon” on my bedroom wall. Like a lot of his other work, Lichtenstein lifted this image from a comic book, so I kinda lifted it from him. I’ve been drawn to “Girl With Hair Ribbon” since I was in high school, mostly for the woman’s pose and expression. Not to get all artsy-fartsy here, but to me it always looked like she’s glancing over her shoulder and is intrigued by what she sees.

To recreate the painting, I enlarged and traced the image with a video projector, and  I filled in the lines with acrylic paint. I had some trouble figuring out how to paint the hundreds of tiny, round pixels for her skin, but after exploring art-supply stores, I found a large, single-hole punch with a diameter slightly wider than a nickel. I used it to create a stencil, punching a row of holes in a manila folder. I then dabbed pink paint over the stencil with pieces of a sponge. The first paint was applied to the shoulder, which is a little darker in color because I hadn’t yet found the correct mix of pink. Things went pretty smoothly up until I reached the bridge of her nose. Somehow the dots stopped lining up correctly. But I fudged it a bit, and by the time I applied the black outlines, she was looking pretty legit.

Since 2003, I haven’t attempted any projects of this scale, but I think now is a  good time to change that. I’m leaving for an extended-family vacation today, and Improv Is Good for You will be on hiatus until I get back. But when I return, I’m hoping to take the photoblog in new directions. Although I’m not really sure what those directions will be, I hope you will continue to visit. I am, as always, grateful for your patronage.

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