Abstract 012816

Today’s watercolor is a variation of yesterday’s, which was inspired by Kandinsky’s line drawings in front of a colorful background. As with my abstract of yesterday, I began with two lines intersecting at 90 degrees. I ended each line with a flourish, with the aid of a compass and added another concentric arc. Yesterday I […]

After Kandinsky

I wanted to make a colorful background and populate it with linear icons, a vision of something between Wassily Kandinsky and Joan Miró: line drawings standing  out against an alien landscape. I chose lemon yellow as my key color with the idea of adding reddish earth tones and a dash of green here and there. The […]

Young Mike Smiling

I have taken many photographs of my brother Mike and have painted his portrait numerous portraits of him. Mike has been a mystery to me my entire life: since the 1950s. He is very low functioning, has never spoken and is autistic. My motivation has been to try and understand what his mysterious facial expressions mean. […]

Amoebas in Love

Today’s post is a palette cleanser of sorts.  I completed the studies of my brother Mike from three frames of a movie my father took many years ago. Mike is autistic, nonverbal and very low functioning. The images from that series may be found in the following posts: Dark-Eyed Mike #1, Frame #2, Frame #3, Three Frames. […]

Time Continuum

The watercolor in today’s post is itself part of a continuum. It is based on yesterday’s post of my brother Mike’s changing expressions, which in turn was a compilation of posts from previous days (Dark-Eyed Mike #1, Frame #2, Frame #3). Mike is autistic, low functioning and nonverbal. As such, I have never been able to communicate […]

Three Frames

The triple portrait below depicts three frames of an 8mm film my father took of my brother Mike. Mike is autistic, low functioning and nonverbal. He is a mystery. I rendered each frame individually in previous posts:  Dark-Eyed Mike #1, Frame #2, Frame #3. The three portraits are also slices of time, the first moment represented […]

Frame #3

Something happened between frame 2 and 3 in the movie that my father took of my brother Mike. Mike is autistic, low functioning and has never spoken. He often would bite his hand and slap his head. I think he did this out of frustration, but that’s just a guess. Here is the third frame […]

Frame #2

Watercolor: Abstract Expressionist Portrait - Mike Frame #2

This is a continuation of yesterday’s post which was frame #1 in one of my dad’s 8mm of us kids back in the 1950s. I chose three frames of my brother Mike. Mike is autistic, low functioning and has never spoken. I was always difficult to get his attention, to say nothing of understanding what […]

Dark-Eyed Mike #1

Watercolor: Portrait of Mike from Frame 1 of 8mm Movie

I found a picture of my brother Mike, which reminded me of the photograph of myself that I have been working with for the past week or so.  In the low resolution photograph of me there was no detail in the region of my eyes, and yet as a whole it conveys complex emotion. Here […]

Other Eyes in My Life

In recent posts, I’ve explored the dark eyes in an old photograph of me. I worked with that photograph in the posts: ‘When are Portraits Self Portraits?‘, Dirty Blond, Negative Blond, Disorientation, Eye, Closer, and ‘Underworked?‘. I’m sure that I have squeezed much of the creative potential from that motif. Below is an array of photographs of eyes from my two […]

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