We love Kelsey's work. See how he creates this beautiful piece Step by Step.
Introduction:

• Hello fellow Fecal Face fans. I would like to walk you through a step by step analysis of the creation of one of my paintings. I'm going to organize this like a laboratory report as this is the format I am most comfortable with.

Materials:

• Three to four days free time.
• Paint: Latex (house paint from The Home Depot oops rack), Golden Acrylics and black waterproof India Ink.
• Brushes: All of the line work is done with round sable brushes (sizes 0/20 to 2). Everything else was done using various sizes of flat brushes.
• Canvas: The canvas was 36in.x48in.10-oz. pre stretched and gessoed canvas bought at Blick. If you by 20 pre-stretched canvases at one time you can get 75% off. So I usually go with a friend or wait around for someone in the store to pair up purchases with....75% is a great discount and we all need discounts…..right?

Method:

• Dig through pounds of photos and gigabites of online blog sites for a suitable photograph (of people…usually women) to take apart. In this case the source is www.lastnightsparty.com
• Find appropriate animal photograph to splice into previously mentioned photograph. Prepare canvas with suitable background and paint character onto canvas….simple as that.

This is the sketch/study I made from those photographs. This along with the photos above are what I used as a reference as I painted.

Purpose:
Damn good question. Ideally I try to not consider this before I paint.

Analysis:

Big blank canvas.

This was the latex paint. Pretty simple first step really…..lots of splatter and lots of coverage....very fast and watered down to allow the paint to run off the bottom of the canvas. Almost always a circle.

I did a rough free hand sketch of my characters/figures onto the dried latex paint with a mechanical pencil. Then laid out the quilt pattern using a ruler and couple layers of acrylic paint. I also made a few little stencil type things out of cardboard to help me draw the quilt patterns onto each little square. I found the quilt pattern by Googleing "quilts".....how else? You can see them taped up to the canvas for an easy reference.

These are the little stencils I made to help me make the quilt patterns straight and uniform.

Here I began to fill in the quilt patterns. I tried to mix up a bunch of rustic/country type colors...using the printed out images as a reference point.

More detail into the background...shit took a long time.

I was almost finished with the background here....took me about 2 days to finish and I remember getting kinda antsy to start on the characters (always my favorite part). I also remember at this point kind of being worried that I would fuck up while painting the characters and have to gesso over this entire background and start over.

The quilt background was finished here and I laid down the first bits of flesh. The blank, un-patterned squares (by the woman's left shoulder) were left like this since her hair was going to cover them anyway....planning ahead is a new thing for me.

Started to rework the flesh here. I continuously rework the skin until I think it looks good or until I get sick of doin it....which ever comes first. Using my skin as a reference (as it is usually handy), I create one master pigment for each piece by mixing up a flesh tone out of primary blue and a pre made orange (yellow and red). I then add titanium white and a pre mixed brown to this master pigment to change the hue and get that 3D effect.

The fleshy bits started to come together here and I laid down the first layers of paint on the Baboon's head. I usually paint from dark to light and then add the black as the final stage. I don't really have any hard and fast rules though. I never made it to art school, so I just kinda wing it. Almost all good things in life happen as accidents at first...right? (except our current president.....this rule holds no truth in regards to that monkey.)

The white paint by the woman's head was about to become her hair. I painted a layer of white down first so that when I painted the brown (her hair will be brown) the paint that was under the hair wouldn't show through. I also just gave her teeth, complete with a set of nasty fangs. The baboon was getting ready to put on his shirt as well.

Brown hair as promised.

Underwear for the ladies and a sweet shirt pattern for the baboon head dude. He also got a bit of yellow added to his fur...probably has something to do with attracting females in baboon world.

From here on out it was all about line work. I did my line work with India Ink and those super small round brushes....which are a perfect recipe for Cramps Ville. The hair was a technique I had been playing around with for the last couple of months..kinda comic book style. I first got turned on to this style from looking at Nathan Fox's work (who is so freaking amazing). I have a long way to go before I master the style like he has.....but Im makeing progress.....slowly. Got some detail in on the baboon undies and the shirt as well.

Added some black to the baboon's face and mouth

Tyed all the loose ends together with the black liners....and added a few splashes as homage to (a.k.a ripping off) Ralph Steadman. My buddy Ben Tour kills it with this technique as well.

This is the final product....with the contrast turned way up.

I know I'm totally blowing it by not having any good detail shots...most of this painting is in the detail. I would have taken more but this piece was shipped off to Lazarides Gallery just after I finished it. These are the best shots I could muster up...I'm sorry.

This is my studio here in San Diego. The light in the evenings is great....My bedroom is in the other room on the left. I have spent almost my entire year in this room....the only time I leave these days is when I surf.

Side Note: Anyone in SF who is a fan of quilts should check out the De Young Museum as they have an amazing collection of quilts from Gee's Bend Alabama currently on display....very worth your while if you're a fan.

Thanks for your interest out there....Kelsey

Website: http://www.kelseybrookes.com

Fine Art: http://www.lazinc.com

Friends: http://rvcaclothing.com

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