Amadazzle!

Since there has been some interest, here is a series of the tiger in progress:



And also a closeup of the eyes, both before and after digital processing:



Christina Davison

Thanks for the progress pic's Christina.

How long did the tiger take you? The eye work alone is so incredibly detailed, with the little highlighting and contrast lines adding such depth and realism. You are incredibly talented

Also, do you mind me asking - how long have you been painting? I know you also do other art too.

This tiger took about 3 hours to complete, from the time she sat down to the last photo, so I'm not entirely certain of actual painting time. But obviously not something that would be done at a gig, LOL.

I didn't start painting anything until the summer of 2004, which is when I added cheek art to my pony ride / petting zoo party business. In November 2005, I painted my first full face designs (on friends and relatives), and then first offered them at an event in January 2006 (I was so scared! LOL).

These Zoodiac paintings were done for an art gallery exhibit at a bookstore coffee shop, and were all painted between June - October 2007.

I have only recently begun painting in other mediums, like acrylic and oils, but face painting is still my favorite, probably because of the "instant gratification" factor, and that my canvas smiles when I'm done

Christina Davison

hey christina,

you are amazing!!

now, tell us how you don't even paint with the hand/side that has natural motor skills!!

i don't remember the whole story...but, i know at a la fete, you said you had to train yourself to paint with the opposite hand!!??

now WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOW!!!!

ox
rebecca

amadazzle wrote:
Yes, as a matter of face, I had wanted to do a Ram, but couldn't figure out a way to do the horns with just makeup, LOL. The bison was one thing, having to paint a horn in his curly hair and make it look decent, but ram horns? Nope, that one didn't make it.

Also, I absolutely HATED the eagle, and still do. Probably for the very reason you mentioned, it just didn't fit right

Christina
www.amadazzle.com

Ooooh! A ram would have been neat, but yeah, I can see the problem. I love how you incorporated the hair as part of the design on so many of those, particularly the lion and the horse. (That horse still amazes me; the foreshortening is fantastic.)

This is making me think I should carry around a book of animal pics, just so I can be ready when somebody asks for something out of the usual tiger/dog range - instead of saying, "oh, sorry, I don't know how to do that" - just take a stab and see what happens. Clearly there is so much more possible than we tend to assume.

LOL, I just noticed my typo in my previous post, "as a matter of FACE", heheh...

Anyway, what I was going to say in reply was that I LOVE having an iphone so that I can look up things for reference when people ask me for off-the-wall things. I've been asked for a lot of things that I've never heard of, mostly the things kids are interested in these days. If I'm not sure, I look it up!

And replying to Rebecca, there are two parts to that story I think. One is that I have used both hands for face painting for quite a while now, mostly to make symmetry easier while I'm sitting down to paint. But the rest of that story is that I had to have rotator cuff surgery a year & a half ago, and in order to paint AT ALL, I had no choice but to use only my left hand/arm for at least six weeks following surgery.

I had all my gigs covered by my other painters for that time period, but I still found that I couldn't stay away from my work, so 6 days after surgery, I went in to Jump-n-Jive (kids' play place with bounce houses) to visit with my painter who was working there, and ended up doing a few myself, entirely left-handed. As "luck" would have it, a guy there wanted me to paint something "really cool" on his back, so this is what resulted:



This is a pic of me in my sling working on it:



Couldn't help but laugh, even though I couldn't use it, my right hand INSISTED on holding a brush anyway, just so it could "help" my left hand. I almost felt like my right hand was getting really frustrated at how stupid my left hand is in comparison, LOL

Christina

Ohhhhhh man, Christina!

That is beyond awesome...and with your 'other hand' too...

Where DO you get your inspiration?

So brilliant!