Live Event Painting Examples and other News

The Consumer Electronics Show (CES) is one of the largest trade shows in the world, with more than 170,000 attendees, including 50,000 from outside the U.S., visiting some 3,800 exhibitors on nearly 2.5 million square feet of exhibition space. This year I painted live portraits of attendees at the Touchjet booth utilizing their Pond Projector, a compact projector that turns any surface into an interactive Android touch surface. The Android painting app I used for these portraits was the Android painting app Infinite Painter. You can read about the experience of being one of my portrait subjects at CES in Chris Matyszczyk’s CNET article How I let a physicist paint me at CES.

Congratulations to Amanda and Kunal on their beautiful New Year Wedding!! In this video you see me creating a live iPad portrait of the newly weds at their evening reception, including a replay video showing how the portrait developed from beginning to end. Earlier in the evening I painted live iPad portraits of Amanda and Kunal’s family and friends, plus worked on a collage painting based on photographs from the Indian and American Ceremonies.

Wedding Portrait of Amanda and Kunal
Created from life using iPad Pro, Apple Pencil and the Procreate app (shown below displayed on two large screens at the reception)

Here are a few photographs I took of Amanda and Kunal at their wedding:

Mercury Soul at Ruby Skye, 2015

26″ x 36″, pigment ink print and acrylic gel on canvas

This painting is based on a photo I took of electronic music DJ and composer Mason Bates and bassist and composer David Arend performing together at an event called Mercury Soul, a wonderful fusion of electronic and live classical music that took place at the venue Ruby Sky, San Francisco. This was created using Corel Painter 2016 on an iMac with a Wacom pen tablet, and is the subject of an online Painter tutorial on my digital paint training site, PaintboxTV.com.

Eric
2015, iPad Pro, Apple Pencil, Procreate

This portrait sketch was created from life at a Boxing Day celebration in my studio on December 26th, 2015. I used an iPad Pro, the Apple Pencil and the Procreate app. You can see below the video replay of the entire drawing, plus the reaction of Eric when he sees the completed portrait for the first time.

If you’re interested to learn to draw and paint on the iPad please join the four day iPad Art Camp in San Francisco, April 4 – 8, and/or you can study online via the iPad Art Online Course

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Dragon’s Gate
2015, pigment on canvas, printed 32″x 16″ / projected 72″ x 36″

This painting was created live at a ChinaSF event on the 24th floor patio of the new NEMA building in San Francisco using the latest technology: the Touchjet Pond (that turns any surface into a smart wall) and the Infinite Painter app.

The Dragon’s Gate depicted is the gateway to San Francisco’s Chinatown and is located at Bush and Grant. It has a fascinating history and design, with every element being symbolic (see the Art & Architecture SF article).

Painting the Dragon’s Gate live on the 24th floor patio of NEMA with the spectacular view of San Francisco in the background

Helen Thomas, CEO of Touchjet Inc., San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee and I with the painting at the ChinaSF event

“Thank you again for creating magic last night with the Pond Projector and painting the Dragon’s Gate. So in love with the painting.”
~ Catherine Woo, Director of Sales & Marketing Operations, Touchjet Inc.

I love it when technology, art and performance synergize together in creative harmony and create something bigger and more spectacular than the sum of the parts. That’s what happened at the ArtPoint Cocktail Party, de Young Museum, on November 12th where I had the pleasure of live painting with a combination of cutting edge technology: the recently released Touchjet Pond Projector, which turns any surface into an interactive smart wall; and the Android painting app Corel Painter Mobile.

The theme of the event was innovation and the arts, resonating with the theme of the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition (PPIE) which is the subject of the one of the current shows in the museum, plus the theme of Hawaii since the Royal Hawaiian Featherworks are also currently on display in the museum. I chose to paint the Palace of Fine Arts, one of the last remaining structures from the PPIE, loosely basing it on a photo I had taken earlier this year. You can see in the videos below how I was painting on a “real”, i.e. non-digital canvas. It was a pleasure to be able to paint digitally directly at large scale, with full body motion, and to feel the resistance, give and tactility of the canvas surface texture.

After this event I received this nice note:

Dear Jeremy,

I cannot thank you enough for your participation with last night’s event. You truly brought the Art to the Innovation! It has been an absolute pleasure to work with you, and I would love to do so again.

Sincerely, Carrie

Carrie Cottini
Assistant Events Manager
Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco
de Young
Legion of Honor

To see another example of my use of the Touchjet Pond to digitally paint live on real canvas, please see Dragon’s Gate.

Majestic Kaiser
2015, mixed media on canvas, 50″x 24″

This painting depicts a 1951 Kaiser Deluxe outside the historic Majestic Hotel South Beach, 660 Ocean Drive, South Beach, Miami Beach, Florida. The hotel was designed by Albert Anis and completed in 1940. Amongst the magnificent Art Deco buildings of the South Beach Art Deco District, the Majestic Hotel stands out in style. As explained on the Miami Beach 411 Official Travel Site, this building “abandoned horizontal linkage and eyebrows in favor of a mimicry of the pre-deco Vienna Succession style, with recto-linear windows and arched cornices, seemingly straight out of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis. Despite this digression, it maintains a style which looks decidedly Deco.” This painting includes details from the beautiful art deco metallic elevator door as well as a 1919 Miami map.

The painting is based on, and inspired by, my stay at the hotel during the 2015 Art Deco Weekend on Ocean Drive. I took reference photos at different times of the day, inside and outside the hotel. I was inspired by wonderful quality of light; the shapes, colors, architecture and design details of the building; and the history, style and character of both the hotel and the car.

Thank you to Brian, owner of the Majestic Hotel, and to Michelle, Hotel Manager, and all the rest of the staff for their warmth and hospitality.

This painting is part of my Miami Beach Art Deco Series which currently comprises:
Avalon Olds
Beacon Bel-Air
Breakwater Chevy
Majestic Kaiser
Ocean Surf Caddy
Park Central Olds

November 2015

Paper to Pixels Fall Open Studios Art Show, November 6 – 8, 2015
~ Part of the city-wide San Francisco Open Studios
Sutton Studios & Gallery, 1890 Bryant Street #306, San Francisco, CA 94110 (cross street Mariposa) Click here for map

Jewel
2015, Live iPad portrait created at the Open Studios Show using iPad Air, Sketch Club and Pencil by 53

Photo: Margo Moritz

I exhibited a range of my work from “traditional” works on paper to innovative digital and mixed media paintings on canvas. Here are a few of artworks that were shown:

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Mayor “Sunny” Jim Rolph Jr.
2004, 48″ x 72″, pigment ink and acrylic on canvas

This painting is a historical portrait, part of my Legendary San Francisco Mayors series. It commemorates the life of one of the longest serving mayors of San Francisco who oversaw the recovery of San Francisco following the great earthquake and fire of 1906. He was instrumental in San Francisco hosting the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition (PPIE), a world’s fair that celebrated the opening of the Panama Canal and the city’s post-earthquake reconstruction. The centennial of this exhibition is currently being celebrated at the de Young Museum with their exhibition Jewel City: Art from San Francisco’s Panama-Pacific International Exposition.

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2014, 44″ x 102″, pigment ink print on canvas

This painting depicts the magnificent view looking down on the San Francisco Bay from Divisadero Street at the top of Pacific Heights on the final day of the America’s Cup.

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Marcus Shelby
2009, 36″ x 56″, pigment ink and acrylic on canvas

This portrait of bandleader, composer, arranger, bassist, educator, and activist, Marcus Anthony Shelby, is based on working from life in my studio while Marcus practiced. This painting is stretched (gallery wrap) without frame.

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Rhonda Reclining
2015, 24″ x 20″, pencil on heavy weight cold press watercolor paper

This drawing was created during a recent life drawing session at Alexandra Palace in North London. It is unframed.

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Ortigia Alley
2015, 40″ x 30″, mixed media on canvas

This painting depicts a scene I saw in one of the beautiful picturesque alleys of the ancient city of Ortigia, Siracusa, Sicily. It was created as part of a teaching demonstration for my Painter 2016 In-Depth Photo-Paint Workflow video tutorial (for PaintboxTV members). The inspiration of Sicily has led me to organize an iPad sketching workshop there: Sketch Sicily 2016. This artwork includes a beautiful museum-frame frame.

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Gatsby Stroll
2015, 24″ x 19″, mixed media on canvas

This painting depicts a scene I saw at the Gatsby Summer Afternoon event in Dunsmuir Historical Estate, Oakland, where I brought students as part of the Great Gatsby Impressionist Workshop. It was created as part of a teaching demonstration.

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Majestic Hotel, South Beach Miami
2015, 36″ x 24″, mixed media on canvas
This painting depicts the classic Art Deco Majestic Hotel, 660 Ocean Drive, South Beach, Miami Beach, Florida. Designed in 1940, this Albert Anis creation abandoned horizontal linkage and eyebrows in favor of a mimicry of the pre-deco Vienna Succession style, with recto-linear windows and arched cornices, seemingly straight out of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis. Despite this digression, it maintains a style which looks decidedly Deco. The vehicle outside the hotel is a 1951 Kaiser Deluxe which participated in the Art Deco Festival parade on Ocean Drive outside the hotel.

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Avalon Olds’
2014, 36″x 26″, mixed media on canvas
This painting depicts a 1956 Oldsmobile convertible parked outside the classic historic Avalon Hotel at 700 Ocean Beach Drive in South Beach, Miami. The hotel was built in 1941 in the late Art Deco style (in the subcategory of Streamline Moderne) and was designed by architect Albert Anis, renowned for designing many Art Deco buildings in Miami Beach and Chicago.

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Gatsby Stroll, 2015, MacBook Pro + Corel Painter 2016 + Wacom Intuos Pro M

This painting depicts a scene I saw at the Gatsby Summer Afternoon event in Dunsmuir Historical Estate, Oakland, where I brought students as part of the Great Gatsby Impressionist Workshop. It was created as part of a teaching demonstration.

Ortigia Alley, 2015, MacBook Pro + Corel Painter 2016 + Wacom Intuos Pro M

This painting depicts a scene I saw in one of the beautiful picturesque alleys of the ancient city of Ortigia, Siracusa, Sicily. It was created as part of a teaching demonstration for my Painter 2016 In-Depth Photo-Paint Workflow video tutorial.