Posts made in September, 2010

"Sideshow" by Lesley Spanos. Acrylic painting on Multimedia Artboard, 5 x 7". Copyright ©2010 Lesley Spanos, all rights reserved.

A new one from my State Fair USA series. These sword-swallowing, bed-of-nails-laying, walking-on-broken-glass,swinging-paint-cans-from-nipples guys are from the Blue Monkey Sideshow, based in Indianapolis. It’s a fun show and they create an authentic vibe with their costuming and some really cool painted drops. Painting them was great fun, and I’m sure they’ll be on my drawing board again sometime in the near future.

Here are a few images taken along the way:

After toning the surface, I roughed in a sketch with pastel…

… then defined it further with waterproof marker. Once the marker lines were in, I rubbed off the pastel.

Starting to rough in the faces with thin layers of paint. At this point I’m not trying to get a likeness, just something that looks rounded and human.

Starting to refine the faces a little…

…and even more…

…and even more.

Now that the faces have some dimension, I start the process of trying to make each look like the character I’m portraying. Notice how the guy with the shaved head has gotten a personality and longer, less squishy face since the last step?

A few more details and I’m finally done.

Gotta love a guy who wears a dog collar with a tie.