Stumbled Upon

Alexa Meade is another artist from Tumblr and I accidently came across her art while I was slacking off at work and looking at my dashboard on Tumblr. I know a lot of the artist I post about are from Tumblr, but I feel like that’s where the most interesting and creative people are that no one knows about yet.

This piece is titled Transit, by Alexa Meade. Looking at it, the viewer would think it’s a painted portrait photoshopped into a picture of people on a bus. Well that would be incorrect. Alexa Meade actually paints her models and puts them in a setting. This man was actually painted and then she photographed him on the bus.

     I love the different layers of color she used to actually paint the model. It does have a painting look to it. She had to highlight and darken every plane-change and wrinkle on the model. I like that her canvas is an actual 3D surface instead of a typical 2D canvas or paper. The only thing I don’t like about it is how you can tell the man isn’t an old man. He just looks like a younger person made to look old and it doesn’t look very convincing.

 

This one is titled Portrait of a Self-Portrait which means that Alexa actually painted herself for this one. I usually love the layers of color and how they look like they’re just slashed on, but in this one, I really don’t. I feel like she does a better job painting other people. The shadows and highlights are a little off and you can tell she’s a painted person. The yellow she used looks really out of place.

       Overall, I like the idea of this one and I like the rug or blanket in the background. I think it adds more color to the picture. Even her hair’s okay, but the highlights and shadows on the face don’t match the highlights in her hair. I think it was just a little more difficult for her to paint herself than it is for her to paint other people.  I give her kudos for her attempting it though.

 

This last image is titled Concealed and the woman in the picture looks like she’s concealed with a tarp or blanket. The colors are a lot better in this image than they were in the previous one. The shadows and highlights make more sense and the clothing enhances that. You can tell the background was painted on, but the tarp or concealer is harder to tell. I can’t tell if it’s painted on or a real object.

  I love how the tarp or whatever it is frames the portrait in a creative way. It makes the picture more interesting. The only flaw in this one is that she didn’t really paint the hand in the bottom right corner. The hand looks like it wasn’t painted like the rest of the woman’s body. For some reason, it bothers me a little bit.