Thinking about your body being exposed during the month of January can send shivers down your spine. It’s been a cold one this winter in Toronto, but it always makes me happy to see people lookin’ forward to new skin art and asking me to design something for them to show off once the weather warms up. The Orchids I designed for Suzie were requested to be bold and bright with purples, blues and pinks. I wanted to give the flowers a softer touch, so I used watercolour, pencil crayon and filled in the bolder parts with sharpie markers. Louis wanted a phoenix tribal tattoo, so I worked on this image using fine line ink pen and rhythmic lines to create movement. Music of Influence at the time: MGMT, TV on the Radio and Mother Mother.
Kay is a local hip hop artist from Hamilton, Ontario under the label Sircle Famili’a. His style is progressive and his words are powerful in his rhymes about life, struggle and success. When photographing Kay, I wanted to give each shot a clean, fresh look for an upcoming Canadian artist. The saturation in the photos are upgraded with dark shadows and blasted out negative space. Although he’s got a serious side to him, Kay still knows how to have a good time. Sarcastic photographs of rappers are hard to come across, but the metaphorical message of “Same S&%t, different day” was the base for the two humerous shots. It was a pleasure working with Kay for this shoot. You can check out more of Kay’s music at:
www.myspace.com/ksalammusic
http://www.reverbnation.com:80/iamkays
