The idea is to recreate religious imagery of the plethora of Gods in the Hindu religion and perhaps some of the saints from Catholicism. I’m thinking in particular of the kitschy imagery on candles to be used on altars of the Hispanic flavor of the Catholic tradition.

I’m also using “India Bazaar” as reference, which has a great vintage look.

I’m not going to try to be ironic and clever as some sort of statement about religion, but rather to try and create vivid & enchanting imagery with current technology in this rich tradition. I won’t replicate the look of the pastel and airbrushed colors but try to make some really photo-realistic representations of the Gods and Goddesses.

I’ll be using the green screen I have set up in my studio space at tockwotten so I can make the backgrounds in post-production.

http://picasaweb.google.com/jay.gidwitz/PinUpsProjects#

I would shoot the photographs in front of green screen and then create the (usually sparse) environment in photoshop and then import the image into Painter X to make it look more like an organically painted image.

I would not just be recreating the look of pin-up illustrations, though; I want the models to have the “look” of belonging to various sub-cultures: hipsters, goth, with tattoos or mohawks etc. (Which I can do in photoshop afterwards if necessary).

The images would still be relatively tame to modern standards; the “oh golly!” look on the model’s face as for some reason a little bit of thigh or bum was being revealed, as was that style of illustration.

Or feel free to comment on the concept below.

But also when Richard Fishman, my teacher & mentor and friend looked around the room, and said: “You’re ready for a show. I mean this is a show, but you’re ready for a show.”

Wow! A real show not a student show. It’s been a long time coming… and the best part about it was I really respect Richard’s opinion. He really knows his stuff and doesn’t say things he doesn’t mean.

There’s some people who when they tell you things is means a lot more, because they don’t give compliments lightly and only do when you’ve really earned it.

1. Drawing what you see
2. Drawing what you see in your mind
3. Automatic drawing

1) Drawing from life

Drawing from life, or drawing what you’re looking at, can have smaller strategies contained within that strategy.

Drawing from life is about training your eye to see relationships. The relationships of the shapes, the relationships of the lights and darks and middle-tones, and color. While life drawing is a difficult skill for many to master, and I still have a long way to go, it is certainly a very learnable skill.

As a mentor once told me: “the more you learn, the more you realize how much more there is to learn.”

2) Drawing from your mind’s eye
Drawing from your mind could be into drawing from memory, or drawing from your imagination, or both. Training your visual memory is the quickest and easiest way to develop your ability to draw better what you see in your imagination, and to make that more vivid, and containing more details.

3) Automatic drawing
Automatic drawing is when you look at the pencil on the paper and just watch what comes out without thinking about it or thinking about it less and less, or not looking at the paper at all.

A note on flexibility and the integration of these techniques
Seasoned artist’s will probably end up using all these techniques together in various ways within the same image. The flexibility an artist can develop to call on any of these skills in any sequence and whenever the image requires it is key.

Credit to Richard Bandler for pointing out these three distinctions in strategies of drawing.