the autumn or the end of the autumn and so i started with a leaf and i have some leaves on the wall and so yesterday i kind of put a base coat down here and i'm going to show you guys just will do a leaf on the i'm able to sort of start with the base coat and then i'll just i'll just start adding to it so it's really quick for me i don't like to i don't use small brushes usually because they're too fine and i'm  i like to be messy so i like to use large brushes i always paint on board probably for the last eight years or so just because i'm  lazy to stretch canvases and i just get them cut to whatever size i want you know and they get a little there heavier than canvas you know to hang on the wall and stuff scratch to it's really just it's like building up texture you know so over the course lasers and then it will do in a few minutes was kind of let this drive it and at this point it's kind of a matter of like if i started rubbing right now it would just become smooth again so it's at a point where days reference and you know i'm going to i'm not going to try to i'm not going to try to render them perfectly i want to be a little bit more stylized my lines are going to be a little bit more kind of curvy probably  yeah so i do a rough outline kind of know where my tips are and i know kind of that i want my at least to and see part of what i love about the leaves is the stems like that's such a looks nice when it's just by itself in the white yeah so i'm going to end on and it probably up in that area all right so we're probably getting close to make a few more marks on it but we're getting close to the point of doing the weight so there's also if you look at the maple leaf there is these very three distinct the veins are ok so that's part of the beauty of it i want to make sure that i do something to honor  that so now is close to the point where i would start putting all the white background in some similar to so this is what i did with this one here you know in the end this this area like you were saying before is going to end up being the back end of the negative space and so you'll see that you know you can start you can see the background come through and that's that's intentional i don't want to just be a pure white i think i can keep going on with the white may keep your weight but i kind of like to see in some of the color through the back and then you really start to define the shape a lot more like right now as there's a lot of scribble in there i put in the end i think you know you'll be following you know i  on't follow the line exactly you know it's like here i decided to go in with outside of it but you start to make the nice curvy shapes and it'll it'll look style the stylistically a little bit more like this  year i've done a lot of paintings this year since i've had the studio since february and i think i'm up to about twenty paintings but one of the first things i did was kind of revisit my c e o series which started  back in two thousand and seven and some of those actually appeared in the belmont gallery show to in two thousand and eight i believe so it's kind of sad that i'm still kind of like that we have the same issue basically came about because  corporate greed and and the fact that the country is kind of a plutocracy and not a democracy anymore and you know it's kind of sad that i'm kind of still on the theme that we still have this issue that i feel you know it that you know compelled to paint it again done five years ago were actually quite a different style and since then i've done a series on facebook called the facebook which has all these very quick face drawings like really quick line drawings of funny faces some a very serious summertime goofy but these guys took on that look when i started these back in in the spring that they took on that look a lot more so kind of just very serious sort of very bold  this is this is a song by aloe blacc and it's just a part of one of his songs and i was like wow that i just felt like it really worked and but somehow bob dylan lyrics some some have woody guthrie lyrics and you know at some point these guys will sue me but yeah and this one the one nation under greed that was from the occupy movement that you know they had signs one nation under greed and i thought that was great and that was perfect for for reading on top three and saw some sharks the great the great black shark and the black golfer i'll probably end up doing three leaves i don't know it just kind of gives me time to explore it a little bit so these these are three other series i did this year the i mentioned the black golfer did a series of three of these it was probably april or may and i'm a golfer myself i love golf and this guy's kind nice because he's he's a little bit docile even though he looks he still could looks a little bit kind of scary he compared compared to this one this guy's kind of angry and yeah so  love just sort of what i like about this one is sort of the mark say in the background i mean this was sort of you know this was the background this is ifs and i sort of the black came in around it much like the way it goes in around the leaf you know also the background was just a bunch of color right and then i started making the face after that and then finally i did sharks and don't ask me like oh you know what it was why are shark it was during the late summer and that the shark scare on  the great black sharks and so the i initially initially started with this one and i was painting on like that and i was painting your i started by drawing when i was a little kid probably like you know most artists do my mom like my parents were creative people they had a theater and woodstock new york when i was very young and my mom did some painting that was that's one of the paintings behind me and and then my dad did a puppetry theater after sort of after the regular theater folded he had a partner and started a puppetry theater and his partner was a really big influence on me too in terms of his style he was going through a lot of cartoons all the time and i was you know seven eight nine years old and sort of tried to copy that and so that was probably the that was  i went to pratt which is an article in brooklyn i studied i studied graphic design that's what i graduated with a greek in degree in graphic design my mom said if you're going to art school you got to study something that's going to make you some money when you get out  for better or worse i still got a good grounding in in fine arts at pratt because you take you take like two years out here four years is as heavy duty fine art and but i graduated a degree in graphic design and then kind of became worked on the i was in my attic i wasn't painting as much hats at all why are you planning to promote yourself that let me ask you that i mean i was reading just the other day that roy lichtenstein spent eighty percent of his time marketing and twenty percent of his time painting and i think that's kind of what it is really what it takes so i mean web sites really important you have to have you have to have a really good portfolio site and one thing i've done so i've got my own portfolio site but i've also built a service for other artists photographers cake decorators jewelers to to to build a portfolio site for them as well and then have them give them the ability to edit it themselves afterwards so it's called portfolio spring so what is your what is your project painting prize day you know it's funny because you kind of it's the same thing with the web design work and i guess maybe most creative endeavors like even if you're not physically at your desk at you computer at the canvas doing it i think you're still thinking about it and i think that's the way it happens like i had mentioned before when i was doing the leads that was going to be a wolf and then i was kind of looking that day and i was like wow autumn is was in full bloom and it was bloom a had sort of this orange background so you know that is what i am going to try doing a leaf i never done a lease before it's kind of a little bit of a goofy subject but you know it's kind of fun to do it because i like the shaping the colors are cool so you kind of think about it right you go home