The Purple Haze

The Purple Haze

What do you see
In the haze of her purple night?
Glinting eyes,
Teasing smile shining bright?

What do you smell
In the dark of her purple room?
When she buds
Like her lilac in bloom?

What do you feel
In the bed of her purple rose?
Trembling touch,
The sweet pain as it grows?

What do you hear
At the dawn of her purple day?
Silent voice
That keeps asking "Please stay?"

* * *

I wrote this small poem shortly after finishing the artwork. I was looking at it and the verses began to float in my head, just like that. It's strange, because I don't write poems on regular basis -- I have written a few in my youth, but who hasn't? And they were all in Georgian, so this would be my first poem in English.

Anyway, back to the artwork. It's sort of a commission, only I don't get paid for it -- just an old promise redeemed. My friend, who is the model in this picture and the "client" at the same time, has a thing for lilacs and all related tints and hues, so the color choices were obvious. Since I rarely work with purple and violet, it was a good opportunity to visit that unexplored part of the spectrum and play around. Also, it was my second time with oil pastels -- another virgin soil for me. Thus my enjoyment from the process was doubled.

I chose a bluish-violet pastel paper, very toothed and very hard. Not the best choice for oil pastels, but I like the canvas feel it provides. The size of the paper was another rarity for me -- most of my works don't exceed standard A4 size, and this one makes a whopping (for me, that is) 40 cm square. But, despite the size, the drawing didn't took much time -- the paper was quite dark, so I didn't have to cover all the surface. I managed in two days. The portrait came out a bit darker than most of my other works, and a lot rougher around the edges than my usual style, but I don't complain -- change of pace is always refreshing.

Tamro

It may sound strange, but this simple Ossetian countrywoman was my first guide into the mysterious World of Art. She's my late grandmother's sister, and I often visited her in my childhood days. Back then she was a teacher of drawing at her local village school, and her house was full of art related textbooks and publications. We spent countless evenings just browsing through them and talking about art. I've been drawing pictures since I was knee-high to a grasshopper, but it was those unforgettable evenings that kindled a real flame from the little spark I always carried in my heart.

This portrait is my first attempt in oil pastels. It's been drawn on a toothed pastel paper, which proved to be quite a challenge with this viscid medium. The old lady looks as if she's troubled or in pain, but don't worry -- it's her regular expression due to the permanent facial nerve damage she received in her adolescence. It gives her a unique twisted smile, which I find most heart-warming and adorable.

Easter Levitation

Here it is at long last -- my belated Easter tribute. I intended to finish it for the Orthodox Easter, which fell on the 19th of April this year, but my designer's work interfered, as always.

In the picture there are four levitating objects, associated with Easter. The first one is a buxus leaf (in Georgia we use buxus instead of palm branches); below it there is a chalice from which the red wine is pouring down, painting an Easter egg; at the bottom you can see a slice of paska -- a sweet bread with raisins, traditionally prepared at Easter in Georgia.

Art Holding Logo

This one went surprisingly fast, smooth and easy. The whole process of creation and endorsement took only one day. The task was to create a simple, good-looking, modern logo for an art holding company, without going to great conceptual lengths. I was given only a couple of days, so I had a certain skepticism regarding the quality of the final product. But fortunately, my worst expectations proved to be wrong: the logo came out neat and solid. It surely was no world-beater, but the client was happy with the product, which was quite enough for me, considering the circumstances.

Originally the client wanted to use an eight-pointed star as the leading element of the design, because it was a trademark of their related project: the Hollywood-style memorial stars to honor the famous Georgian actors. I expressed a strong concern that such an element could give the logo somewhat cheesy looks, but still promised to work on that concept. And I did: on the right you can see one of the several demos where I used the suggested element. Fortunately, these "star" versions were rejected in favor of a more modern concept, just as I hoped.

The Big Wash

Georgia's household chemistry market heavily relies on import -- mostly from Russia, Turkey and Iran. The local manufacturers are only just making the first steps in this direction. Most of them are trying to give a "foreign" look to their products, since the majority of Georgian consumers do not quite trust the local chemistry goods yet.

I designed my first detergent label in 2006. It was named 100+1 and came in three different flavors (you can see the "green apple" version on the right). The brand name was a clever invention for the local market: at that time the label designation rules strictly required the main titles to be in Georgian (which was something highly undesirable for the household chemistry manufacturers), and the name 100+1 consisted only of numbers, which conveniently avoided using a Georgian title, while breaking no rules.

But not all the manufacturers were so clever. Some of them went on a shady path of disguising their products as foreign. The next order, which I received the same year, was precisely of this sort: I was required to make a bilingual label with primary designations in German and secondary in Russian, to mislead the customer into believing it was an original German product exported to Russia. Naturally, I protested with all my might, but my three wives and eleven children (numbers are slightly exaggerated for a dramatic effect) were starving to death, so I took my thirty pieces of silver and set to work.

The labels were called DamlaX (which is quite strange for a "German" product, since "damla" is a Turkish word, meaning "drop of water") and also came in three versions -- only this time divided not merely by flavors, but different scopes of application (glass, dishware, universal). Also, there was a small label for liquid soap.

That's when my first "detergent character" was born -- a cute girl with a big smile and even bigger frying pan, ready to be used as a tennis rocket with someone's head as the ball, if that someone tries to offend her (by refusing to buy the product, that is).

The "Damla-Girl" soon was followed by another character -- a mole, designed for a caustic soda label. Why mole? It's a long story, but to be short, there is an insanely popular Russian brand of caustic soda, named KROT (meaning "mole" in Russian), which uses a mole as its symbol. Traditionally, the mole is depicted wearing goggles and a miner's helmet, often climbing out of a pipe (since caustic soda is mainly used to cleanse pipes). This time the clients were strictly law-obedient: it was clearly a local product, with proper Georgian title and inscriptions.

Last year was very productive in regard of household chemistry labels -- I received a whole series of orders from a newly emerged private manufacturer. The first labels, going under the brand name UNIVERSAL+, were bilingual (Georgian-English), but the next series, named ECO+, dropped Georgian titles entirely, because by that time the designation rules had been somewhat softened, allowing to disregard Georgian, leaving it mandatory only in technical data -- such as usage, ingredients, validity terms, etc.



Soon after that I received a similar order from a different manufacturer. This time I had to invent the brand name myself, since the clients had no idea what to call their product. It proved to be quite a challenge, since all the good names had been already snatched away. I finally came up with SHINY, but it took quite an effort to convince the clients to use this name, because they had some reservations about the ability of an average local consumer to pronounce the English word properly. Anyway, the labels were done, and another character was born: a shiny, smiley and toothy drop with energetic thumbs up.


Then I returned to ECO+ brand, only this time with slightly different products: floor polish and glass cleaner. It was an entirely unexplored territory for me and I really enjoyed the work. In both labels I used the "wiping" effect, but achieved it differently in each case: in floor polish it was a simple gradient transparency, while in glass cleaner I used a more elaborate method, working with layers and filters to get the "wiped window" effect.

By the end of 2008 we gathered quite a bunch of ECO+ products. Below you can see them in all their glory -- actual containers with actual printed labels, exactly as they appear on supermarket shelves.
But the big wash wasn't over yet. This year I received several new orders from this manufacturer. The first was two series of liquid soap labels: one for transparent plastic bottles and another for semi-transparent plastic canisters. It was done in the "classic" manner of ECO+ detergents, already tried and tested in battle.


The second on the menu was a multipurpose whitener called Belizna -- another popular Russian brand (the word means "whiteness" in Russian). It was quite easy: a snow-white title against blue background (a winning combination), a little splash, some yummy bubbles... and done!
Then things got more interesting, because the next label required the creation of a new "detergent character" -- something like my Damla-Girl, only less headstrong. But before that, I needed a hand... literally. The client insisted that there had to be a hand image on the label, because it was a sort of "detergent balsam" with some protective additions for hands (glycerol, to be precise). Naturally, the hand should have been that of a female. I didn't have any suitable hands at my disposal, so I had to involve Diana, my ever-ready lifesaver, asking her to take some photos of her left hand and send them to me ASAP. After some trial and error, I received my hand, which was quite well-preserved, but still required a little "manicuring." I added some extra "glamour" with Portraiture Plugin for Photoshop and reversed the image, because I needed a right hand for my label, not a left one.

The hand fitted just perfectly, and now I switched to drawing the new character. Like in previous cases, first I drew the line art by hand, then I scanned it into the computer, traced it and finished in my graphics editor. The "Eco-Girl" came out a lot more likeable than her predecessor -- I really got my hand in making these cartoonish characters in the past few years. I added a slice of lemon and the work was done.

Now I had to make the final label from this set of orders. It was another caustic soda in the best traditions of our good old Russian KROT. Only this time the mole got bigger and stronger -- a real Super-Mole! The idea came to my mind, when the client asked me to help him with the name. He didn't want it to be just KROT, so I suggested to name it Super KROT, which means "super-mole" in Russian. It was time to create another character...

The new mole had the same helmet and goggles, and he also climbed out of the pipe, as you would expect from a mole of his profession, but this time... dressed in Superman costume (with ECO+ logo instead of the letter "S") and flexing a well-developed biceps.

As I was told, the color of the containers could be either yellow or green -- it wasn't decided yet -- so I chose the colors to match both. The combination of yellow and green looked nice and fresh. The work was done and everybody was just as happy with the results as the mole on the label...

That's the end of the big wash... for now. Hopefully, there will be more washing and cleansing in the future, because I find the process of designing household labels rather... refreshing.

The Epic Wait for Another Crank-Up

It all began back in 1995, when I made Crank-Up: Start to a New Life for the Body Language series. The simple idea of a demon "winding up" a young woman into a brand-new sensual life lingered on, resulting in a spin-off called Waiting for Another Crank-Up, made in 2004. The spin-off featured the original Crank-Up framed and hung on the wall, as a reminiscence. Among other things, you could see the two intertwined spirals -- the trademark symbol of the new Body Language II series.

Still Waiting... is a sequel to Waiting for Another Crank-Up. I never really intended to make it -- the next thing in this line should have been Crank-Up II itself. But the last summer, during the photo-session for my upcoming "sanguine" series called The Mornings After, I "accidentally" took a picture of Diana gazing through the window, dressed in her red bedgown. The sight was breathtakingly beautiful, and she instantly reminded me of the girl from Waiting for Another Crank-Up. So I thought it could be interesting to make another spin-off -- this time, featuring Diana as the model.

The new version has the same general concept and composition, as its predecessor, but there are some differences in details. For instance, the "teeth" now have a polymorphous "tongue" in the form of a large house plant leaf, and the strongly suggestive cactus has been replaced by the less allusive flower vase. There is yet another suggestive element in the picture -- a "fruit composition" arranged on the table. The "sculpture" on the table has also changed -- the "male" spiral has disappeared, leaving the "female" one in complete solitude. Also, there is no more picture on the wall -- but, to keep the good tradition, a framed reminder of the plaited spirals has been left on the table.

14 years have passed already in this epic wait for another crank-up. Hopefully, the lonely girl from the picture gets what she wants very soon...

A Striking Coincidence

Recently my friend in art and fellow ArtWanted.com member Patrick Pierson has uploaded one of his older paintings called The Crossing to his ArtWanted portfolio. You can see the painting below.

Patrick Pierson "The Crossing" © 2001

The painting itself is a very unusual and interesting take on the Crucifixion theme, but that's not the subject of this blog post. What really caught my attention (to put it mildly) was the striking resemblance to my own draft made somewhere between 2000-2002 (roughly the same period as Patrick's painting). You can see the draft below.


There are certain differences -- for instance, the composition is reversed in my version. But the similarities are striking nonetheless, as you can see yourself. The most amazing thing is that Patrick had no chance to see the draft -- nobody had seen it except me until now.

Naturally, Patrick was shocked no less than myself. He wrote to me: "It must be that we are twin sons of different mothers. Stranger still, my first sketches for THE CROSSING show Golgotha as a human skull with the cross sticking out it as the skull cracks. Way too creepy. Anyway, what a weird coincidence!"

The Georgian inscriptions on the draft indicate, that there should be an outer space view in the background and, more importantly, the actual geographical point, where the Crucifixion took place, should be clearly recognizable on the globe.

It's indeed amazing how the similar creative ideas drift inside the heads of different artists. And I'm really glad that such a marvelous coincidence happened with the two of us, because I hold Patrick Pierson in high respect for his great skill and wild imagination. His surrealistic paintings are full to the brim with creative insanity, and his hyper-realistic oil pastels deserve to be regarded as living classics.

To see more artwork from this brilliant artist, please visit http://www.PlanetZootopia.com.