Groovin' Street Art Portrait

                                                                  Groovin'
                                                                   9"x12"
                                                                   Acrylic
Got my gansta on - doing a little street art today.  Well trying to bring it, here is another more abstract style based on street art.  I don't exactly have the color blocking done in some of the more spontaneous styles, but the background certainly embraces the graffiti feel.

This picture has been in my head for quite a few years.  But I just didn't think I could paint it.  Now all of a sudden, without a lot of planning, stressing and apprehension, it just flowed onto the paper.

While there isn't a whole lot of painting in this piece, it did take me two days.  I put the background together and because there was a whole lot of paint (I used a palette knife to lay in the colors and move them around) I needed to let it thoroughly dry for 24 hours.  There is some texture on this piece from the thickness of the paint.  This is on a piece of watercolor paper that I am trying to figure out how to use and it actually handled it pretty well.  Buckled like heck the first day when putting the background on but ,because it was taped, it did straighten back out after it dried.  Then today I just decided to pull out the essential parts of the musician and I was on my way.

I really wanted you to feel this piece, really hear the music, so I simplified and tried to let the background provide the movement and energy of the music.  I cut back everything, but if you look hard at the background you can see parts of the musician's shirt which gives his body more substance.  And what street performer doesn't have a super looking time piece?  Anyway, this was a ton of fun and next time I am going to try harder to get the color blocks in whether I can find it from the initial background or if I need to lay it in.  I think the secret there is to do larger flat swatches of color.

Thanks for stopping by and hope you don't hum the Young Rascals Groovin' the rest of the day.

There's always lots of things that we can see
We can be anyone we want to be
And all those happy people we could meet just

Groovin', on a Sunday afternoon
Really couldn't get away too soon