Palm Trees

Tropical Flower

First Memory as an Artist

Magican II

Magician I

Portrait of Carlos

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 / Poster

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.

Man on train

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.

Interactive Vending Machine

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.

Zoink Identity

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?

Still life with Lamp and Flowers

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.

Still life with Lemon

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".

Peter with Sombrero

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.

Homeless Man

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.

Tibetan Musicians at Lhasa

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.

Nina, Pinta and Santa Maria

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.

Medieval Identity

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!

Walking Muse

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.

Sleeping Beauty

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.

Uzhgorod – the first memory

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.

Flower drawing sketch

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.

Jasmina

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!

Sourceful Universe

It was miserably cold and windy and imaginary girl was trapped in the turmoil of swirling dead leaves of one of the October nights in no-man's land. Only the idea of "sourceful Universe" has kept her wandering warm and purposeful.

imaginary girl in a orange dress

One of the sketches I created in my orange period of a girl that I dreamed off the night before. She had a fantastic dress full of waves and floating lines and she was illuminated with her inner warm.

Fantastic Wave

A study of a wave before it breaks.

Banyan tree in Hilo

There is a place in rainy old Hawaiian Hilo called Banyan Bay with monumental banyan trees. They are very old trees that keep growing from the moisture they get from rains.

Oh happy day!

I wish I know all the trees names, like this one, let's call it "tropical umbrella tree". It was one hot day with the sun up high in the sky, the temperature could be 100 degrees, so I hide myself under this tropical umbrella tree and draw. You see the outcome. The location is Mauna Kea resort with beautiful white sand beach and Aloha dancers.

Mighty Steep Coast at Waipio Valley

I still wonder why reggae music is so popular on the island. Bob Marley did break through and came up with some unique island tunes to inspire the folks around the globe to tranquility and peace! Emancipate yourself into slavery, Yeahs Bobby sing to me...

It's all about the mark-making, feeling the momentum and catching the poetical winds of thoughts coming through your life experience. One is good at writing things down, one is good at producing things, there is one and there is none.

Down by the ocean

Waipio Valley, the valley of the Kings! It's an amazing place where you go the get lost and forget about the 21 century civilization. Surrounded by mighty tropical volcano cliffs that are very steep, it is also a part of rain Forrest climate zone. Surrounded with multitude of various trees and bushes the area is famous for it's difficult-to-get to location. It's the steepest ever drive way is thin and with 45 degrees angle. The vehicle could only be SUV with 4-wheel drive and the driver cannot use the breaks. Once you're down you can bump into running wild horses and camping hippies.

Two Palms

For all the love of the hot weather and all palm trees there are in the world!
I religiously admire to draw them!