One of the most spectacular and ominous churches in the world, it's the embodiment of Roman Catholic Church. Designed by Michelangello, Bramante with sculptures by Bernini, St. Peter's Cathedral is believed to be the tomb of St. Peter. The photo is HDR - taken with 3 different apertures and combined in Photomatix.
I went to Rome for the past Thanksgiving for a few days, and was absolutely amazed by this ancient city! I saw a lot of inspiring works of art from Greek and Roman sculpture, to Colosseum, to mind-blowing sculptures of Bernini, Sistine Chapel by Michelangello and Vatican rooms by Rafael. I took many pictures of artworks. sculpture, city scenes and anything that I though looked interesting, and everywhere I looked all around me was all inspiring and breathtaking! This shoot of Mythological depiction of Laocoon is in Vatican in the garden composed of ancient Roman sculptures, that were found in escalation in the Forum area of Ancient Rome.
I have some free time these days and I plan to upload all my pictures on my flickr, please check some of them here
One of my favorite acrylic paintings I have done quickly with striking pose and energetic brushstrokes. I think I've captured the moment of time full of inspiration and expression.
Acrylic paints on canvas paper, 24 x 34'
Rain (the name of the actress) was a fascinating fashion model! She had the best poses and strikes for her audience. She is black and she doesn't hide it, that's why I think she is terrific!
Study of a woman's back, some sketches of woman sitting.
Black and red charcoal on paper 24x32'
One beautiful day, me and my friend Tajna went to the Governor's Island, a truly beautiful place to spend a day outside of noisy NYC. I was equipped with Canon 40D bunch of lenses and reflectors + Tajna's video camera. It was a busy and fun day full of creativity and freedom. I have shoot the video and Tajna edited and created the music for it.
This view was taken from one of my trips to the West Coast. The plane would fly from JFK airport and make a round turn towards the west and flew right above the Manhattan island. I always try to take a seat next to the window. I am not afraid of heights, I think I overcame that fear in childhood.
I used the picture I took as a reference to draw out and create my first lithograph. I learned new medium as well as challenged myself to draw size-down skyscrapers looking like abstract shapes.
If you haven't seen an artist Stephen Wiltshire draw views of Rome, Tokio, New York from memory.
INFLUX is a series of music videos that I created in 2006-2007. The idea was about change, fluctuation of time and space. I biked every morning before I went to work and filmed scenes in and around NYC in 50 miles radius. It took more than a year of biking and filming to capture the transformation and the INFLUX of Big Apple as well as my own.
One of the most inspiring models we had was Aviva Stone, who inspired a lot of NYC artists. I currently learned that she passed away last year.
During 2003-2004 I was running figure sketch class at Parsons School of Design.
Every Friday from 3 to 9pm there would be 3-5 models posing in front of a packed class of 40 people. We would start up with 5 seconds drawings to warm up, and later on 2 minutes, 5 minutes and 15 minutes long poses. In one session I would create a pad full of drawings. It was a great exercise. At that time the Austrian chick that i wanted to hang out with, totally ignored me, so it was a great deal to draw nudes to get myself occupied and not thinking of her.
I wish I remember all the models names, they were mostly undiscovered actors or dancers, performers or artists. Most of them were very good at striking a pose and holding it for certain time. I would always have a book of other artists in front of me as I would study the human form as well as other artists. Later on I started to distort some of the features I saw on the human body, characterizing it's unique posture. After all distorting is fun!
Black ink and water on paper 24x30
From Chris Young's drawing class in Parsons School of Design
Carlos was one of my favorite model to draw and paint back in school. He resembled the models Velazquez would use in his paintings, one of the biggest inspiration from the classical Spanish painting. Velazquez, Rembrandt, Michelangelo, Raphael, Leonardo da Vinci were among the first I admired and studied their art and skills.
Boards of Canada was introduced to me by one of my friend back in college and I started to like them a lot. It's a Scottish electronic music duo consisting of brothers Mike Sandison and Marcus Eoin. Their music has unique tunes, textures, a fine mixture of electronic and acoustic sounds. The sonic blends create some inspiring spaces.
I always wanted to see them play live in NYC, but they are not as popular in the US as they are in Europe.
Commuting on the NYC subway for the past 12 years, I have seen all kinds of stuff, here are some of them: dancing Santa with a throwing stick in July, woman with a bible screaming about Jesus coming, a man fake-crying showing his drug prescriptions and begging for money ( i saw the same guy waiting in line in one of the banks, he deposited his cash), there were clowns, pre-teens acrobats that work in teams, and lot's of more. But this man with a bike had 33 flags from around the world on his wheel - was different. I wonder, why would you wanna go on the train, if you have a bike...Oh I got it, because there is a lot more audience, and you will be noticed. For all respect, the man with a bike, was way to cool not to make a drawing of him.
Samsung has created an innovative, interactive vending machine with touch screen technology. It's full interactive sophistication with users transcends the usual "toss the coin, get the can" experience. I think we're getting closer to "Blade Runner" super-computer reality, where computer operating systems will not only be in our workplaces or homes, but on the streets, movie theaters and other public places.
Tommy Kane did creative direction, Cris Collins did the photoshoot, I created the designs for the vending machine.
The agency where I am freelancing for the moment asked me to create a genetic looking can / soda product so they can illustrate the new interactive vending machine made by Samsung. The Samsung has created the new generation interactive vending machine and a few world brands already picked up the idea and started utilizing in in the real world. Guess what companies picked up the idea?
Simon Carr – one of my teacher of Art History and Drawing from Parsons, had invited me to his summer house in Upstate NY for a few days, where we painted the scenes around his farm or his summer home. It was a great experience to be out in the woods away from NYC and just create your art. Here is a still life I painted in the Carr's house with yellow flowers, lamp and deer horns.
BTW, Simon Carr is a son of famous beat-generation writer Lucien Carr, who introduced my favorite Jack Kerouac to Allan Ginsberg way back in 1940's in NYC.
In a simple still life study you can detect the most complicated relationships and attitudes as you get in everyday life. Although the objects, fruits shapes are not of the same property, they project or reflects their colors onto the surrounding objects or entities. In other words, a persons entering the room can have the same attitude with the reflections of his/her opinions onto the others, thus influencing them with his "colors".
A friend of mine from Slovakia was visiting NYC at the time when I was working on these series "New Yorkers". We went to the same art school in Kosice and we once worked together on the restoration of baroque building way back in 1995. He said he liked New York very much and felt the multi-cultural vibe. He wasn't born here but he respected the people around him and was a little bit of New Yorker himself for time being.
A portrait of a homeless man, whom I asked on the street if he would be interested to be my model for a series called "New Yorkers". He said he liked art and was proud of himself, too bad I don't remember his name.
It' a mixed media / collage with my own photographs of various places in NYC, with a drawings of shellac, black and brown ink on the illustration board.
I always admired Tibetan culture: their Buddhist traditions, Mandala drawings, original depictions of deities, meditation in the caves, their peaceful look on the world despite Chinese occupation of their land. Of course, every artist who admires their culture would like to visit the Himalayas. Although I never been to Tibet, I visited their culture through books, museums and movies I've seen and here is the depiction of the Tibetan musician who perform a religious ceremony in holy city Lhasa.
As a kid I was always fascinated with ships, planes, bicycles, submarines and cars, etc. They represent the man's ability to create the ideas of travel, discovery and excitement far beyond usual voyage by foot. Imagining Columbus and his crew traveling in the open see at about 3-4 miles and hour, in big hope to discover the shortcut to golden land of Asia, and they stumbled upon the new world.
The 3 Ships here represent the idea of man's desire to go beyond what is seen, to the new scales and unseen horizons. "3 Ships" is an idea for the large glass on Time Warner building located on Columbus circle in New York City.
In 14th century, in times of reformation and pseudo-feudal society in christian Europe, every advanced tribe, country, army or product-maker had to have some kind of mark that will identify "it" among the others. Most of the time the shields had depictions of an animal that is unique to the country origin, or a symbol that brings good luck and fortune and protects the people from evil. My mother's family got one as well that dates back to 1280, and it's coming from the Czech-Moravian background. It has a depiction of a bear holding a sword standing on the hill and defending the people from wrong-doers. Well, at least I can call myself bohemian!
In the ideal world, an artist is inspired by the surrounding world and ideas fly around in the invisible world, but once in a while it presents itself in some kind of high-pitched voice and it asks itself to draw me! In not so ideal world, the muze comes but there is no time to capture her.
I have always admired Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres Obelisques, his nudes are shaped with perfection of form and plasticity. Somewhat unconsciously I see his influences in my earlier drawings, but I am trying to push the idea of "fantasm and imagination" to grow from the drawing itself. Drawing is just a series of lines and shapes, that make it look poetical, dreamlike or realistic depiction of artist imagination or distorted reality.
One of the first assignments when I started the etching class back in 2003 was to recreate your first memory as an artist. I remember when my mom took me to the city, it was a gloomy and gray day, with people looking heavy and tired, and the streets were dump from recent rain. And of course from a child perspective everything looked enormous in size. I remember the women wore the same wooden heels platforms, that rose them up by 5 inches high, and men were smoking pipes and watching women passing by.
The perspective on things changed of course dramatically, Uzhgorod – my native city in Ukraine has completely changed and metamorphosed into a classic European undiscovered jewels. It got western influences such as modern advertisement, fashion boutiques and asian cousins on the sidewalkes, but one things still remains the same, how come 2 story buildings made such an enormous effect on the kid.
One beautiful morning I started doodling and 10 minutes later I doodled a flower of some sort. I like this sketch and would like to color it sometimes in the future. I will post the colored one as soon as I am done.
Here is link to colored illustration.
Here is a sketch of my friend Jasmina sitting on a bench in Washington Square Park. I did a photo shoot with her one cold day on February or early March and wanted to make a portrait painting.From more than 50 shoots I like this one. Maybe one day I make an oil painting of Jasmina!
