I can not ignore the voice and sheer talent that Aretha Franklin has showcased. Let it be known that she is the quintessential Queen of Soul. I’ve always enjoyed her popular songs such as, “Respect”, “Think”, and “A Natural Woman”. Such hits were created when she signed on to Atlantic. Her albums, “Lady Soul” and “Soul 69” show how deep the woman can go.
When I got older I started looking back at her years when she was with Columbia Records. I was taken back to hear a different sound than what I was used to. I heard a strong jazz influence. I loved it! Songs like, “Nobody Like You” and “Skylark” are some of her best songs from Columbia. A deeper appreciation for her music came from my soul searching of Aretha. It was her Columbia years that I chose the song for this episode.
I was happy to have on board Dj Drez remixing her song, “One Step Ahead”. He gave it a little update that I find enjoyable and fitting to my style of painting. Drez has been a strong pillar in LA’s Hip Hop culture and continues to push the sound to new levels. Having him on the After Midnight series is a blessing and a new direction.
If you guys haven’t heard of this guys music, you need to check it out here on itunes. The link will take you to his album that is setting a new sound of hip hop and indian music. The image that I produced above is for his second Volume of Jahta beats. In order for me to paint his cover he hit me off with a copy of the music and let me tell you… it is off the hook. I’m really excited that I was able to do this cover. I hope you guys like it and please support Dj Drez… aka Doctor EZ… click here for a bigger look at it.
The details are starting to fall into place. My students are feeling really comfortable with themselves and the group. They are working at such a fast pace that I sometimes have to think of new ways to keep them busy. My students are the cats pajama’s! As you look at the pictures below, you can see the finish product peaking out from the scaffolding. the orange group had the challenge of making that rainbow as clean as possible.
My red group started to understand the importance of tones as they had to readjust the shades of the tree and snake. I mentioned to them that all the forms needed to be distinct from one another so that wouldn’t guessing as to what the viewer was seeing.
The blue and purple group were chugging right along with minor changes. I told them that this was it. This is where the idea was coming to life…so no messing around!
I started a painting for someone on monday. I had to work on some other projects before I could begin on it today. I started lolli-gaggin’ for about an hour so I’m calling it quits for the evening. Once I’m finished with it I will give the low-down for who it’s for. I’m sculpting this puppy so colors may change at any moment.
The person I’m doing it for is a Disc Jockey that bridges hip hop with his yoga way of life. The blend is cool and the music that he makes with it is off the hook!
Once again…I’m back at the world famous Mint club. I’ll be painting to the sounds of the Kevin Kanner Quintet. Check out this video of Ro Hargrove blessing the audience..
The color white was here and it allowed for all the tones to follow. I created color charts for each picture frame. I wanted them to understand what colors they needed for their sections and I wanted them to depend on themselves for creating colors. I always told them that I’m not responsible for the micro-management of their projects. That was to be their land of rule. I prescribed everyone into 4-6 groups to tackle the wall. I had people working on the sky scene, tree-horizon line, the green banner and the picture frames.
I had to make sure that my students were being very definitive in their fill-ins and outlines. I did not want the mural to be good from far but far from being clean. I wanted all colors to meet where they were supposed to; and I wanted the colors to be solid… not porous from the cinder block surface.
I also wanted them to be in total communication with each other…
And as the day grew darker I noticed that everyone was still here. They are Diehards!
you can see the tree line coming into effect and everybody is noticing their small sketches coming into grand reality. I taught them in the beginning that we were not going to do gradients and fades. I thought this would be too challenging to some and it would leave the mural to unexpected risks. So my peoples in the red group tried to sneak some fades into the painting… sorry guys… gotta stick to the program.
the first night of real painting was an astounding one. I can’t believe we did this all in one night. At this point I knew we were golden to finish in time. From here on out… it was going to be all about tightening the painting over and over again.
My students and I were interviewed by KLCC/NPR about the mural. It was a chill day for an interview.
the first to speak was Melena. Scott was second, followed by Helms…after him was jennifer and Barbara. The girl on the left of the two is Lilly. Nicole was next and then Kirby was the last to say his thing.
Well let’s see… Brushes, check. Containers? check. All colors accounted for? Yup! Okay….I got my black….wait a minute! Where’s my white??!?!??!? The good people at Nova color did their job perfectly. It looks like UPS messed up the delivery. After talking to Nova color; they said that they would ship my 5 gallon of white next day air and which ever shipment came first we would accept. The other would be denied and returned to sender. I love their paint and there service is second to none! Thanks you guys!
But that still leaves me with a bunch of students that are hungry to paint. I had to think about what I was going to do. The color white is very crucial and not having it meant we were very, very, very limited in what we could do today. I had to tell my students the deal and get them on my level of concern.
All hope wasn’t lost. It actually worked out for the best because I had my students outline the initial sketch and get them to tighten up or ask questions about unclear lines. Another thing that was cool; was that some of my students hadn’t touched a paint brush before and this was going to be their introduction to painting 101. With that in mind I briefed them on what kind consistency they should make their paints. I taught them how to load their brush with paint…yadda yadda yadda. I knew everyone was getting excited so I let them go to the wall with their brushes.
I must express again that NOT having the color white for our first day was probably the best thing that could happen for to us. Let me explain: They knew and developed the sketch. They were able to trace it the night before and today they had to re-outline it. I believe this gave them greater familiarity with the mural’s design. Every so often I would walk back and view the wall. It was really cool to see scaffolding and all my students working simultaneously. They were under my guidance, but honestly; they were doing it on their own.
What do you do when you see something like this? Do you run in the other direction? I wouldn’t recommend that. We have a job to do. my art army showed up with a lot of excitement. This was the day that they were waiting for. But hold on…it’s not like you can just go up to the wall and paint. Prior to even painting we went over the final draft. We visualized our plan of attack. I reminded them that we must start from the furthest background and move to the foreground. The next thing we needed to do was lay out our grid. We were working with 3″ squares in paper and now they were going to have grid the wall in 3 foot intervals. 3 inches to 3 feet is a wicked challenge. It was even more of a challenge to get the snap line tools to work properly. The first problem we ran into was the color of the chalk, which was peach. Now how are we supposed to make distinguishable straight lines when the chalk lines blend in with the wall? I send a person to the local hardware store to pick up a blue color. Now everything should work out, right? Wrong!
We get hit with knots in the line. These are 100 foot snap lines. This is supposed to be the easiest thing to do… but nooooooooo. So we have to buy some new ones. We were lucky because I really needed the night time for the projector. So while all this was going on we still had hours to spare. I had to remind myself about that aspect. Once we got everything in order I had my students working together flawlessly. They kept themselves in check by making sure all lines were even and perpendicular.
After the grid was complete we had to play the waiting game because were going to project the image on to the wall using a high powered image projector.
My students were starting to understand what was happening. They saw why the grid was important and knew that the projected images needed to fit within certain squares. Armed with contractor crayons they went to the wall and started to trace the images. We had to do it in sections so part of the challenge was lining up the new projected image with the previously traced image. When you have this many people working together… the challenges we encountered were mere speed bumps. This evening was all about getting the grid up and attaching the image to that grid. My students are the best!
