Figures in Drink

These paintings are done with Coffee or Wine.  I started doing them after the Jesus Coffee painting I did earlier.

2006 Zinfandel Mendocino County (Red Truck) on Fabriano 300 cold-press.

Batman in Coffee Lucky Jack organic coffee on Fabriano 300gsm.

Eric Bibb – Red Wine (2006 Zinfandel Mendocino County - Red Truck) on Fabriano 300gsm cold-press

Figure in Coffee - 2011-02-09 Looks like I need to make stronger coffee.

Jesus Coffee

I had the book The Origins of Christian Art on my desk while I was working and I absent-mindedly put my coffee mug on top it.  When I lifted it up I thought it’d be fun to see a halo around the Jesus figure done in coffee.  S

So here are the results of my experiments:

This is a portrait of jesus done with organic coffee on watercolor paper.

Domino Effect WIP

 

 

This was a self-promotional piece done as Mubarak was being overthrown.

The idea was to show how popular uprisings, not necessarily military actions, were starting to topple dictators in the middle east.  And how this would result in a domino effect in other places.

At this point I’d already drawn and had a cartoon published in the online foreign affairs magazine Current Intelligence.

 

Here’s the initial sketch:

First colors.

The colors I selected were Green, Red and Black.  In countries in the middle east green can represent new life, red can represent victory, white; purity.   Using this palette could be tricky because, to western eyes, these colors could have completely different meanings.

Below is my analysis of the movement in the drawing:

As you can see, I added some people at the bottom to represent the popular source of the uprising.  The arrows represent the movement I could see in the drawing, and it wasn’t turning out very dynamic.  The dudes were also looking a bit angry and the dimensions called for in the layout would have made their expressions and features unreadable.  Their style was also not matching the rest of the illustration.

On to the next iteration:

I replaced the figures with arms and now you can see how the lines of movement are more dynamic.

 

I made the arms a little smaller and worked them into the background.

Here is the final illustration in a sample layout.