My Favorite Witch–February 13th, 2017

A practice portrait of one of my best friends who is Wiccan. She’s crazy and a pain in the behind but I love her and her magic. Surround yourself with people who make you better everyday; she is one of those people for me.

The goal of this was that I wanted to practice lighting from below as well as how to make things look like they’re glowing on Photoshop from this tutorial I found from another artist online.
Turns out that lighting from below is one of the easiest lighting angles to depict, at least for me. And I thought it was super fun. I had to step out of my comfort zone a little bit and just trust in the process because at first it looked wrong. It was a good exercise in pushing my personal anxieties and boundaries. Once I did, and as it progressed, I ended up super happy with it.

It has been approximately four months since I graduated from SVA. I work two jobs: I am a dog walker in Manhattan during the day and a phones person at a busy restaurant called Westville Hudson at night. I started doing portraits of my coworkers at Westville as superheroes just for fun and the head chef of the restaurant, Luis, saw them and commissioned me to design his right arm sleeve tattoo. We discussed what he wanted and he wanted a bunch of food, maybe some waitresses and a chef in a highly-stylized cartoon style similar to that of Tokidoki. Other than that, he gave me full artistic freedom. It took me two months to complete just because of my busy schedule but finally I finished it (see below). When he saw it, he was in awe. He almost started crying which in turn almost made me cry! It was one of the best reactions to an artistic thing I’ve done that I’ve ever gotten. I’ve shared the piece below and you can also find it on my main page under “Miscellaneous.” Sorry about the dopey watermark. Someone should teach me how to make a better one.

It finally happened. It’s unreal.