Guest Post: Andrea

Artist: Natalie Irish of Houston, Texas

First Piece: Marylin Monroe

Jackson Pollock's drips have been surpassed by portraits painted with kisses. On a large scale canvas, Irish creates close-up portraits that tend to go no futher than the shoulders. Irish achieves a monochramatic color scheme by selecting only one shade and brand of lipstick per compostiton. The darker values near the right side of the face as well as the shadows under her neck are created through numerous, successive layers of the lipstick. Lighter values are achieved by varying the pressure of her kisses. To begin, Irish concentrates on the eyes and close facial features, then proceeds to build of the contour lines of the head, neck, shoulders, and hair.

Second Piece: Jimi Hendrix
 

Irish played a video of Hendrix on a TV set beside her canvas reference material. Her method requires her to stand and physically move around the canvas. The thinner or more curved lines are made by puckering out her bottom lip. Irish does not fill in the entire figure, but rather choose to employ thin lines of color to suggest some of the contour lines of the neck and shoulders. On some of her other pieces, Irish paintst the background beforehand. Then, on a small pallet, she mixes tiny amounts of pigment and when she has the right shade, she smears this on her lips and paints. With these type of compositions, she uses up to three colors. Her method also requires her to constantly shift from working close to the canvas to standing futher away to assess her progress.

Sources:


-natalieirish.com

-http://www.dailymail.co.uk/ushome/index.html

-http://www.odditycentral.com/videos/incredibly-talented-artist-paints-with-her-lips.html