Inspiration

Ilya and Zoya Gaft

That's where he usually sits when teaching the class.

Zoya has always made the costumes for all the stage performances. Some are really georgous.

A new shoot is in the works. But I'll be honest I'm not totally feeling it these days and there's just so many things going on..... blah blah.

Anyway I wanted to post a few pics I took of Ilya Gaft. He's the owner of the New York Ballet Institute. Ilya's life story is long but in a nut shell he was born and raised in Russia. He spent his life studying ballet and pretty much devoted his life to ballet. He entered the famous Kirov ballet school in Saint Petersburg where he became a principal dancer and later a choreographer. Later he left Russia with nothing and started all over again in the US (with some stops in Europe). He worked for many years in NYC with his own theater company that he ran with his wife Zoya who was also a dancer (and opera singer). After suffering a heart attack he decided to settle outside of the city where today he still runs his own school. He is now 75 years old and teaches ballet everyday. He still moves amazingly well and it is astonishing how he comes up with routines on the fly, often I think his mind works better then mine. He lives and breaths ballet. The most fascinating thing to me is how emotional he is. When he is in a bad mood or a good mood you can always tell because it will reflect on his routines. Sometimes he closes his eyes and makes us listen to a particular part of a song because it is so beautiful. He puts a lot of emphasis on understanding the emotional side of dancing not just the technical side.

Postcard Art Benefit

4"x6" birch wood postcards

Medium: colored pencil, micron pens and glossy varnish.

Here are my two pieces for the Brownstones to Red Dirt Art Benefit, the deadline is tomorrow. I'm not happy with the scan, they just don't look quite right, and they don't show off the gloss varnish. I tried scanning them a few times but couldn't get them much better. As mentioned all the postcards will be for sale on Ebay on March 6rd. All the money from the benefit will go to the orphans in Freetown, Sierra Leone. I'm actually very excited about the auction and am hoping to get my hands on some of the original art works. I've got my eye on Jeremy Geddes, Olivier Tossan and Dermont Powers pieces........... so stay away from those :)!

Family

Thought I'd post a few portraits I took of my father. I think they capture him well.

La Vie En Rose

I was happy with the way the dress turned out. It's the same painted fabric as the background. Feels a bit like paper. It amazes me is how perfect Shelleys skin is. Granted she's wearing a ton of make up (on face and body) but still her skin is so smooth. Pretty girl.

Model: Shelley H.
Make Up: Lauren Weber

La Vie En Rose - Preview

Finally. I can't believe my last shoot was in August. I was excited to work with Shelley. I saw her in a restaurant and spontaneously decided to ask her if she'd sit for a portrait. We literally spoke for about 2 minutes and I gave her my card. She called me back the next day and agreed. I have to admit I was a tad nervous since it's been months since I had met her and I knew nothing about her. Also was nervous that she might bail out the last minute. Not only was she reliable, she was incredible to work with. I always have a clear vision of what I want the shoot to end up looking like and it's amazing when it actually works out. She was totally what I had in my mind. And that girl has stamina she sat still on that chair for hours, never complained.



As for the set. The big thing was that I really wanted to paint the backdrop. I wanted it to feel a bit like a painting. I also wanted her to wear the same painted fabric so she would blend in more with the background. I have never painted on fabric before and didn't know what I was doing. Since I needed a large quantity of paint I couldn't use fabric paint. I found on the Internet a product called textile medium that I mixed in with the paint. This prevented the paint from cracking. I didn't want to pay a lot of money for the paint so I just bought some cheapo kids paint. I had NO time to prepare for this shoot. I wanted to stain her finger tips red and didn't have time to properly test the staining out, ended up using a combination of food coloring, juice and icing. I started ironing the backdrop a few days before because it literally takes days to get all the damn wrinkles out, if you've been following my blog you know by now that I'm obsessed with wrinkles. The night before I started painting the backdrop. I didn't finish until 2am. I was worried that it wouldn't dry in time. This was especially a problem since she was to wear part of the fabric as a dress.

Everything went smoothly. I set up the heaters in front of the drying paint and it actually was all dry in time. The only major problem was that the hairstylist cancelled a half hour before the shoot. That sent me in bit of a panic mode. I'm not very good at doing hair plus I brought nothing with me to actually do hair! So I ran over to Duane Read and bought a cheapo curling iron and a huge can of ultra strong hairspray. In the end I have to admit I didn't need anybody to do hair anyway since I went with open hair. Lauren did make up, she's so talented. I was very specific about what I wanted and she nailed it, love her! Shelley I would work with again any day.

This shoot was all about color and feel.

Bubble girl

Random shot I took over the weekend. Just liked the framing and feel of it... reminded me a bit of an illustration.

... and back to sculpting for a bit.

A new photo shoot is in the works but I'm also back to sculpting once a week again so here's my update.

Uhm yeah, this is still the same sculpture I started in 2007. If you've been following my blog you'll have seen this project slowly progress. I've never worked on anything as long as I have on this. I just get too busy with other stuff. The upside is every time I do go back to working on this it's amazing how I look at it differently. I've also learned a ton about how to manipulate and change things that I thought were quite permanent. I've baked this sculpture multiple times at different stages only to then take half of it off again. Although dremeling off baked clay is a pain. Last time I posted her she had thick Farrah Fawcett hair. I didn't liked the hair, it was just too much, it took over the whole shape. So I thinned it way out. I decided to change the whole hairdo. I parted the hair more over to one side in order to add a hair clip later. This meant that I had to shave and cut of pounds and pounds of clay. I also am going to change how the hair drapes over her shoulder. Alena pointed out that her left ear was far too large and high up. Funny, I never noticed it before but definitely agreed with her that it was weird. I had to cut off the ear and re-sculpted it a tad lower and smaller. Next I'm going to go in and add in clay and re-sculpt the hair shapes.

Big thank you to the amazing Alena who as taught me everything I know about sculpting (and thanks for all the pictures she's been taking of the progress).

Older posts:
Second post
First post

01.08 - Old crazy hair

08.09 - Baked hair. Starting to cut and reshape hair.

Spray painted surface and dremeling hair to thin it out.

A) "Before ear" with drawn in corrections. B) After dremeling off ear and basic reshaping.

10.09 - Further cut off hair and recreated mesh to make the hair flow better.

New mesh.